Corporate Social Responsibility: Is It a Matter of Ethics?

Abstract

Recently, there has been an increasing trend of manufacturing organizations adopting the strategy of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and expecting their suppliers, too, to adopt the CSR guidelines developed by them and be accountable. From a supplier’s perspective, it is important to comply with the key customer’s requirements to maintain the business relationships but adopting the customer’s operating principles may not always be feasible and practical. Situations in which disqualifying suppliers who fail to comply with CSR criteria could limit the number of suppliers or create higher dependency relationships on limited number of suppliers adding cost to production. What is ethical to a customer may not necessarily be ethical to its supplier. This is one of such cases, seeking to bring out the ethical dilemma of Mr Kumar, the General Manager of Pack-tech, a medium-sized flexible packaging company based in United Arab Emirates. The questions that are bothering him are as follows: Should he accept and implement the CSR principles of its customers? Should he follow the suggestions of his workers and manipulate the records to show compliance? And, can CSR principles payback the cost of its implementation?