Critical Reflection On Corporate Social Responsibility Projects Accounting Essay

Critical Reflection On Corporate Social Responsibility Projects Accounting Essay The aim of this paper is to provide a critical reflection considering the ethical point of view of the CSR projects which companies are increasingly launching with the global emerging trend of corporate social responsibility in the business world today. The purpose is to evaluate the objectives of these campaigns, comparing if they are rather actions targeting profits or/and better corporate image or if they are truly altruistic actions driven by the increase of the concern involving the global issues nowadays. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A CORPORATION? Indubitably, this question has been widely discussed for many years, as great theorists show different point of views, arguing that either the primary objective of an organization is to maximize value or to be devoted to its mission and essentially satisfy the stakeholders needs. Basically there are two main theories: shareholder value theory and stakeholder theory. The first one argues that the only objective of a company is to maximize profit and generate value to its shareholders. At the other extreme is the stakeholder theory, which suggests that the organization not only should make profits and create value to the shareholders but also please their stakeholders, such as customers, employees, suppliers, local communities, and society at large. (Morgan Stanley, 2008) One of the earliest precursors of the shareholder value theory is Milton Friedman that emphasized once: So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not. (Friedman, 1974) On the other hand, Dave Packard the co-founder of the Hewlett Packard proposed a distinctive cause for company existence: I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a companys existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reason for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separatelythey make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental. (Packard, 2002) The ground of the stakeholder theory is not far from the corporate responsibility concept or trend, which undeniably attract much attention in the last years. As the theory, CSR objective is to determine all the stakeholders and pursue a balance between the main concerns and goals of each one of those (Morgan Stanley, 2008). While Friedmans and Packards points of views represent extremes opinions, others have promoted a mid-term approach. Peter Drucker, for example argued that a middle ground is essential for one business to be considered successful as illustrated on the statement bellow: A business that does not show a profit at least equal to its cost of capital is socially irresponsible; it wastes societys resources. Economic profit performance is the base without which business cannot discharge any other responsibilities, cannot be a good employer, a good citizen, a good neighbor. But economic performance is not the only responsibility of a business Every organization must assume responsibility for its impact on employees, the environment, customers, and whomever and whatever it touches. That is social responsibility. (Drucker, 1954) All in all, the fact is that there are many diverse opinions among specialists and executives. Therefore, in my opinion the CSR of one company is influenced mainly according to the beliefs and values of its leaders, especially the CEO, rather than the mission statements of the organization. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IS INCREASING AS A TREND BUT DECREASING WITHIN COMPANIES Before analyzing more extensively the corporate social responsibility as a trend within the companies, I truly believed that the CSR practices were substantially increasing. However after reading the 2008 Morgan Stanley publication about the topic, I was surprised with the results. Considering the methodology utilized by Morgan Stanley, It seems that the overall real concern of CSR is decreasing over the last 15 years. Although the organizations might be investing more in CSR projects, the damage/harmfulness caused by the companies is increasing on larger scale. So, this means that the negative actions are not being covered by CSR practices. Instead, the careless with CSR is increasing much more than the projects as could be analyzed in the table below. KLD defines a set of potential strengths (for example, charitable giving) and a set of potential concerns (e.g., hazardous waste). For each company, KLD assigns a value of 1 if the strength or concern exists and a 0 otherwise. (Morgan Stanley, 2008) In conclusion, besides the strengths are increasing, the concerns are rising more rapidly and the net value of the strengths minus concerns is decreasing each year. Evidently, that the result presented could be argued and probably other studies with different methodologies could show diverse outcomes. However, I personally like the methodology because not only shows what companies are doing well but also consider what they are doing wrong. Nevertheless, in my opinion does not matter if they are investing more if they are depreciating even more. Even though, companies are not emphasizing CSR as I would expected so, unquestionably the trend is increasing within the society, followed by the pressure for new management practices and concerns with the environment. A good evidence to illustrate that hypothesis is the rise of the relevance and coverage of this topic at the universities. One study conducted by Lisa Jones Christensen in 2007, aimed to further investigate the importance of CSR, Ethics and Sustainability at the top 50 global MBA programs. The results showed that 84% of the schools that responded oblige students to take courses of one or all of these subjects. Even more 25% represented a stand-alone course. Comparing with The Ethics Resource Center study conducted in 1988, when 75% of Ethics, CSR, and Sustainability Education were a required part of the program and only 5% of the MBA programs required a separate course on ethics. (Christensen, Peirce, Hartman, Hoffman, Carrier, 2007) Summarizing, in my point of view CSR is a relevant subject and it is an increasing trend among the society, however companies are not giving the importance they should to these practices. Moreover, as will be presented on the next section, companies could gain more profits with a different approach of CSR. COMPANIES INVEST IN CSR AS MEANS TO MAXIMIZING VALUE OR TO DO THE RIGHT THING AS AN END ITSELF? As Michael Jensen discuss in the article Value Maximization, Stakeholder Theory, and the Corporate Objective Function, published by the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance in 2001, there are two alternative reasons for organizations to finance CSR initiatives. The first one is known as the moral theory, which CSR considers organizations as good corporate citizens by losing profits when necessary to serve other stakeholders, including society at large (Jensen, 2001). Above all, corporations have responsibilities to their customers, employees, and communities that should be given at least equal priority with their economic goals for their shareholders. On the other hand, the economic theory for CSR suggests it as a positive-NPV investment. More simply, presume CSR as the same as any business investment decision: Invest in all essential stakeholders if there are expected returns, at least equivalent to the cost of capital. (Morgan Stanley, 2008) Nevertheless, the main question to address is why companies are investing in CSR? For economic reasons, expecting returns, or they are really concerned and are investing with moral arguments? To answer that question, once again I will reference the Morgan Stanley study. The article states the premise that corporations that are more disposed to reduce shareholder returns for stakeholders would probably invest not only to increase their CSR strengths but also to decrease their CSR concerns. In other words, those organizations would adopt the idea of First, do not harm. Therefore, such companies would make efforts both to increase their CSR strengths and reduce their CSR concerns. In contrast, companies concerned with the returns of the investment in CSR would give priority on building their strengths, as many of them do it to make a public demonstration of ones progress, instead of focusing their efforts to address the weaknesses. Especially because usually is very costly to eliminate many CSR concerns. As I predicted, the results shows that companies invest on CSR projects primarily to maximize value rather than endorse stakeholder commitments as an end in itself. This means that businesses are financing CSR to strengthen their attributes instead of eliminating the CSR concerns. However, the most interesting factor is that the same research found that companies with more CSR strengths or fewer CSR weaknesses presented higher returns. This suggests that financing CSR initiatives generates profit and long-term value maximization, as could be observed in the graph below. Even more, companies which focus on reducing the concerns and thinks primarily on the stakeholders rather than profits, in a long run makes better results that corporations which allocate resources on strengthen their CSR attributes and have the economic approach. In other words, being ethic and altruistic considering the investments is more profitable! (Morgan Stanley, 2008) (Morgan Stanley, 2008)

