Corporate Social Responsible

Qi Ming Zeng

English 310

Final Daft

The term corporate socially responsibility (CRS) is a pervasive term in the business world; what exactly does it mean? CSR is an idea that corporations should consider the interest of the society and the environment, by taking responsibilities for the impacts they made in them. The practice of CSR has been a controversy debate within the corporate business world. I personally believe that corporations should only focus on their business and profit because the practice of CSR is such a problematic subject for corporations to deal with; corporations tend to create a lot of problems when they practice CSR.

Corporate hypocrisy is one of the problems which associated with CSR. BP, an oil company which claims to be an environmentally conscious oil company that promised to be “Beyond Petroleum” (Bakan, 2004). Unfortunately when it comes down to business and profit, BP is just an ordinary oil company, and CSR is just empty promises they made to deceive their consumers. Norma Kassi, a member of the Gwich’sin Nation, is an Arctic indigenous people whose villages were built thousands of years ago went to BP’s annual general meeting at London, trying to stop the drilling on the Arctic slope’s costal plain. She believes that the drilling would destroy the Porcupine Caribous and the Gwich’in Nation’s cultures (Bakan, 2004). What did our environmentally conscious oil company, BP do? They turned down Kassi’s request even though there were a lot of strong scientific evidences that indicated the drilling will wipe out the whole Gwich’in culture and the Porcupine Caribous.

Despite BP’s refusal to drill on the coastal plain, other BP programs such as developments in alternative energies, and cut down carbon dioxide emissions are relatively insincere. In between 2000 and 2005 BP had invested $500 million on alternative energies, yet BP sent $8.4 billion on exploring and producing nature gases within just a year in 2004 (Roberts, 2006). Comparing what BP put in to alternative energies and in petroleum, the money they spend in developing other energy resources is very trivial. It looks to me that BP has never had any concerns in the society and the environment because if BP is genuinely care about the society and the environment BP would have not opened the drilling of the coastal plain and would have spend more money in alternative energies rather putting money in developing petroleum. BP has failed to do both they did not stop the drilling nor put more money in developing alternative energies. This kind of corporate hypocrisy toleration has to be stopped before other corporations start to imitate this kind of practice. Therefore corporations should not be distracted from its core business and profits.

Lack of maintenance is also a major problem correlated with pursue of CSR. Corporations who practice CSR devoted themselves in creating good moral images for the public, fails to realize that at the same time they are neglecting the company’s most essential part, making sure that everything in the company is working properly. In 2006 one of the BP’s pipelines in Alaska broke (Roberts, 2006). No matter how many environmental programs BP supports, I believe that the damages made by the broken pipelines in Alaska can not ever be fully healed. Instead of pouring money in bragging how environmentally they ...

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Don Shugak, a BP technician, was a victim of BP’s lack of maintenance on the company’s materials and mechanism. BP engineers knew that the Prudhoe Bay Oil field had problems and would operate unusually, yet they did not fix the problems. As a result Shugak ended up in a Seattle hospital with burns covering 15 percent of his body; miraculously he was able to survive. In addition, the state inspectors found that one-third of the pads at one of BP’s drilling platforms were defective and did not get fixed (Bakan, 2004). BP is not as socially and environmentally responsible as they claimed to be after all; in facts they are creating fatal impacts on the society and the environment. The pursuit of CSR results inefficient maintenance, which ultimately damages the society and the environment. It seems to me that when corporations do not practice CSR they do not tend to have problems with their maintenances. ExxonMobil, an oil company which did not focus on CSR has never been caught with corroded pipelines (Roberts, 2006). BP should have had focused more on the company’s indispensable supplies rather than putting a massive of attentions on CSR. Maybe the pipelines in Alaska would not have had broken if BP had put more focus on their job, namely focus on profits; also Shugak would not have had suffered from all those burns. The practice of CSR does no goods to our society if corporations create fatal impacts during the processes of CSR. In order to avoid those major impacts, corporations should focus on their profession; one has to be able to take care of one’s self first, before they can take care of others.

Finally, one of the most common problems connected to CSR is corporate scandals. There are many corporations out there who use the practice of CSR to hide their bad behaviors from the public. Nike, a very big sportswear and equipment company in the United States, has been accused for using sweatshop labors in third-world countries (Holmes, 2006). Accusations of using sweatshops for any corporations are very critical, it damages the corporation’s guts or even worse it can bring the entire corporation down. Apparently, Nike knows this very well; they use the practice of CSR to conceal their immoral behaviors from the public. Just after Nike has been accused for using sweatshops, they exposed their practice of CSR to the public claiming that it took them fourteen years of hard work to get the greenhouse gas out of their sneakers (Holmes, 2006). The accusation of using sweatshops for Nike got diminished by their practice of CSR because there are no policies require companies to reduce greenhouse gases. The public sees that Nike nevertheless decided to take the voluntary to do so, which makes Nike seems like a decent company that will do good for the environment, and eventually the public has forgotten the accusations on Nike.

Interface also knows very well on how to use the practice of CSR, to defraud their consumers; using recycle materials sounds very environmental, and it is believed that recycling is one of the best ways for people in the world to save our planet. Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, claims that by 2020 Interface will be reaching its goal forming a zero waste company by using recycle materials to produce their products (Cortese, 2006). We as consumers are easily get deceived by Interface because any recycling is to be believed to be good, that is what we have been informed since the beginning of Global Warming. Yet it turned out that Interface’s recycling effort is just another corporate scandal, it was found that the recycled products had a much greater environmental impacts than carpets which are made of out non-recycle materials (Cortese, 2006). We have to realize that corporations are programmed to maximum their profits without any concerns for the harm it may bring to the society and the environment. Every penny they spend is a benefit to itself, namely a straight route to profits. That is why the practice of CSR should not be encouraged among corporations because the practice of CSR is going to be an opportunity for some corporations to cover up their immoral actions from the public, which gave them the ability to commit unlimited crimes without any consequents or exposed to the public.

Corporate hypocrisy, lack of maintenance, and corporate scandal are some very common and dangerous problems that are associated with the practice of CSR. Each of these problems is associated with a very serious impact on our society and environment. Corporate hypocrisy is linked to our future image of corporations, the future corporations is based on our present images of corporations. Corporate hypocrisy has to be stopped before the whole business world gets influenced and started to practice this kind of behavior. Lack of maintenance is related to fatal impacts on the society and the environment, our society and environment might have to suffer just because of a particular company fails to provide an adequate mechanism for its company. Corporate scandal is correlated to the ability of how corporations have the power to commit crimes without the acknowledgement of the public, which granted corporations the power to do unlimited damages on our society and environment. The practice of CSR is such a problematic belief, it is better that the practice of CSR should not be encouraged among corporations. The practice of CSR does no good to our society and environment when it brings up more vital impacts and problems to our society. I believe that if corporations are focusing on their main job and goal, they would have less impact on our society and environment. The truly and most effective practice of CSR for corporations is basically for them to focus on their core business and fix problems that are with in the company, instead of the obsequious practice of CSR.