kristina

Corporate Social Responsibility is how a company interacts with the environment, keeping up with the expectations of your stakeholders (or surpassing the expectations), and being more responsible in the way you run your business.  Each organization impacts the society and environment around it, and a plan like CSR incorporates all aspects of how it will affect those and how to be more responsible in their actions.  The organization/company would take full responsibility for their impact on anyone or anything in the public sphere.  Also, the organization would promote the interests of the public for their benefit.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a very simple concept that is relatively new.  All of the organizations like Greenpeace and WWF are really cracking down on the larger corporations and the impact they have on the environment.  And corporations do not want to look like the bully within these relationships.  It is also how effectively the corporation manages their relationship with their stakeholders.  The Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide has developed an 8-step program that helps manage and better these relationships.  The 8 steps are as follows:

1. Identification: what issues could arise either because of the client’s industry or it’s scale?
2. Prioritization/Classification: which of these issues could cause significant damage to the client’s reputation?
3. Monitoring: how is this issue evolving on a monthly/daily/yearly basis?
4. Preparation: How can we anticipate the course of this evolution and devise an action plan?
5. Action to Influence the issue: what steps can we take to change the course of an issue’s actions?
6. Issue/Crisis Response: If the issue developed into a crisis that threatened the company’s ability to conduct business, how would we react?
7. Evaluation: did we respond effectively to the issue, preventing its emergence as a crisis? What lessons were learned?
8. Re-classification:  has the issue lessened in severity over time?Is it still a concern moving forward?