Corporate Social Responsibility and its arrival until today
Today, society’s expectations about companies, especially the greats, are usually coincident: good treatment of employees, ethical and responsible management, responsibility with the environment, etc., In short, they are socially responsible. But the same thing happened years ago?
Throughout the history of humanity, the different communities, including countries and social groups;They have submitted others for their own benefit, having as a clear example the division of society into classes in before the 18th century, where the bourgeoisie and the clergy had a favorable position and benefited from the nation in general. At that time we can say that ethical or moral behavior was not expected, both socially and labor.
Adam Smith, economist and philosopher of the 18th century, began to draw the path of what we now recognize as RSC when in his 1759 work "theory of moral feelings" began to question himself if the coexistence of the most focused individuals was possibleIn their own well -being with the rest, showing sympathy for them, even satisfying their own needs and without being purely selfish. In this work he introduced for the first time the concept of "the invisible hand of the market", which developed and endowed a greater notoriety later in his work "The wealth of nations" in 1776. With this concept, try to explain that it is compatible to satisfy individual wealth with the general well -being of society.
Later, during the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain in the 19th century, following the great inequalities between workers and businessmen, other authors and businessmen such as Robert Owen began to reflect on the employer’s responsibility in the face of the interest groups that surroundedTo his company, where appropriate, in addition to being a thinker, being an entrepreneur in the cotton industry sector, he could carry out all the actions he understood as necessary to promote the welfare of society, “he got the company to throwBenefits introducing substantial improvements for workers: he raised wages, laid the foundations for mutual social security and provided workers with the conditions worthy of housing, health and education."
Andrew Carniege in 1889 wrote "The Gospel of Wealth", where he talked about the philanthropic actions carried out by companies through charity in order to achieve a more just and egalitarian society. As we see, many authors and businessmen have already begun to think about how to achieve the common good combining the search for individual wealth, but it was not until 1953 when the concept of what we know today as corporate social responsibility is really introduced. It was in the United States in 1953, when Howard R. Bowen, considered the creator of the CSR, wrote his work called "Social Responsibilities of the Businessman", where defines the concept of CSR as "the obligations of entrepreneurs to promote corporate policies to make decisions or to follow lines of action that are desirablein terms of the objectives and values of society ". In this way, it expanded the concept A, more than charitable and philanthropic actions, a way of governing a society by integrating actions that achieve the common good.
In it, it reflects, among many other issues, on how the Board of Directors should be composed: facilitating the listening of opinions outside shareholders;That the business decisions that set the price policy, R&D, marketing, external relations and remuneration, should be subject to a social audit;That business codes are developed, a kind of what we know today as a code of good practices, where the exemplary business practices of each company are established. In general, it collects different judgments and convictions from different authors, giving rise to the first concept of the RSC, which deals with the repercussions that business work has on society and considers that the responsibility of the board of directors of a company goes beyondget your business goals.
The rise of theorization brings this concept takes strength during the 60s and 70s, when business values and business ethics begin to be subject to study universities, giving rise to academic debates about how a company should act with its environment. For the first time, the term stakeholder develops to refer to the different interest groups surrounding the company, giving rise to the alignment of the alignment between the economic progress of a company and social development through RSC.
Until now, the CSR passed through a theoretical stage in which the real actions that were carried out to seek the common good were very scarce, but it is from the 70s when the practical stage begins. During this period, several events occurred that moved the population and marked the time, such as the Vietnam War, the crisis of the missiles of Cuba, the murder of John F. Kenned, terrorist acts such as the Munich Olympic Games or the Watergate scandal. Following tragic events for society, social movements were born in response: the hippie movement, the second wave of feminism of the "women’s movement", social revolts and workers to demand better working conditions. The company was completely changing and was much more sensitive to the side effects of the main activities of the companies and, in some way, they understood that if they consumed goods that came from these organizations, they actively collaborated to the worsening of society. Therefore, businessmen understood that they had to offer the information that consumers required.
During this period, it should also be noted that contrary opinions about the RSC appeared, as is the example of Malton Friedman, Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976, which he wrote in 1970 an article in The New York Times Magazine called “The SocialResponsibility of Business is to increase ITS Profits ”. In which he defended that he could not directly speak of responsibility related to companies, since, according to him, only people can be responsible and added that the sole responsibility that the company would have would be to maximize benefits, positioning against contributingin an altruistic social welfare added for society, since all this was automatically generated by complying with the laws and contribution to society.
From the requirement of consumers about information about the practices of companies, the need to present a social balance is born, which is idea in France in 1974 by Pierre Sudreau and becomes law in 1976 at the proposal of the Minister of Labor M. Beallac for companies with more than 300 workers in France. This idea gradually expanded around the world and some companies began to issue information about their actions, demonstrating whether or not, socially responsible.
Archie b. Carroll, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, developed what is known as the "Pyramid Theory" in 1991, in it classifies the four types of social responsibilities that he considers that companies should have, placing at the base of thePyramid those that are the basis on which the rest are built. FIGURE
At that time, we began to talk about corporate social responsibility and thanks to all the authors, thinkers and businessmen who reflected about it, today we have adopted this concept in thousands of companies worldwide that contribute their grain of sand forhave a better world for everyone.
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