N12100 Managing the responsible

business
Student ID 025639

Learning Journal Choice BEING A RESPONSIBLE MANAGER

DEVELOPING THE
RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS

SUPPORTING A RESPONSIBLE
SOCIETY
Word count 0 Words (Automatic)

Mark

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Feedback (for module conveners only)

Demonstratin
g critically
thinking on
learning
experience

Analysing
capabilities for
sustainable
and
responsible
business

Using
evidence in
support of
argument

Generalising
to develop
effective
routines for
future

Expressing
clear and
well-
structured
writing

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Managing The Responsible Business: Sometimes its
real sometimes its not.

Introduction

After learning this module it doesnt change my perspective about CSR at

all. For me it is always the same, some company really mean it with their
CSR program, and some just want to do it because they know they will
get something bigger in return. Because as we already know business is
business, there is no way a company make a business with giving to the
society as much as possible as their number one priority. Its just after all
at some point company have to give back to the community, because of
ethical manners. But most of the time, the one that really means it is a
medium sized business rather than a giant, so their resource is usually
limited and not as impactful as major companies.

In this reflective journal, I will explain what Ive learned from this module
based on my responses, experiences, reading and also a couple of
arguments with my friends. Also, there a three main concerns that Ive
always brought up to the table in recent e-tivities: 1. CSR mostly just
another marketing gimmicks, 2. SV is more realistic than CSR, 3.
Stakeholder issues

I choose this title because it represents what I feel every time Im

thinking about responsible business, sometimes its there, its possible,
its doable, but sometimes its just there for the sake of theory, because in
the real life there only a few company that actually manage their business
responsibly.

The Nature of Business and Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is on the rise over the last decade,
it makes company can engage 2-way communication in order to achieve a
win-win situation. To makes the customer keep coming and in return, the
company will provide community needs like infrastructures, school
buildings, water services, donations, training for SME and etc. Which is
very useful in my opinion because I think sometimes the company is
faster to act to solve some problem than the government in this matter.

The problem that bothering me is that many giants nowadays use it as a

tool to enhance the image and show to the world that they are making a
real difference, for a better future, which is true by the way at some
point, but on the other hand resorting to devious ways in acquiring profit,
or sometimes just pure unethical business I should say. In a sense that
CSR is done by some companies with the aim on whitewashing bad deeds
particularly in business practices. CSR International Founder Professor
Wayne Visser stated that business should not use CSR for branding
exercises and winning awards, you shouldnt be reporting for public
relations, but companies unfortunately do it for that. he added. The more
I think about he said, the more I realize that its hard to name a company
that is big, with billion dollar value, with excellent practices of CSR that
dont have an award every year. Im trying not to be skeptical, Im
thinking about maybe with that kind of awards it can encourage them to
do more for the society, for a better life for our grandkids, something we
can leave for them. Turns out theres not many of them that willing to do
that.

Nowadays CSR is an industry in itself, with full-time workers, websites,

social media, newsletters, professional associations and dozens of
consultants. Many companies boasting about how well their CSR
practices, hold events like seminar, forum group discussions about the
future of their CSR implementation, or even hiring fresh graduates to join
the CSR industry. At one side it is good for them to make people care
about what the right things to do in order to give back to our society. But
on the other side it is not that good. From business ethics point of view,
the problem with CSR is obvious, it is a phylanthropy at other peoples
expense. Even though Carrolls Pyramid of CSR highly praise that, the way
company do to achieve that is somewhat misleading . Because so far as
public companies are concerned, the manager do not own the firms they
work for. Doing something for good causes from their own salaries pocket
would be admirable, but doing it from the income that would otherwise be
paid to shareholders is a more dubious proposition (The Economist,
2004). Also in democracy, deciding social/environmental policy related act
is not the priorities of a company, it is priorities for the voters and
politicians. So, with that in mind, I dont think CSR is truly a part of the
business. Too much hidden agenda behind that as far as Im concerned.

Shared Value

To avoid the ambiguity of CSR, I think shared value is a better answer to

solve our societys problem, to me shared value is more realistic than
CSR, simply because it makes more sense to me. In this capitalist era,
every body making money from a stack of money, to make even more
money. In recent years, business has been scrutinized as a noteworthy
reason for social, ecological, and financial issues. They are blinded by the
short-term financial performance, making them overlook the potential
benefits from making good relations with society to further cementing
their success pathway in the future. Redefining the value chain. Take
Walmart for example, they know their business mostly rely on
commodities, so they come up with the idea of helping local farmers to
produce higher quality products at a lower cost, so they can gradually
increase both quality and quantity of their products. They do this by
giving them facility to clean water, high quality tools and the most
important thing, which is cut the middlemen. By cutting the middlemen,
and directly buy from the farmers, it will help small to medium farm
business expands further. So it benefits Walmart, the farmers, and also
the relationship between them, to make sure they have a great future
ahead. With this strategy, triple bottom line is now assured.