Causes and Effects of Land Pollution

Land pollution is one of the gravest kinds of pollutions. I say so because we do not realize when and how we pollute land due to different things we do and decisions we take. We realize the air is getting polluted when we step out of our houses and take a deep breath. We know when our actions cause water pollution, for we can see for ourselves the quality of the water worsening. Similarly noise, light, visual pollution can all be monitored, because we can all see or sense these kinds of pollution. However, land pollution is a hard one to get since we do not understand and we cannot comprehend which of our actions cause destruction of land.What is Land Pollution? When the anthropogenic effects of development adversely affect land (especially in turns of quality of land), it can be termed as land pollution. This brings us to an important question – what counts as an adverse effect? The answer is simple – anything that reduces the productivity and potential of a piece of l and. Here, ‘productivity and potential' refers to prospective uses of a piece of land for any of the different purposes for which land is used; including infrastructure, housing, services, agriculture, forestry, etc.If any of the effects of human development reduce the potential of a piece of land to be used for any good purpose, it amounts to land pollution. Causes of Land Pollution 1. Degenerative Actions encompass a lot of human actions, including – deforestation, overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, desertification, mining, inefficient and / or inadequate waste treatment, landfill, litter, etc. Many of these are unavoidable; however, definitely the severity of these actions in terms of the effects they have on the land can be reduced by taking appropriate and adequate corrective measure.For example, the amount of litter produced can be hugely reduced if we all strictly say NO to plastic. The key here is to conduct a thorough EIA – Environmental Imp act Assessment. 2. Misuse of Land mainly refers to felling of trees to clear land for agriculture, as well as processes like desertification and land conversion. Desertification is when anthropogenic effects of human development and / or other actions converts a piece of (essentially) fertile land into desert-land or dryland. Isn't that a scary thought?Land once converted to desert-land can never be reclaimed by any amount of corrective measures. This is also a serious issue because t does not only affect the land, but also the overall biodiversity of a place, specially when land is cleared for agriculture. A lot of indigenous flora and fauna is lost in the process. 3. Inefficient Use of Land – surprised? Does inefficient use of land count as a cause of land pollution? Yes. Why? Due to the consequences of inefficient use of land. Inefficient use of land as such is not going to cause land pollution.However, inefficient use of land amounts to wastage, and hence shortage of land ; and it is precisely during such conditions that man has to resort to measure such as deforestation and others to meet his needs. It is an important, albeit an indirect cause of land pollution that is often largely neglected. 4. Soil Pollution is when the top-most ‘soil' layer of land is destroyed or polluted. Soil pollution is again another cause of land pollution that affects not only the land, but also a lot of other things such as forest cover of a region, productivity of land in terms of agriculture, grazing etc.Soil pollution is also caused by wrong agricultural practices, such as overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This causes non-biodegradable chemicals to enter and accumulate in the food-chain – a process often referred to as biomagnification of a pollutant. 5. Land Conversion is the process whereby a piece of land is converted from its indigenous form to a form used for either agriculture or infrastructure. Land conversion is especially a growing problem that we possibly do not have a good – or a good enough – solution for.The best way to avoid land conversion is to make efficient use of the available land. Using a piece of land to its maximum potential is the key to eliminate many of the causes of land pollution. Other key causes of land pollution include – urbanization, improper waste disposal, industrial activities, nuclear research, chemicals released by all sorts of heavy industries, coal-fired power plants, metals production industries, etc. Effects of Land Pollution 1. Effects on Climate Land pollution can affect the general environment of the Earth.Land pollutions leads to loss in the forest cover of Earth. This is in turn going to affect the amount of rain. Less rains mean lesser vegetation. The effect of all different kinds of pollution will eventually lead to problems like acid rains, greenhouse effect, global warming. All of these problems have already initiated and need to be curbed before t he situation runs out of control. 2. Extinction of Species One of the major causes of concern is the extinction of species. Species are pushed towards endangerment and extinction primarily by two processes.Habitat fragmentation is the fragmentation of the natural habitat of an organism; cause primarily by urban sprawl. Habitat destruction, on the other hand, is when land clearing adversely affects animals special such that their natural habitat is lost. Both the actions can cause some species to go extinct and others to become invasive. 3. Biomagnification Biomagnification is the process in which certain non-biodegradable substances go on accumulating in the food-chain (in one or more species).The most common example is of methylmercury in fish and mercury in eagles. Not only does biomagnification put the particular species at risk, it puts all the species above and below it at risk, and ultimately affects the food pyramid. 4. Effects on Biodiversity Species extinction and biomagnif ication is going to overthrow the balance of nature very significantly. The main reason for this is disturbance created in the food chain. To give you a very simple example – on account of biomagnification of mercury in eagles, they might go extinct in the subsequent years.However, we know eagles prey on snakes. Less (or no) eagles will then result in more number of snakes! As you may have realized, land pollution is indeed going to affect a lot more things than we though it will. Hence, I leave you with some corrective measure you can take on a personal level to reduce land pollution. Encourage organic farming – buy organic food. Proper garbage disposal – separate your garbage before you give it to the garbage collector; and strictly say NO to plastic.Encourage recycling – buy recycled products, notebooks, paper, etc. Restrict use of herbicides and pesticides – they are not only used in farm, but in your own backyard as well. If we reduce our cont ribution to garbage and litter, therein itself we will be able to significantly reduce land pollution and probably curb it entirely in the near future. Also do realize this isn't only about land pollution; it is about all kinds of pollution. We need to take steps to prevent damaging our Earth. We have no other place to go.

