Corporate Social Responsibility

- Civil Society Handout -

HONG, SAEMI KIM, JEONGIN KIM, SARANG YOON, JINSUNG

1. Concept
Citizen and civil society Citizen is one who is domiciled in a country, and who is a citizen, though neither native nor naturalized, in such a sense that he takes his legal status from such country (Oxford dictionary). They are under the nation with policy. Even if corporation has policy for their employee, So, they cannot be citizen. And civil society is organization which consists of citizen. It is different from government and business. And they are arena of un-coerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values (London school of economics centre). And they are made up of NGOs, pressure groups, charities, unions, social movements, business associations and so on. But, they are involved in the promotion of certain interests, causes and goals. And civil society is made concrete and meaningful for corporations through specific civil society organizations (CSOs).

Civil society organization (CSO) Crane & Matten give a definition of CSO as the tangible manifestation of civil society. And there are diversity and heterogeneity by scope, type, activities, structure and focus. Civil society organization as stakeholder is quite different from other stakeholder groups. Other stakeholders contribute any resources to corporation directly. On the other hand, CSOs very rarely contribute to corporations directly. But it is not to say the CSO was not a stakeholder. When there are problem, for example, like the protection of environment, organizing a consumer boycott and so on, The CSO has an important role for consumers and other citizens who disagreed with corporation. CSO role is representing the interests of non-human stakeholders.

Corporate citizenship: Charity, Collaboration, Regulation Corporate citizenship entail a positive response to civil society by charitable giving and business-CSO collaboration. Traditionally this has mainly centered on charitable giving and other philanthropic actc intened to benefit community groups and other civil actors. More recently, though we have also witnessed an increasing numbers of more intensive business- CSO collaboration seeking to provide more partnership- based solutions to social and environmental problems(McIntoch and Tomas 2002; Murphy and Bandell 1997). CSOs might even go beyond simply collaborating with business to actually forming some kind of civil regulation of corporate action. About charitable giving, more recently attention has turned to strategic

philanthropy(smith 1994) and cause- related marketing (Varadarajan and menon 1988) as a means of aligning charitable giving with firm self-interest.

In addition to this one-way philanthropic gestures, business- CSO collaboration which is the closer and more interactive relation between civil society and corporations has also risen to prominence in recent years. Some times these types of collaborations are included under the umbrella term of social partnerships (Nelson and Zadek 2000). CSOs increasingly appear to have the power to shape, influence, or curb business practice. It is referred to as Civil regulation(Bandell 2000b). As Bandell argues, civil society effects regulation by creating norms for business and than just the relations that CSOs have with business.

2. Ethical Issues and CSOs

Ethical Issues and CSOs : Recognizing CSO stakes There are a number of significant issues that arise from the somewhat less tangible stake held by CSOs. Chief among these are the decisions by corporations about which CSOs might be recognized as worthy of attention, the tactics used by CSOs to gain attention, and the degree to which CSOs are genuinely representative of, and accountable to, their intended beneficiaries. The first issue is about recognizing CSO stakes. One way of assessing which stakeholders were worthy of intention that was popular in the strategy literature was the instrumental approach. The relative silence of stakeholders would be assessed according to their power, influence, and urgency. (Mitchell Agle, and Wood 1997). On the other side, it is suggested that the decision is influenced by the subjective interpretations of managers and their value judgements of what constitutes a legitimate claim(Fineman and Clarke 1996). Many of the groups tend to self delcare themselves as stakeholders in a particular issue(Wheeler, Fabig, and Boele 2002). The question remains: Which CSOs should corporations recognize as legitimate stakeholders? Zadek said that it is simply not really the companys choice who is and is not a stakeholder. The boundaries defining which CSOs can reasonably defined as stakeholders are permeable and evolving, rather than concrete and fixed.

CSO Tactics Unsurprisingly, since CSOs are not passive actors, they have tried to use lots of promoting methods. And it is not odd that some ethical problems have been raised during their activities. According to Smith (1990), there are three types of tactics which

are taken by CSOs for accomplishing their goals. Those are classified as indirect action and direct action and direct action is divided according to existence of violence. Indirect action Indirect action is done by mainly research and communication about the issues of relevance to the organization. Through establishing some reports, they can appeal for what is going wrong and so what needs to be corrected to the business, the government, and the public. However, when CSOs distort information in the report for achieving their goals, some problems can be occurred ethically and legally. Violent direct action Violent direct action is often illegal and it could include destruction of facilities or equipments, riot, trespass, violence and so on. If CSOs take this way for their aims, the issues they want to suggest may be noticed to many people and discussed by a variety of actors. But, this tactic definitely is not allowed by the law and it can be abusing for increasing awareness of CSOs, themselves. Moreover, innocent citizens can be harmed by this action. Non-violent direct action Non-violent action is a far more common approach for CSOs to use (Smith, 1990). In this tactic, you can find demonstrations, marches, letter, email, social media campaigns, boycotts, non-violent sabotage, picketing, etc. There is lower possibility to raise ethical problems than the other actions, however, there are still

CSO Accountability Now, we know that CSOs could not have avoided some ethical problems. Several questions can be asked likewise with corporations in terms of ethical problems. For example, who is an organization to be serving? Are the interests of its managers aligned with those of its principal constituents? To what extent and to whom are CSOs responsible for the consequences of their actions (Crane & Matten, 2007)? Each stakeholder involved in CSOs can not know every detail about what CSOs are doing and how they are doing as well as there may be not an enough motive in a view of CSOs. However, in recent years, the issue of CSO accountability has been raised with increasing regularity (Bendell, 2005). Some CSOs have tried to increase CSO accountability level. For example, INGO (International Non-Government Organization) made and published Accountability Charter expecting to improve the quality of CSOs internationally.

3. Conclusion
Globalization and CSOs Globalization is chance and challenge at the same time to both corporations and CSOs. Corporations have to deal with unfamiliar local CSOs. It can be challenge to corporations because they dont know exactly what unfamiliar CSOs want. But if the existed CSOs were difficult to deal, and if the unfamiliar local CSOs are easy to deal, corporations can have chance to be strong actor in industry. CSOs become one of the strong actors in the world. They are involved in the process whereby global regulation of business is debated, decided and implemented. But CSOs are faced to Problem about national boundaries such as human right, global environment. Furthermore there are anti-globalization movements. It is very noticeable that how CSOs make balance between chances and challenges that they are faced.

Sustainability and CSOs Sustainability can be achieved when the three sectors - environmental, economic, socialmeets. But it is hard to achieve because corporations tend to focus on only economic benefits. The process of stimulating the two remaining benefits is needed. CSOs can participate in this process for sustainability by requiring the wider set of interests to corporations instead of only economic interests. But the problem is still remained. Because CSOs cant be sure about what actions are likely to be the most appropriate for corporations to take, the process of requiring can be harder than they expected.

Conclusion Nowadays, CSOs clearly have a crucial role to play in enabling individuals to participate. To do this role clearly, they have challenges to overcome. If they overcome these problems, CSOs would be important actors in the evolving sustainability agenda. Furthermore, CSOs can suggest new form of democratic governance that people can determine their own futures.