Michael E. Porter and Mark Kramer once stated that Shared value is not
social responsibility, philanthropy, or sustainability, but a new way for
companies to achieve economic success. I agree with this, because it
means they are working together for a mutual benefits in a long run,
rather than being responsible for everything that they do. Because only
in ideal life a company can be so responsible. It didnt mean that every
company is evil, but the truth is there are sacrifices that have to be made.
If we talk about business from the consumer perspective, one can criticize
every single thing from it. They are greedy, they are ruthless, they have
no heart, they have no social awareness, they destroy the forest, they did
this, they did that and etc. But if we look it from the organization point of
view, we might see things differently.

Business can never please all the stakeholders, it doesnt matter what
choice that you will made, consequences will come after us. Also most of
the time, the negative publicity stunt usually made by the one who feel
disadvantaged. Moreover, business should focus more on the shareholder,
because they are the one who made the business possible, they
eventually have to return the shareholders investment. A manager have
to think how they can balance between what they take, and what they
give to the society, and I understand it is a very hard job to do, because
the are thousands of endless possibilities that will happen and link with
each other in every choice they made. Whether its going to lead to a
good thing, or a bad a thing.
Causal Loop

After all, what Ive said above will bring us to the causal loop. A loop
where everything that weve done will affect another thing that interlinks
to it in the long run. I should say the major root for all this problem is
population growth. The more the population, the more the problems will
arise, and we cant really do much about it, government of a country cant
even handle it. Because it will collide with religion aspects, personal belief
and whatnot. Even though there are some regulations about pushing
population growth in some developed or communist countries, the
implementation itself is not really that clear, so far it just like some sort of
awareness by the government. Some theories even said that the only way
to control population growth of a country is war and massacre, but then
again I will not discuss it here since it will only lead to various politics
conspiracies.

So far, various company have been trying to fix our causal loop by
creating green business model in a search for a better future of
environment in our beloved earth. Sir Michael Perry stated that "The
brands that will be big in the future will be those that tap into the social
changes that are taking place." It all can be started from recycling
production waste, green campaign for raising awareness, energy auditing
to make sure that they dont waste too much energy, reducing the use of
paper as much as possible, fund raising for reforestation, research for
more environmental friendly raw material for production and etc.

The question is, is it enough? Actually no, the more we try to fix our
problem in the loop, the more problem will arise, life is full of dilemmas,
once we fix problem A, problem B will appear, once we fix it, problem C
will appear and it goes on. I myself, trying to help to fix this broken loop
by not wasting food since my parents taught me from when I was a baby,
use paper and tissue moderately, throw garbage in its place, use the
energy efficiently and not buying electronic devices excessively. I know,
realistically to fix this loop we need bigger acts and also long term
planning, but at least we try to do something better for our earth.
Because change starts within ourselves.
Innovation for a Sustainable Business

Nowadays everything is changing rapidly in every aspects of business,

starting from the technology, economic growth, population growth,
environmental change, trend in markets, political aspects and more. As
the time goes by, businesses will be forced to adapt to the new standards
of industry, in order to maintain the competitiveness among them. To be
the leader in a raging competition, a company must have certain aspects
that make them unique in the eye of stakeholders, to do that, one must
be innovative to make sure they are one step ahead from the competitor.

Take a giant in the internet industry for example, Google. It started as a

search engine that eventually gain a huge success with their mobile
operating system, acquired several social media services, making Youtube
as the largest platform to share videos to date, become one of the largest
ad service provider in the world, integrating every applications to achieve
seamless Google ecosystem, and recently launch their own in-house
design hardware to the world. Who wouldve think of all this success when
Google was making its IPO in 2004? People was thinking about how can
this search engine become a better one than it was. The thing is, they
adapt to change, they realise they cant rely only on search engine to
make profits, so they start to expanding, and making numerous brilliant
innovation to assured they sustainability in the future. Because innovation
is the key to a sustainable business. We can look at various social media
that goes or atleast almost bankrupt because they didnt see the change
as opportunity, they fail to keep innovating in order to secure their
business (e.g. Twitter, Vines, Yahoo!, MySpace, Friendster, etc).

The challenge its on us now, technology is evolving rapidly every year,

and soon machines and A.I. will replace most of the human workers,
social and environmental issues will keep popping every year, so our job
as a social entrepreneur is to make sure there will be a new field of jobs
for people to depends on, looking after the industry, and keep integrating
business with social and environmental issues to make sure our future is
on good hands. Some company will try to achieve the shared values, and
some will not. No matter where it goes, we have to keep trying and do
our best. Then again, you will see sometimes a thing called Responsible
Business its real, and sometimes its not.