Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance Research Paper

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance - Research Paper Example CSR- related policies function as built-in, mechanisms through which the business evaluates and ensures that it operates actively in compliance with ethical standards, the law, and international expectations. As such, CRS activities are supposed to impact the stakeholders, environment, communities, consumers, employees and the overall public sphere positively. There are a number of goals that drive businesses into engaging in corporate citizenship. However, the key objective of the activity relates to the establishment of sustainable businesses, which, in fact, need healthy communities, markets, and economies. Some of the drivers of corporate social responsibility include enlightened self-interest, social investment, trust and transparency, and increased expectations of enterprises by the public according to ASOCIO (2004). There are various approaches that corporate entities can take in regard to social responsibility. While for example, some will opt for philanthropy, others will op t for a community-based development approach. Yet again, others will prefer to go the Creating Shared Value (CSV) way. Whichever method or approach is assumed, however, the organization somehow commits some of its resources for the good of other parties as earlier mentioned. Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has blossomed in the 21st century. There is also an increased interest in the topic by different firms and people as seen in table 1. This is attributed to various factors like pressure exerted on organizations to demonstrate high ethical standards and the increasing concern about CSR expressed by policymakers. Firms from developing countries are driven by heightened demands on forms exporting to their products to Europe and other western countries do document their compliance to high ethical standards so as to be competitive. Generally, various organizations develop and express CSR because of various factors that can be summarised as internal and external factor s. In this paper, three international companies namely Monsanto Company, Microsoft Corporation, and Coca-Cola Company will be used to illustrate the various arguments. All the three companies already have a CRS in place.   Why International firms are showing increasing interests in corporate social responsibility and corporate governance There are internal and external factors that are making or motivating international firms to show increasing interests in CSR and corporate governance. Internal factors include managers, shareholders, employees, customers, and suppliers while external factors include social, economic, cultural, legal/government regulations, technological, global standard and nongovernment organizations. Economic and Social factors Researchers have given a special attention to the connection between CSR and the financial performance of an organization.