Basic concepts and principles of CSR

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Frame of References

This chapter will present previous theory and research regarding the concepts and definitions of CSR. There will be a presentation of different CSR models and how CSR can be implemented and used.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

CSR has many different names for the same or similar concept, such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship, Business Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility and it can defined in the following way.
CSR is the persistent assurance by companies or businesses to perform properly and constantly contribute to the development of the business economics as well as improve the value and quality of life of the employees and families, as well as of the local community and society in general (Holme & Watts, 2010).
The basic concept of CSR is that companies should manage or operate their overall business situation in a good way. They should also aim to achieve a balance be-tween business and society, such as various shareholders, unions, and customer groups’ etcetera and produce an overall balance in society. CSR promises the socie-ty to operate the company or business to meet the expectation of different share-holders and those affected in society (Blowfield & Murray, 2011).

Basic concepts and principles of CSR

CSR ensures that the company is financially viable and that the shareholders’ in-terests are managed in the market. The major goal of CSR is to improve the busi-ness, maximize shareholder value as well as increase the economic profit and share price, but also maintain and develop the relationships between the company and its stakeholders. There are four dimensions that are incorporated in CSR and these are the economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic dimension, taken from Car-roll’s pyramid of CSR (Blowfield & Murray, 2011).

Economic responsibilities

Economic responsibility is the first measurement in CSR and it denotes to the fun-damental responsibility of businesses to produce goods and services that society wants, and which it sells at a profit (Blowfield & Murray, 2011). The role of eco-nomic responsibilities is it to produce good and satisfying services that meet cus-tomer requirements and needs and generates profit in the process. All companies and business responsibilities are established upon the economic responsibility of the firm (Carroll, 1991).

Legal responsibilities

Businesses have not permission to operate as they please when chasing profit; the businesses need to comply with the law and regulation promulgated by municipal, state and local (Carroll, 1991). Under legal responsibilities, companies chase the goal of economic responsibilities within the limit of the written law. Legal respon-sibility one only needs to think of arms, sales, and narcotics and realize how the law defines it and what legal activity the business needs to consider (Blowfield & Murray, 2011).

Ethical responsibilities

Ethical responsibility works as a planning process, setting the guidelines for differ-ent business groups in how to protect the business and shareholders. The ethical responsibilities have a clear goal to generate profits to the business and are not just for increasing business profit, but also to find out what is right for the compa-ny. Ethical responsibilities and legal responsibilities communicate with each other to build economic profit and a good business. CSR started with a focus on the role of business leaders and how they could manage their companies from the point of view of society and environmental situations. Since the early 1990s they discuss how environmental aspects concern the business, how they were increasingly be-coming an area of the business process and how they could influence the local so-ciety (Blowfield & Murray, 2011).

Sustainability and Sustainable Development

There is a broadly accepted definition of sustainable development established at the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), also called the ‘Brundtland Commission’ in 1987 (Blowfield & Murray, 2011):
“Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable- to ensure that it meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future gen-erations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits. Not absolute limits, but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the bio-sphere to absorb the effect of human activities. “ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p.8)
The concept of sustainable development is to combine the growing concerns for environmental issues with socio-economic problems. With the help of sustainable development there is a potential to tackle essential challenges for humankind, both now and in the future. This concept is the result of an increasing understanding that there are links between increasing environmental problems, economic issues concerning inequality and poverty and also concerns for the future of human kind (Hopwood et al., 2005).
The commonly used model for sustainable development consists of three rings: environment, society and economy. These are separate, but still connected and to some part independent. Sustainable development is usually presented as the effort to bring these three rings together in a balanced way. The rings are normally de-picted in equal size, but the size can be altered depending on how important they are to the company (Giddings et al., 2002).

 Philanthropic responsibilities

Philanthropic responsibility is the last measurement in the model. Philanthropic involves the good corporate citizen who should contribute resources to the com-munity to improve the life and quality of the society. The difference between phil-anthropic and the other responsibilities is that to be philanthropic, the company must do more than what is required of them in the different areas of economic, le-gal and ethical responsibilities. This is a proactive approach where the company tries to foresee customer demands or new regulations so that they can stay ahead and be competitive (Carroll, 1991).
CSR has been created mainly in response to business scandals, but also due to the understanding that development centered only on economic growth paradigms is weak and therefore they need to do some active and effective actions in the differ-ent responsibility areas. Companies and communities should cooperate in an im-provement process targeted at combining economic growth with environmental sustainability and social cohesion. CSR and sustainability reforms the corporation by situation. This can help the business to improve and evaluate their economic situation. Corporate sustainability and CSR handles the company’s improvement, current situation of business and the needs of the stockholders (Blowfield & Murray, 2011).

