Corp Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility /Sustainability

continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life in the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large”

Shareholder

Any person, company, investment fund, or other institution that owns at least one share of a company’s stock. Shareholders are the company’s owners. They have the potential to profit if the company does well, but that comes with the potential to lose money if the company does poorly. A shareholder may also be referred to as a stockholder

Stakeholder theory/Stakeholder capitalism

The business entity should be used as a vehicle for coordinating the interests of all stakeholders instead of maximizing shareholder (owner) profit

Shareholder primacy

Shareholder primacy is the idea that a company's primary responsibility is to maximize the financial returns for its shareholders (owners of the company), placing their interests above those of all other stakeholders like employees, customers, or the community. It essentially means the company should prioritize actions that increase shareholder wealth above all else. This was the thinking by some in the 1970s. It is outdated now

Value

Benefits relative to costs. Relative worth, merit, or importance, e.g., the value of a college education. The measurement of value is not necessarily monetary. NOTE: value ≠ values. They are very different things

Values

Important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. NOTE: value ≠ values. They are very different things

Value versus values

Value is often quantitative; however, it may refer to the emotional value of something.

Values are qualitative.

Extended Producer Responsibility

Firms which manufacture import and/or sell products and packaging, are seen as financially or physically responsible for environmental and social impacts of their products and packaging.

Social License to operate

Refers to a local community’s tacit permission for a company’s operations, project or ongoing presence in an area. Development of license to operate occurs outside of formal permitting or regulatory processes and requires sustained investment to acquire and maintain social capital within the context of trust-based relationships.

NGO

The term is short for Non-governmental Organization. This usually refers globally to charities

– organizations that do not earn profit, pursue a social aim, are not operated by any government, and are legally constituted (forms in the U.S.: 501(c)3, 501(c)4, etc.). NGOs are

not typically political organizations, e.g., political parties.

Some social aims may have controversial social or political aspects. Like the NRA or Planned Parenthood

Business model

A business model describes the core aspects of a business. It describes how the business creates, delivers, and captures value. It explains how a business operates and makes money. The term is used to represent core aspects of a business, including purpose or value proposition, target customers (e.g., consumers or other businesses), product/service offerings, strategies, organizational structures, trading practices, distribution model (e.g., direct sales, wholesale, retail), key dependencies, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure.

Business Case

A business case is an analysis that justifies a specific business decision or project, focusing on the benefits, costs, and risks to determine its viability and value. It is the argument for doing something. A business case vs. business model: why do it versus how to do it. A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task

Competitive Advantage

The edge a company has over its rivals that allows it to generate greater sales or profit margins or to retain more customers than its competition

Value Chain

A value chain is a series of consecutive steps that go into the creation of a finished product, from its initial design to its arrival at a customer's door. The chain identifies each step in the process at which value is added, including the sourcing, manufacturing, and marketing stages of its production

Supply Chain

All the steps (the chain of events) required to move a product from raw material to customer delivery. This includes sourcing, production, inventory management, transportation, and distribution. Companies strive to make the entire process as structured, fast, and cost-effective as possible

Stakeholder

A person, group, organization, or system who affects or can be affected by an organization's actions

Ethical Dilemma

A situation in which there is a choice to be made between two options, neither of which resolves the situation in a way that is fully satisfying to the decision maker

Sovereignty

The quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided. A key element of sovereignty in a legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of jurisdiction. Specifically, the degree to which decisions made by a sovereign entity might be contradicted by another authority

Foreign Direct Investment

A controlling ownership in a business enterprise in one country by an entity (e.g., a company) based in another country. (Note: It is different from foreign aid, which is money, food, or other resources given or lent by one country to another.

Corporate governance

The system by which a company is directed and controlled. Guarantees that an enterprise is directed and controlled in a responsible, professional, and transparent manner with the purpose of safeguarding its long-term success. Intended to increase the confidence of shareholders and capital-market investors.

