Yen-Bei Lin
Instructor: Breena E. Coates
MGMT 335
Feb. 10 2015
According to our textbook, “corporate social responsibility (CSR) means that a corporation should act in a way that enhances society and its inhabitants and be held accountable for any of its actions that affect people, their communities, and their environment.” (Lawrence and Weber 49) Besides, the Triple Bottom Line Concept of John Elkington, a company should be responsible for its social, environmental and financial performances, which is known as the “profit, people and planet” approach as well. That is, the businesses nowadays not only focus on making profits for shareholders, but also care about how they making profits. Business, a part of the society just like we individuals, should embrace its responsibility by encouraging positive impacts on it. Whether the company should take CSR seriously, it is better to find a balance between profits and CSR. As we can see, some companies only care about short-term profits so that they contaminate the environment randomly, producing low-quality products. People in the society are forced to get into the vicious cycle. However, some companies put too much effort on CSR; then end up with financial crisis. For this reason, some critics think that CSR misleads the business profit-motive. They claim the costs of implementing CSR is more than the profits that CSR has brought, which violates the essence of doing business. Although CSR brings non-financial benefits to business, and people nowadays prefer the CSR corporates, without making profits, business is merely a non-profit organization. Surprisingly, there’s a company didn’t start from the profit-motive but ended up marketing dream coming true. A video of Steve Pinetti, a senior vice president of sales and marketing for Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, is talking about how they green their business and what benefits it has brought. At the beginning of the video, Steve said, “We are the company that totally believes if you give the love, you will get the love.” They formed an earth care committee and started the environmental program, such as changing the recycling