Internal Corporate Social Responsibility: An Overview

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained its attention and popularity since the last decade. The precursor to CSR was topic of charitable giving, which had been in existence since 1980s. CSR is not a new concept in the filed of management. Todate, CSR has evolved to a business concept that had been accepted widely. Business corporations are focusing on CSR due to tremendous pressures from the society. Consumers are becoming more demanding as a result of increased awareness of green product and buying from companies that do not harm the environment. Therefore, when corporations can delivered what are needed and required by consumers, CSR can emerged as strategic advantage to the corporations (Hopkins, Roche & Hopkins, 2008; D„Souza, Taghian, Lamb, & Peretiatkos, 2006; Englehardt & Simmons, 2002; Mebratu, 2001). More significantly, the society has started to believe that corporations must operate in a different way as compared to the past. The presence of expectation-reality gap between the society and business corporations has driven corporations to look into CSR seriously. The public‟s expectation that business corporations shall operate in the society‟s best interest had grown rapidly (McElhaney, 2009). Hence, developing a CSR sound strategy can help corporations remain competitive, expanding market share and enhance customer loyalty (D„Souza, Taghian, Lamb, & Peretiatkos, 2006). Due to its countless benefits and development, CSR has become an increasingly salient feature of business and the environment, to which managers are expected to respond, it has acquired status within management education and research (Pfeffer & Fong, 2004; Starkey, Hatchuel, & Tempest, 2004).