Vital Pieces of Essay Samples for College Applications

Vital Pieces of Essay Samples for College Applications Colleges are not searching for perfect individuals. Since our writers are experts in several forms of papers, we understand how to target your college no matter the discipline you chose. Our professional writers can enable you to do that. What You Need to Do About Essay Samples for College Applications Before You Miss Your Chance There are plenty of steps you have to observe to compose an essay that will secure a top position whilst applying for college. Much like any other paper every student faces in university or college, the very first step to compose a great admission essay is picking a topic. Because you are interested in getting the essay to communicate the ideal information about you, you have to do thorough preparation for the sample college admission essays to accomplish its purposes. 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The Lineages of Conformity in Mailer’s The White Negro...

Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay, titled â€Å"The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster†, traces the lineage of conformity (and, as a result, nonconformity) in American society post World War II, as well as the counter-cultural reaction of the time, the â€Å"white negro†. Considered a cultural phenomenon, these â€Å"white negros†, or â€Å"hipsters†, as Mailer deems them, distanced themselves from white culture, and adopted black styles of clothing, language, and music. However, this phenomenon seemed to be somewhat isolated, appearing specifically in cities where the â€Å"Negro culture† had much to offer, in places such as New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. (Mailer) These hipsters represented a fascination or an interest†¦show more content†¦Mailer argues that this act of violence, though not necessarily a particularly physically taxing effort on the youths’ part, and not necessarily â€Å"therapeutic† due to the circumstances, â€Å"the hoodlum is therefore daring the unknown, and so no matter how brutal the act it is not altogether cowardly.† (Mailer) The courage stems from the idea that not only are the youths murdering another human being, they are also trespassin g, creating conflict with authority, and introducing a â€Å"dangerous element (Mailer) into their lives, thrusting the young hipsters into direct conflict with society. In this way, the hipster is also considered an outlaw. A nonconformist, a hipster can only function on the fringes of society. Mailer’s mid-twentieth century hipster opposes society as well as any sense of collective responsibility, leading a lifestyle like a â€Å"petty criminal, hobo, a carnival roustabout or a free-lance moving man in Greenwich Village†. (Mailer) Nevertheless, for all Mailer’s attempts at situating the hipster within the context of post-world war trauma, this persona exists across socio-historical boundaries. There will always be individuals ready to seek liberation and self-gratification through violence rather than submit to rigid societal mores. Like Mailer’s definition of a hipster, today’s