The Business Need for Corporate Social Responsibility:

Sustainable development is recognized by us as a process of development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. We believe this constitutes balancing the Triple Bottom Line – defined as the achievement of three interdependent and mutually reinforcing goals of economic development, social development, and environmental protection.

We respect the needs of all stakeholders and strive to create value for them. The main themes of our sustainability agenda comprise Health & Safety, concrete steps in mitigating climate change notably through mineral, environment and energy conservation, community development, customer excellence & product development, affordable construction and transparency in our sustainability reporting and communication.

Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility:

The term corporate social responsibility gives a chance to all the employees of an organization to contribute towards the society, environment, country and so on. We all live for ourselves but trust me living for others and doing something for them is a different feeling altogether.

Bringing a smile to people’s life just because our organization has pledged to educate the poor children of a particular village not only gives a sense of inner satisfaction but also pride and contentment. One should never forget the importance of society and environment in our lives. It is indeed high time when we also start thinking about people around us who are less privileged and fortunate than us. Corporate social responsibility gives an opportunity to organizations to work towards the betterment of the society and make it a better place to live.

Social Responsibilities of Organization Towards Customers:

Treat your customers as kings and do not think of them only when you have a pressure to meet your targets within the stipulated time frame. Organizations that do not bother to touch base with their customers the whole month but are active only when they fall short of their targets and they have an appraisal in the coming month. Understand that a customer buys our products or services only when he/she trusts our brand and most importantly believes in us.

Understand the needs and requirements of our clients. Find out as to why they need a particular product and how our product would benefit them. We need to build a strong relationship with our customers for them not only to remain our  loyal clients but also bring more people along with us. It is the responsibility of  our organization to give correct suggestions and feedbacks to our valuable customers.

Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) Leads to Increased Business Efficiency:

In case corporations need some convincing to be done to adopt CSR, the model proposed by Young and Tilley (2006) where they list six criteria for corporate sustainability that not only contributes to the social responsibilities of the business but also improves the business efficiency..

The six criteria discussed by Young and Tilley are eco-efficiency, socio-efficiency, eco-effectiveness, socio-effectiveness and sufficiency and ecological equity. Taken together as a whole, these six criteria form an integrated model which corporations can follow for sustainable business practices and reap profits as well as be conscious in their business practices.

Societal Marketing Concept:

Societal Marketing is based on the principle of societal welfare. It emphasizes that an organization must make strategic marketing decisions keeping in mind the consumer wants, the organizational needs and most important the long term interests of the society.

Societal Marketing is nothing but an outgrowth of the principles of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable development. It underlines that an organization should not ignore the society’s long term welfare so as to achieve it’s mission and vision. An organization should have moral and environmentally friendly strategies and should ensure that proper acts and laws are implemented.

In today’s world of increasing environmental destruction, scarcity of resources, rapidly increasing population, and abandoned social services. the societal concept of marketing is doubted. It is questioned that “Are organizations doing an outstanding task of customer satisfaction in line with meeting long run societal welfare ?”.

Consider example of a fast food industry. They do provide yummy food but this food is full of health concerns. The burgers are rich in fat and so are the fries and pies too. Such products are packed in handy form and packaging generating lot of waste. Thereby, in the process of satisfying customer, these fast food outlets are creating increasing health concerns as well as environmental issues.

Societal marketing should take into account the following things:

• The consumer’s needs are of utmost significance.
• Genuine, modern and continuous developments in the products should be executed so as to increase the product’s life and value.
• Emphasize on building long term customer relationship and not on doing business. Do societal good. In short, an organization should market the product keeping in mind the consumer, organizational and long term societal needs and welfare.

The Societal marketing concept is significant because of the following advantages it has:

• It ensures that all the economic resources are channelized in the right direction.
• It develops entrepreneurs as well as managers in a specified society.
• It raises the living standard of the people.
• It increases the speed of economic development of society.
• It makes economic planning more significant and more fruitful to people’s life.

CSR Initiatives in Primary and Secondary Education:

CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives can extend to the realm of primary and secondary education. This entails close engagement and involvement of corporate in the schools, colleges, and universities where the corporate provide for funds, training, and associated programs with a view to educate the future workforce on how the corporate world works and the expectations from the future employees. It has been found that in many developing countries, there is a disconnect between the education that the students receive during their graduate programs and the expectations from them when they join the workforce. Indeed, it has been estimated that out of the millions of graduates in countries like China and India, only 10-20 percent are employable meaning that the rest do not have language, comprehension, verbal, and aptitude based skills to find gainful and meaningful employment. This is the reason why many industry bodies in these countries have taken it upon themselves to reach out to the colleges and universities and impart skill based training programs so that the students upon graduation can be employed and be employable.