Logistics social responsibility

A new concept that has been addressed in more recent years is logistics social re-sponsibility (LSR). There has been mentioning of CSR topics, like environment, eth-ics and safety, in logistics literature, but they have not been researched with con-sideration to each other, but instead investigated in an unrelated way. Research in this area is not yet extensive, but one of the earlier studies was made by Carter and Jennings (2002). They examined the issues of CSR that related specifically to logis-tics and called it LSR. According to their research there are three different roles within logistics, purchasing, transportation and warehousing. The activities within these areas could be categorized within six different groups: environment, ethics, diversity, human rights, safety and philanthropy/community. Depending of which function, the activities differ under each group and show which involvement the different roles have in LSR. According to the study there are several positive out-comes for companies working with LSR, for example improved stakeholder trust, increased stakeholder performance and improved financial performance (Carter & Jennings, 2002).

CSR models

This chapter will show and describe some of the accepted CSR models in the litera-ture. They show

Pyramid models of CSR

Carroll 1979 first presented his pyramid of CSR model in 1979 and this model helps companies to succeed with the different types of obligations. It contains four categories: philanthropic responsibilities, ethical responsibilities, legal responsibil-ities and economic responsibilities, as seen in figure 1-1. The model shows that economic performance is the basic building stone that CSR is based upon. The company is also expected to follow the law, since it dictates what is acceptable and unacceptable business conduct. The third step is to be ethical and this step con-cerns the companies’ commitment to do what is right and minimize harm to stake-holders. A company’s stakeholders can be for example their employees, consumers or the environment. The last step is about being a good corporate citizen. This last step shows what is expected of companies in regard to the society. It is anticipated that companies should give economic and human resources to the society and to enhance the quality of life (Carroll, 1979) (Carroll, 1991).

The three domain model of Corporate Social Responsibility

This model, figure 1-2, is based on the previous one by Carroll (1991), but has some differences. Now the model is made up out of three categories, ethical, eco-nomic and legal. The fourth domain, philanthropic, is included under the ethical and/or economic domain. This is done since there can be differing motivations for the philanthropic activities. This model also depicts that none of the three catego-ries is more important than the other and that companies can work in different overlapping areas. With the overlapping areas, this model has seven categories and the ideal overlapping area is the center, where all three domain overlap (Schwartz & Carroll, 2003).

A framework of Logistics Social Responsibility (LSR)

The framework, figure 3-1, created by Carter and Jennings in 2002, shows how lo-gistics companies can find the barriers to economic base, employer issues and overcome them, and drivers that lead to successful LSR. In analysis part author build a responsible logistic model it explained in the section 5.1 and it help to un-derstand the factors that influence (driver and responsibilities) LSR and what the outcomes will be in order to apply the framework in their organization. The framework shows the different drivers and barriers that exist and also gives ex-amples of how to overcome some barriers. With the help of LSR the company can Implementing and managing CSR
CSR is the one of most effective solutions used to manage the business structure. Corporate responsibility management describes the terms of organization, changes the business needs of the organization. The implementation of CSR differs between companies and depends on what they focus on. When implementing CSR there will always arise some questions about what purpose (why and what), what process, which principles are going to be applied and what the outcome is. A CSR model can be used for different levels in the organization and it will affect the different levels in the business in different ways. It focuses on the relative organization and society associated with CSR (Benn & Bolton, 2011).

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem discussion
1.3 Purpose and research question
1.4 Delimitations
1.5 Thesis outline
2 Research and Methodology
2.1 Methodology
2.2 Method
2.2.1 Documents
2.2.2 Interviews
2.2.3 Observations
2.2.4 Questionnaires
2.3 Research approach
2.4 Research strategy
2.5 Literature review
2.6 Data analysis
2.7 Quality of the study
2.7.1 Reliability and Validity
3 Frame of References
3.1 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
3.2 Basic concepts and principles of CSR
3.2.1 Economic responsibilities
3.2.2 Legal responsibilities
3.2.3 Ethical responsibilities
3.2.3.1 Sustainability and Sustainable Development
3.2.4 Philanthropic responsibilities
3.3 Logistics social responsibility
3.4 CSR models
3.4.1 Pyramid models of CSR
3.4.2 The three domain model of Corporate Social Responsibility
3.4.3 A framework of Logistics Social Responsibility (LSR)
3.5 Implementing and managing CSR
3.6 The application of CSR
4 Empirical results
4.1 DHL
4.1.1 CSR within DHL
4.1.2 GoGreen project
4.1.3 GoHelp project
4.1.4 GoTeach project
4.1.5 Business ethics
4.1.6 Key stakeholders
4.1.7 Employees
4.2 DB Schenker
4.2.1 CSR within Schenker
4.2.2 CSR effects and reduced costs
4.2.3 Environment
4.2.3.1 KNEG
4.2.4 Employees
5 Comparison and Analysis
5.1 Responsible Logistics model
5.1.1 Responsibilities
5.1.2 Drivers
5.2 Schenker and DHL
5.2.1 Schenker and DHL Responsibilities
5.2.2 Schenker and DHL Drivers
6 Conclusion
6.1 What is CSR?
6.2 What is the purpose or goal for a company engaged in CSR activities?
6.3 How do the two case study logistics companies work with CSR and what differences are there?
6.4 Implications and recommendations
6.4.1 Implications
6.4.2 Recommendations for future studies
7 References
8 Appendix
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