scholarly journals Ethical codes and corporate responsibility of the most admired companies of the world: Toward a third generation ethics?

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reyes Calderón ◽  
Ignacio Ferrero ◽  
Dulce M. Redin

Codes of ethics contain a set of rules of conduct and corporate principles concerning the responsibility of a company to its stakeholders and shareholders. These codes help to guide corporate and employee behavior, and constitute verifiable elements of social responsibility. This study examines the Most Admired Companies of the World, ranked by Fortune magazine in 2009 to find out, first, whether their codes of ethics exhibit greater emphasis on social responsibility and strong implementation processes, and second, whether they could be considered codes of the third generation as elaborated by Stohl et al. in their article in the Journal of Business Ethics. Our results indicate that the codes of ethics of the 2009 Most Admired Companies of the World resemble “codes of conduct” rather than strictly codes of ethics or “codes of corporate social responsibility”. These codes continue to be governed by traditional norms related to immediate economic success, normative compliance, internal management and the pressing effects of their sector. This study thus provides empirical support for the idea that the philosophy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is scarcely present in the codes of the most reputable companies.

2021 ◽  
Vol 303 ◽  
pp. 01003
Author(s):  
Olena Kozyrieva ◽  
Nataliia Tkalenko ◽  
Valentina Vyhovska ◽  
Alina Pinchuk

The article proves that the implementation of the principles and use of the tools of corporate social responsibility can increase the reputation of the corporation and its activity in the world market. The purpose of the article is to substantiate and determine the role of corporate social responsibility of the mining and metals companies in ensuring and improving their reputation in the world market. The article substantiates that the low level of corporate governance practice and insufficient part of social contribution to the companies negatively affect formation of corporate social responsibility of the corporations. The article analyzes the indicators of Corporate sustainability and Transparency for 2018-2019 according to the professional rating of the largest Ukrainian mining and metals companies, based on leading international practices. The analysis of indicators made it possible to identify the proportional dependence of the reputation of the corporation on the measures of corporate social responsibility that the latter implements. It is determined on the basis of the study that corporate social responsibility is an effective tool to increase the competitiveness of mining and metals companies.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5993
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Huk ◽  
Mateusz Kurowski

Sustainable development is now an important direction for the further development of all economies in the world. It is important to balance economic development with the impact on the environment and our planet. Another direction in the development of management sciences is the emergence of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, which considers this impact in three key aspects—economic, environmental and social—in terms of microeconomics. This concept gives companies specific guidelines and tools that minimize their negative impact on the environment. Reducing the negative impact of companies influences the environment and this is what is mainly associated with them. However, companies should also pay attention to internal consistency and caring for employees. Company practices such as the exploitation of people, including children, and injustice in the workplace are some of the factors that can be observed in less developed countries. The article focuses on the presentation of the environmental aspect in the context of the concept of corporate social responsibility. We analyzed individual sectors of the economy in terms of the environmental aspect, with particular emphasis on the energy industry. The study is based on a statistical analysis taking into account data from 1718 companies from all over the world. The aim of the article is to present the environmental aspect in the context of corporate social responsibility in the energy industry as a direction for sustainable development of the economy. The article is based on the analysis of the literature and databases presenting CSR, which was created on the basis of questionnaire research. The article shows which regions of the world are worse and which are better in terms of the environmental aspects of CSR. Conclusions on the main CSR guidelines for the environment are also presented. We analyzed factors such as environmental routines, policies and targets, implementation of environmental management systems, ISO 14001/EMAS certification, environmental reporting, environmental requirements inside the supply chain, the trend of GHG emissions and the trend of energy consumption for their environmental impact. The analysis was carried out on the basis of given regions of the world and individual sectors of the economy, especially the energy industry.


Author(s):  
David Tajgman

The International Labour Organisation's 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work prioritised four core labour standards' principles and led to a burst of new ratifications of the international treaties that are the subject of those principles. Ten years on there are important identified gaps in state implementation of the ratified Conventions that are the subject of the four principles. These gaps leave important holes in public policy and legislation. In a number of important substantive areas, these gaps have the effect of leaving it to private actors to figure out what would amount to fulfilling the norms of fundamental labour principle inspired codes of conduct. Inescapably left on their own to figure out approaches, corporate social responsibility (CSR)-respecting enterprises are subject to criticism levelled on the basis of interpretations of these principles given by civil society organisations and labour rights' campaigners. This chapter details this situation. The first part provides the necessary background information. The second part gives concrete examples of how this governance gap raises challenges to implementing CSR initiatives. The third part suggests that, considering the arguable origins of CSR in neo-liberal deregulatory fervour, social dialogue and reform by non-compliant state actors is the only sustainable solution.


