Question

What do you believe is meant by being socially responsible? What impact do you believe social responsibility has on organizations? Do you believe that being socially responsible is what has led to the success of the company examples provided? Are there any cautions against a company focusing too much on being socially responsible? What lessons should other companies take away from these organizations?

Answer 1

Social responsibility deals with ethics and fulfilling civic duty to benefit society as a whole. Social responsibility can have a large impact on organizations, and it can change your consumer market, which can lead to much success for your organization. Patagoniaemphasizes on finding lasting solutions for working conditions for their employees. They focus on souring, quality, social and environmental. As a consumer I know Patagonia for their environmental and quality efforts. They build lasting products that will be reused and recycled after the consumer is down with the product, this reduces the waste that they will put in the landfill. I believe this leads them to success because they focus on a specific target market that cares about the environment and is looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

Ben & Jerry’s conducts annual social audits to improve the company’s relationship with the community. Their mission is to increase societies awareness of social issues in todays world. Ben & Jerry’s should have caution with these efforts because it could stray away customers with different views, publicity can be good but bad publicity can be more harmful than good publicity can be helpful.

I thought the timberland video was very interesting. I’m happy to hear that they noticed an issue with creating outdoor shoes with a chemical that harms the environment and changed this, creating their choose carbon neutral. Other companies can learn to promote a specific responsibility that they are passionate about to help create a strong, loyal customer base, although it can create a lot of challenges along the way.