CSR is a form of corporate self-regulation that became popular during the 1960’s and 1970’s in growing American businesses. Domestic and local businesses have ethics codes and social conduct that must be complied with, the direct results of which are reflected by their communities’ support of them. Once they become multinational, they must adhere to official mission legislation depending on what organizations are affected by the company. These ordinances, whether instituted by the UN (e.g. TBL) or an independent (e.g. ISO 26000), guide what steps businesses should take to comply with socially responsible actions, the law, and international codes of conduct. The following image is a simplified explanation of what a business would look for in a competitor’s CSR strategy: 
Companies use benchmarks such as “CSR as corporate philanthropy” to evaluate how the public views their social programs and how likely their customers are to continue buying a product. For example if the average consumer had the choice between two identical bottles of water, equally priced, but Bottle A is made of 30% recyclable plastic, the consumer is more likely to buy Bottle A. A sense of marginal utility is attached with helping the community and environment.
A few companies who stand out in the field of Energy in regards to CSR are: Chevron and Exxon Mobil
Chevron has over 62,000 employees and is the first Corporate Champion member of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Chevron has followed its publicized CSR Report (More information can be found using this link! http://www.chevron.com/globalissues/corporateresponsibility/2008/documents/Chevron_CR_Report_2008.pdf) by creating 55 Learning Centers in Angola, Venezuela, South Africa, and Nigeria. It also has a donation based banking system, Novobanco, which uses micro loaning in Angola to encourage entrepreneurship amongst low-income homes. It has made plans for fourteen branches and raises $10 million in loans already.
Exxon Mobil is one of the few companies that boast the statistics to back up their own CSR plan. Originating in 2010, their integrative Corporate Citizenship Report is constantly updated to show progress and efficiency since instating. For example Exxon claimed it would spend one billion dollars on women and minority owned businesses by 2012. Halfway to that due date, Exxon Mobil has spent over $800 million. With a detailed and progressive CSR strategy, Exxon Mobil holds accountability training and monitors factory conditions scrupulously in all its active countries.
More Information about Exxon Mobil, Chevron, International CSR Codes, and my sources for this post can be found here:
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/05/exxonmobil-beats-oil-drum-latest-csr-report/
http://www.iso.org/iso/social_responsibility
http://www.csrquest.net/
http://www.chevron.com/globalissues/corporateresponsibility/2009/?gclid=CPmB8f2yuasCFYiC5QodmQnuqQ
Is CSR Corporate Self-Regulation or Cooperation Social Responsibility?
ReplyDelete**Corporate Social Responsibility
ReplyDeletewhich is a form of Corporate self regulation
ReplyDeleteI like that you chose to focus on two companies who produce oil when looking over CSR plans. Companies like Chevron and Exxon can get a bad reputation in the public eye considering their massive amounts of revenue & increasing sizes of its companies. People will pinpoint how these corporations will be able to give back to the community around them. If a company does not do their CSR duty, their public relations team may be working overtime in order to do damage control.
ReplyDeleteBased on this post it sounds like Chevron has been making serious efforts in order to help and improve the world around them. Exxon also has stayed on track with its promise.
In our group discussion today, we talked about the differences between ethics and corporate social responsibility. Dan does a great job in this blog by distinguishing what CSR is by backing it up with clear examples and statistical information. When we create our investment recommendations and write our paper, some of the information you used in this blog could be a great asset to our research. While we looked into Exxon and Chevron, maybe we should also give some attention to some of the smaller energy companies that might also be well-known for their CSR. We could probably find some information in the library research center with an array of sources about all companies in the industry.
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ReplyDeleteExamples of corporate social responsibility