Externalized costs

Negative impacts associated with economic transactions which concern people outside of those transactions. Some argue that they occur when a company transfers some of its moral responsibilities as costs to society

Natural Capital

The stock of assets that can be used to produce ecosystem services. It is the world's stock of natural resources, which includes geology, soils, air, water, and all living organisms.

Renewable Resource

A resource that can be used repeatedly and does not run out because it is naturally replaced, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass energy

Ecosystem services

The resources and processes supplied by natural ecosystems, e.g., fresh water, clean air, waste decomposition, stable climate

Life Cycle assessment

A technique to assess environmental and social impacts associated with all the stages of the life of a product or packaging, i.e., from raw material extraction through materials processing, manufacture, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, and disposal or recycling. While typically used to assess environmental impacts, this technique can be used to identify social impacts of a product’s life cycle as well

Circular Economy

An economic model, based on systems thinking, that is restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value always, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles

Downcycling

The process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of lesser quality and reduced utility. Eventually, these materials are so degraded that it is not feasible to use them further, at which time they become part of the waste stream. It is often confused with recycling

Collaborative Consumption

Describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies. Three categories:

-Product Service Systems enable companies to offer goods as a service rather than sell them as products. Defined as selling the function of a product or the service it provides, rather than the physical product, e.g., buying voicemail service instead of an answering machine. Product Service Systems appeal to the increasing number of people shifting to a usage mind-set: They want the benefits of a product, but they don’t need to own the product outright.

- Redistribution: used or preowned goods are moved from somewhere they are not needed to somewhere they are. In some markets, the goods may be free, as on Freecycle and Kashless. In others, the goods are swapped (as on thredUP and SwapTree) or sold for cash (as on eBay and craigslist).

- Collaborative Lifestyles: People with similar needs or interests band together to share and exchange assets such as time, space, skills, and money. These exchanges happen mostly on a local or neighborhood level, as people share working spaces (for example, on Citizen Space or Hub Culture), gardens (on SharedEarth or Landshare), or parking spots (on ParkatmyHouse). Collaborative lifestyle sharing happens on a global scale, too, through activities such as peer- to-peer lending (on platforms like Zopa and Lending Club) and the rapidly growing peer-to-peer travel (on Airbnb and Roomorama)

Downcycling

Downcycling is a materials recovery process that breaks down materials into lower-quality, less functional, or lower-value products, often extending their life before eventual disposal.

Biomimicry

The practice of developing sustainable technologies inspired by ideas from nature. Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements and then imitates or takes creative inspiration from them to solve human problems sustainably.

Benefit corporation

In the U.S., it is a type of for-profit corporate entity that includes material positive impact on society, workers, the community and/or the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals. Benefit corporations differ from traditional corporations in purpose, accountability, and transparency, but not in taxation. They are distinct from non-profit organizations because the benefit corporation should seek to generate a modest profit that will be used to expand the company’s reach, improve the product or service, or to subsidize the social mission. A wider definition of benefit corporation is any business which has a social or environmental rather than a financial objective

Shareholder Advocacy

A strategy where investors use their status as company owners to influence corporate behavior on environmental, social, and governance issues or financial performance. Utilizing tools like proxy voting, shareholder resolutions, and direct dialogue, advocates aim to improve long-term sustainability, accountability, and ethical standards. Shareholder advocacy is increasingly used to hold companies accountable for risks and to encourage them to adopt better corporate social responsibility practices

Systems thinking

Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work overtime and within the context of larger systems. The systems thinking approach contrasts with traditional analysis, which studies systems by breaking them down into their separate elements. Systems thinking can be used in any area of research and has been applied to the study of medical, environmental, political, economic, human resources, and educational systems, among many others.

Cause Related Marketing

Promotions over a limited time in which a portion of the purchase price of a product or service is donated to a social cause; benefits the company (e.g., increased sales) and society; links marketing and corporate philanthropy

Fair Trade

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency, and respect, that is designed to address the imbalance of power in trading relationships, unstable markets, and the injustices of conventional trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers.