Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility is an important aspect of a business nowadays. During the previous eras businesses were least bothered about their responsibility towards the environment and the society as a whole. However, surviving in the current business scenario, without paying attention to the social responsibility is deemed to be rather unacceptable by some. For the purpose of completing this assignment, the electrical and electronic equipment industry has been chosen and how they are contributing to the society. General Electric and Siemens have been chosen from the developed category, whereas, Samsung and Acer have been chosen from the developing country category.
The increased emphasis of companies on corporate social responsibility is primarily due to the customers becoming more socially aware of the environment around them. As a result of this, they often refrain from buying products from companies, which may be harming the environment in any way. Therefore, companies are increasingly focusing on and implementing policies which will help them in ensuring strong corporate social responsibilities. This is turn, has been found to have profoundly increased the business opportunities and how the customers perceive the company to be like. For this paper we have selected companies from both developed and developing countries to analyse their initiatives related to corporate social responsibility. General Electric from United States has been chosen to study the initiatives whereas, Siemens Inc from Germany has been chosen for the same purpose. In contrast, Samsung from South Korea and Acer from Taiwan have been chosen for a similar purpose and they fall in the developing nation categories. Further analysis for the report and their activities has been carried out throughout the paper.
Corporate Social Responsibility in General Electric Company
General Electric Company, better known as GE, is one of the largest companies in the United States and holds a high ranking in the Forbes 500 list as well. Since its inception in 1892, General Electric has flourished to become one of the biggest and most successful business conglomerates in the world. As of 2011, their ranking in the Forbes world list stood at an impressive 6th position. Even for a company as big as General Electric, paying importance to the corporate social strategies is an important factor for their survival in this competitive industry. As part of such initiatives, GE has come with GE Citizenship program, which is their unique way to approach CSR activities.
The GE Citizenship is the initiative of the GE Foundation, which was started well over 50 years ago. Their main purpose is to instil a sense of good culture in whatever they do and they tend to focus on some major issues related to human rights, volunteer efforts, public policy, heath and education to name a few. In general, they have divided their activities into three parts; people, planet and the economy. In the people’s division, they focus on the customers they are serving as well as the employees who are all working for them. While working for the benefit of the customers, they have started a DVP Framework which stands for differential value proposition. This has enabled them to gain valuable insights from the customers and to be able to better cater to their needs. GE has also focused on finding solutions to their customer’s problems so their customers are able to succeed in their individual businesses.
Under their people related initiatives, providing support to their very own employees is yet another major initiative for them. Often in large corporations, the distance between the organization and the employees may seem huge but GE has taken vita; steps to ensure that they have a healthy relationship with their employees as well. As part of this initiative, they have focused on 5 main issues; health & safety, soliciting opinions, diversity, integrity & privacy, labour relations, and learning & development. Through this initiative they intend to ensure 100% implementation of the safe working policies across all aspects of their business.
The other prime focus of GE’s CSR efforts is the planet in which we live. Under this initiative they focus on 3 issues; water scarcity, energy consumption and resource and environment management. In order to combat the overwhelming level of water scarcity across the world, GE has come forward with ways to reduce their own consumption of water. They also successfully combated another major challenge; of controlling their energy consumption. Being a huge business which is primarily dealing with electronic and electrical goods, it was deemed to be extremely challenging, but they managed to pull it off successfully.
The third and most important initiative was to manage their resources and the environment. As part of this initiative, they have decided to reduce the usage of rhenium as well as other major earth’s resources, which are increasingly becoming scarce. To ensure that they last for the generations to come, they are significantly, lowering their reliance on such resources. Furthermore, they are also focusing on clean technology based future technology.
Corporate Social Responsibility of Siemens AG
Siemens AG or merely known as Siemens is a German based multinational conglomerate which focuses on selling electronic and electrical based products to their clients spread across the world. There primary area of business includes; healthcare, transportation, energy and industry. It is indispensible that the amount of operations of Siemens is huge and as a result of this the impact they are having on their surrounding environment is also huge. This places them in an even vital position to protect the environment and reduce the impact that they are having on it.
Siemens is a part of some major organizations working towards protecting the environment; such as, Chamber of Trade and Industry of Bulgaria, International Business Association of Bulgaria and the Chamber of Electrical Engineering. Similar to General Electrical Company, Siemens is also working towards providing sustainable solutions to their clients and customers across the world. At Siemens, special attention is paid to the ensuring that minimal harm is made to the environment.
In order to protect the environment, they have come with plans to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and the consumption of water as well as energy. Apart from this, they have reduced their wastes produced by 15% over the years. These plans revolving around setting up an international environmentally friendly environment were initiated in the 1970s and have since grown tremendously. Apart from this they have used WEEE recycling to reduce wastes created during their production processes.
Compared to GE, the CSR efforts do not seem to be as wide, but it is rather focused on certain prime issues. In General Electric Company, a major proportion of the CSR activities were related to the people who are associated or are working for the company. However, Siemens seems to focus more on the environmental aspects of their operations only. They have also put in tremendous efforts for using sustainable energy and have set up wind turbines to accomplish this goal.
Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Nations
Similar to the corporations which are operating and flourishing in the developed nations the companies in the developing nations have also started paying attention to the importance of corporate social responsibility. This is primarily due to the fact that the customers in the developing nations have also become more aware of the environmental consequences and the damages the companies may be causing. Apart from this, the government of the respective countries have also played a vital role in ensuring that these companies adhere to the certain norms and regulations necessary to protect the environment.
For the purpose of studying the impact of companies and their corporate social responsibility, Samsung Group from South Korea and Acer Inc of Taiwan, both of which are multinational conglomerate and have their operations spread across the world. Both of these, are working in the own unique ways of becoming more socially responsible and at the same time fulfilling the needs of the customers in the most efficient manner.
Corporate Social Responsibility of Samsung Inc.
Samsung Inc. is one of the most successful companies to have grown out of Asia. Based in South Korea, they have set new standards of how companies must operate. Samsung Inc started off as a trading company in the year 1938 and has since diversified in a wide number of arenas; such as, retail, security, insurance, textiles, processing and food. During the 1960s, they eventually ventured into the electronics and electrical equipment industry. Over the years, they have continued to expand and now include other big companies; such as, Samsung Electronics, Samsung Heavy Industries, Samsung Engineering, Samsung Everland and Samsung Life Insurance to name a few. For the purpose of simplified analysis, only Samsung Electronics and their work shall be analysed for now.
As a part of their corporate social responsibility, they undertake a wide range of initiatives and all of them are mentioned in detail in their sustainability report, which is published every year. They mainly focus their CSR activities on three aspects; people, society and the environment. Samsung Electronics CSR activities are quite wide and it includes various initiatives to ensure a green management structure across the company. Through this initiative, they have significantly reduced the emission of green house gases in their production processes and increased the use of eco-friendly production materials by a staggering 85% for the “Good Device” categories. As per their targets, the usage of recyclable materials in their eco devices would be increased to 90% by the year 2013.
Samsung Hope for Children is one of the largest CSR activities which they have undertaken. In 2011, it was operating in 30 countries, which they intend to increase to 50 by the year 2013. Under this initiative, they have opened children’s learning centre for the lower income families. This is mainly formed to support the youth of any given area. College students who support and teach students in these centres are given a certain amount of compensation, which in turn helps them in supporting their own education. Thus, this initiative is benefitting both the parties and also increasing the reputation of the company.
A major set up of Samsung Electronics is the creation of their engineering academy, whose intention is to teach vital vocational skills to the attendants. They also gave free solar LED lanterns in Africa to increase their access to electricity. Setting up an entire internet school with solar energy was yet another major achievement for them.
Corporate Social Responsibility of Acer Inc.
Acer Inc. is a multinational Taiwanese conglomerate initiated in the year 1976, as Multitech. Since its inception it has evolved into one of the most successful companies in Asia. Since its inception with 11 employees and a mere $25,000 it has extended its operations in numerous countries across the world. Currently, they have operations in four countries namely North America, Russia, India and Australia. All of these operations are controlled centrally by the headquarter of Acer Inc, which is in Taiwan.
Similar to the other companies mentioned before, Acer Inc has also taken a fair share of steps in order to fulfil its social responsibility towards the environment. Acer believes in providing its services in a manner which is socially as well as morally responsible and instils the safety of the environment above everything else. As a part of such efforts they have carried out numerous humanitarian related activities and to demonstrate their contribution towards an ethical business environment.
They mainly focus on the well being of the environment, people, customers, employees and the community as whole. Despite being based in a developing nation, its corporate social responsibility is as strong as its counterpart multinational organizations based in the developed nations. Therefore, it can be clearly seen that such activities are imperative and are seen as vital for any business organization, irrespective of where they are.
In conclusion, we can say that CSR activities are vital for any business organization no matter where they are. Nowadays, companies both in the developed as well as the developing nations are working towards benefiting the society and at the same time doing business profitably no matter where they are. The importance of such activities is extremely likely to increase in the future as well. Whether it is increasing due to the increased consciousness of the customers or merely due to the regulations of the government, will be a thing worth noticing.
References
- GE Citizenship. (2012). Retrieved on 4th February 2013 from http://www.gecitizenship.com/focus-areas/people/helping-our-customers-succeed/
- Corporate Social Responsibility of Siemens. (2012). Retrieved on 4th February 2013 from http://www.art-of-security.com/valueproposition/csr.php
- Sustainability Report. (2012) Retrieved on 4th February 2013 from http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/sustainability/sustainabilityreports/download/2012/2012_sustainability_rpt.pdf
- Corporate Social Responsibility- Acer Inc. (2012). Retrieved on 4th February 2013 from http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/csr
