Kayode Ibukunoluwa-Micah's Blog

The call for corporate social responsibility is constantly growing by the day, organizations today have realized the need to conduct their businesses in an ethical manner that goes beyond their immediate interests of profit, service delivery and customers’ interest to paying attention to the economic, social and environmental impact of their operations especially on their immediate host communities and sphere of influence.

Corporate social responsibility has widened the activities of the organization beyond their immediate operations to include the extension of benevolence acts aimed at improving the lives of their workforce and their families and at the same time paying attention to the wellbeing of the local communities and the society at large.

Based on my experience in the handling of organization/communities relationships in the predominantly oil producing communities of the Niger Delta, it was realized that hostility towards businesses operating in that region was largely due to the distancing of organizations from issues and matters that are paramount to the people in which communities that they operate. And, one key solution to this problem is the advocacy for organizations to adopt CSR initiatives that directly impact the lives of the people.

In this article I will be looking at the role of HR in steering such a high impact initiative for the promotion of organizational peace, enhanced social impacts and corporate citizenship. This article will pay attention to the ways and means of achieving CSR and how it could be promoted in more effective and efficient ways.

WHAT IS CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OR CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP?

Corporate social responsibility is an internal business initiative and strategy that is directed at integrating business and society thereby promoting corporate socially accepted behavior for sustainable economic development, human and employment right protection, appropriate corporate governance, sustainable environmental protection and working conditions.

Corporate social responsibility has been variously described to mean “corporate conscience” responsible business practice, “corporate citizenship” Corporate Philanthropic and so on and so forth.

It suffices to say, however, that corporate social responsibility has taken on the form of an “International Private Business Self-Regulated” (Sheehy, Benedict (2012) law and practices where standard requirements are made and organizations are mandated to comply and be evaluated on the basis of these criteria.

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