1103 The need for a new accounting solution (original) (raw)

Should government audit corporate social responsibility?

Public Relations Review, 1981

Industry has always had tlie choice of taking initiatives in the public arena or waiting for goverl1lnellt to set the niles, says the author of tllis article. "That business is over-regulated is apparent. .. that business lias invited regulation by its inaction is equally apparent, " he says. To avoid government intervention in corporate social planning, Carltoll E. Spitzer urges industry to use its knowledge and power to help create solutions to societal problems and tlzereby maintain a "Ilealthy balance of power" between the agencies of govemment and private organizations. For business to fail to take "pragmatic initiatives" and be "publicly accountable for its performance" could mean the demise of the private enterprise system in America, he says. This article is frolll Mr. Spitzer's Raising the Bottom Line: A Case for Business Initiatives, to be published by Longman, Inc., New York. Mr. Spitzer heads his own counseling firm in Wasllington, D. C.

Editorial 28.6: Corporate social irresponsibility

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 2023

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a buzzword in academic debates in the past few decades due to many scholarly studies tackling this issue (Levashova, 2014). The debate originally centred on the dichotomy of the stakeholder vs shareholder approach where the stakeholder approach, mainly associated with Freeman and his circle, argued that corporations need to go beyond satisfying just shareholders whilst the shareholder approach, mainly associated with Freedman, advocated that corporations need to only satisfy shareholders because this is their role and what corporations do (Freeman, 2010; Friedman, 1962). There are, however, works that called CSR policies as mirroring the zeitgeist arguing that corporations only have CSR policies for reputational reasons and that CSR is just greenwashing. The view on CSR largely depends on political views of authors so neoliberal views will see CSR as an attempt to impose public social preferences on private property (Krugman, 2007; Sheehy, 2014); centrist-left agenda sees CSR as an opportunity to deliver a more equal and just society with NGOs being the main promotors of this agenda (Sheehy, 2014) whilst the far-left agenda equates CSR to neoliberalism and as a smokescreen that prevents and limits societal changes (Fleming and Jones, 2013; Ireland and Pillay, 2009; Sheehy, 2014). In a study we conducted on food, soft drinks and packaging industries in the UK, it appeared that the food industry was most active in its CSR programme but this was largely linked to consumer and media activism whilst the packaging industry works under the guidance of the supermarkets where CSR managers admitted that this is influenced by consumers with a reference, also often being made on an influential BBC programme Blue Planet, thus prompting us to ask whether CSR is just another mirroring the zeitgeist policy where organisations do what it suits their reputation at each point in time (Topi c et al., 2021). In addition to that, I also argued that CSR is a smokescreen for capitalism and keeping the status quo intact by designing a wheel of neoliberalism where I labelled CSR as one of the cogs in the wheel along with environmental governance and technology, liberal media, degradation of the environment, patriarchy, capitalism and policies of the economic growth (Topi c, 2021). However, one research area of CSR that some researchers started to investigate is corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), which is interesting because this area can be used by authors from all political sides of the CSR spectrum to measure the irresponsibility of companies within their distinctive positions. Existing research argued that assessing companies on the CSR-CSI dichotomy would help in overcoming problems with CSR and its understanding because "CSI is a term better suited to describing the workings of the "old" shareholder business model (.. .) and that CSR is more applicable to the workings of the new and emerging stakeholder business model" (Jones et al., 2009, p. 301). This model, thus, looks at scrutinising organisations based on their performance in all fields, thus not making it look as if organisations are generally irresponsible and not committed to CSR but scoring them, which opens an opportunity to recognise that some organisations have good policies in one field but not the other, e.g. they can have good diversity policies but weak environmental ones such as pollution (Jones et al., 2009, p. 301). Equally, one could use this concept and argue that all organisations are irresponsible to this or another extent and develop an argumentation that further extends the mirroring of the zeitgeist position. What is more, some authors argued that whilst some studies find a positive correlation between CSR and financial

Do Corporations Invest Enough in Environmental Responsibility?

Journal of Business Ethics, 2011

Proponents of corporate environmental respon-8 sibility argue that corporations shortchange shareholders by 9 investing too little in environmental responsibility. They 10 claim that corporations can improve their financial perfor-11 mance by increasing their investment in environmental 12 responsibility. Opponents of corporate social responsibility 13 argue that corporations shortchange shareholders by invest-14 ing too much in environmental responsibility. They claim 15 that corporations can improve their financial performance by 16 reducing their investment in environmental responsibility. 17 Yet, others claim that corporations serve their shareholders 18 well by investing just enough in social responsibility, not too 19 little and not too much. If so, corporations increase their 20 investment in environmental responsibility when an increase 21 improves financial performance and reduce their investment 22 in environmental responsibility when a decrease improves 23 financial performance. Our evidence is consistent with this 24 last claim. We find that the behavior of corporations is 25 consistent with the claim that they act in the interest of 26 shareholders, increasing or decreasing their investment in 27 environmental responsibility as necessary to improve their 28 financial performance. 29 30 Keywords Corporate environmental responsibility Á 31 Corporate financial performance Á Causality Á 32 Corporate social responsibility BP's disastrous oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico and Goldman Sachs' hand in the disastrous global financial crisis prompted critical reflection on corporate social responsibility and its tradeoffs with corporate profits. BP's ''Beyond Petroleum'' campaign positioned it as the leading environmentally responsible energy company before its slogan turned into a bitter punch line. Goldman's ''10,000 Women'' project promised business education of women, before it was revealed that Goldman's business practices serve as poor foundations for business education. Freeland (2011) concluded that the BP and Goldman business disasters were ''facilitated by the mini-industry of corporate social responsibility-known as CSR by those in the trade-a fetish encouraged by the philanthropies that feed off it and funded by the corporate executives who have found that it serves their bottom line.'' How do corporations balance profits and social responsibility? And how should we, as a society, assure a proper balance? We find the corporations are not willing to sacrifice profits for environmental responsibility. Corporations adjust their investment in social responsibility up or down to maximize profits, adding to their investment when additions increase profits and subtracting from their investment when subtractions increase profits. The events of BP and Goldman indicate that corporate investments in social responsibility might be too low when considered by society, even if they are considered adequate by corporations. This implies that government has a crucial role in assuring that corporations increase their investment in social responsibility to levels adequate for society. Proponents of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and, more generally, corporate social responsibility, often claim that corporations face no tradeoff between improving their corporate social responsibility and increasing their financial performance. They rely on studies such as

The Effects of Green Accounting in the Society

Journal of Finance and Accounting, 2015

In today's global economy, organizations are increasingly called upon to demonstrate sound business management that includes concern for economic, social and environmental issues. The challenges created by global competition make it imperative for enterprises to continually rationalize and improve all resources and processes. Separation of responsibilities for the processes that underpin organizational outputs is unsustainable in today's competitive environment. On the base of literature review, we assert that recent achievements proved that ISO's management system standards have a global relevance of and a capacity to benefit from the very largest to the very smallest organizations in both public and private sectors. An Environmental Management System (EMS) provides a solid framework for meeting environmental challenges and realizing the above benefits. Most environmental legislation now originates at the European level, where the main legal instruments are EU directives and regulations. Traditionally, environmental regulation has covered the environmental media. From the early 1990s, a more integrated approach has been taken across all media with Integrated Pollution Control (IPC) and, more recently, the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) European Directive. We describe in our research the main types of environmental standards used across Europe and their impact on businesses performance. In conclusion we analyse the future key areas the environmental legislation is likely to be developed in.