Author(s):  
Rauno Rusko

Due to the general tendency to express environmental protection, environmentalism, and the actions to slow down the greenhouse effect in the world, the enterprises have noticed the importance of environmental values in their public announcements, documents, and homepages. In other words, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a very important and topical theme of the firms. The popularity of environmentalism tempts the firms to follow the direction of public opinion even though the actual environmental activities might be minor or even absent. This kind of quasi-environmentalism is called as greenwashing. This chapter focuses on greenwashing and CSR in the Finnish context via public discussions about greenwashing. This chapter is emphasizing the understandings and the sense-makings in the concepts of greenwashing and CSR and their numerous connotations basing on the results of the textual analysis. The outcomes are completed and compared with the international contexts, and, therefore, they are also internationally robust.


Author(s):  
Terry Clayton ◽  
Nicole West

There are few places in the world where hydropower development is progressing as intensely as the Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia. In searching for ways of supporting public dialog on development, the Challenge Program on Water and Food found that the hydropower sector speaks of social responsibility only in terms of “benefit sharing,” while the development sector and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) largely ignore or are unaware of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The chapter begins with an overview of hydropower development in the Mekong, considers some possible reasons for the absence of CSR in the ongoing debate over hydropower development, and concludes with recommendations for designing a project to build on the findings from this research.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehran Nejati ◽  
Michael E. Brown ◽  
Azadeh Shafaei ◽  
Pi-Shen Seet

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the simultaneous effect of ethical leadership (EL) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on employees’ turnover intention and examine the mediating mechanism in these relationships. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a field study of 851 employees across a variety of industries. This study applied partial least squares structural equation modelling for hypothesis testing. Findings The results show that employees’ perceptions of CSR as well as EL are both uniquely and negatively related to turnover intention. The authors also found that employees’ job satisfaction but not commitment, mediates these relationships. Research limitations/implications This study answers the recent call (Schminke and Sheridan, 2017) for ethics researchers to put competing explanations to the test to determine their relative importance. Research limitations have been discussed in the paper. Social implications Through providing empirical support for the positive impact of CSR and EL on employee-related outcomes and creating a decent and empowering work environment, this study provides further support for CSR and EL. As CSR and EL require accountability, responsible management and addressing societal well-being of stakeholders, this study can contribute to the United Nations sustainable development goals. Originality/value Previous research has found that both employees’ perceptions of supervisory EL and CSR are negatively related to employees’ turnover intentions. Yet, researchers know little about their relative importance because these relationships have not been adequately examined simultaneously.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheikh Muhamad Hizam ◽  
Zulkarnian Iylia Syazana binti Othman ◽  
Mohammad Mohammad Amin ◽  
Zalina Zainudin ◽  
Mohd Faiq Abdul Fattah

The field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has developed exponentially in the last decade and is consistently getting to be a worldwide slant. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a worldwide matter around the world that comes about an expanding number of studies on CSR universally as well as in Malaysia. Furthermore, the importance of CSR practices was emphasized by companies in order to ensure its sustainability in corporate world which are focused on (a) environment, (b) social dimension sustainability, (c) economic advancement, (d) stakeholder behaviour and (e) ethical evolution of society. In this manner, this paper gives a concept of CSR writing that has been conducted in Malaysia to assess the execution of CSR among organizations in Malaysia. It is presently anticipated that organizations expressly take into consideration all perspectives of their execution, not as it were their money related comes about, but moreover their social and commerce environment. Subsequently, most of organizations are presently locked in genuine endeavours to characterize and coordinated CSR into all perspectives of their businesses and exhibitions. The point of our think about is to get it this slant in Malaysia and particularly to explore (i) the status of CSR in Malaysia; (ii) different CSR practices in Malaysia; and (iii) future dissemination of CSR in Malaysia. Finally, over the last few decades, Malaysia has been gradually improving its alignment with global management practices such as quality management and ISO 9002.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Clément Séhier

Purpose This paper aims to investigate to what extent and for which reasons the codes of conduct and social audits of multinational corporations (MNCs) have failed to change practices within Chinese factories. A special attention is given to the social compliance initiatives (SCIs) and multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) which did not overcome the main obstacles of the compliance approach. Design/methodology/approach This research is based on a fieldwork in China, including 36 semi-constructed interviews with practitioners involved in corporate social responsibility (CSR), participant observation in the CSR programme of the International Labour Organisation office in Beijing and several visits of factories involved in CSR programmes. Secondary sources are used to estimate the distribution of value added along global value chains (GVCs). Findings The codes of conduct and social audits tend to reproduce the domination of MNCs within GVCs. This paper highlights some obstacles – and opportunities – for CSR appropriate to the Chinese context. Research limitations/implications Only a few MNCs agreed to meet the author and speak openly. No one allowed the author to visit their suppliers’ factories. Practical implications The findings of this study suggest that the most widespread approach to CSR by MNCs is flawed. More attention should be given to specific institutional contexts and to workers’ participation. Originality/value CSR discourse and practices in China are put in the context of GVCs and in the transformation of Chinese industry and labour relations. This method allows going beyond a case study approach. Instrumentations of several SCIs and MSIs are also analysed in detail.


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