Mr. Divesh,

Yes, When you read vision and mission statements of leading businesses in the world you may understand that they have put social responsibility at the first place.

Upananda (Sri Lanka)

Yes, otherwise there will be many unsettled agenda with other stakeholders.....

The value of corporate reputations has come to diffuse corporate diligence since the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and Qwest Communications. Aside from losing citizen‟s money, the companies lost its elusive asset namely the public trust. Hence corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly becoming the tool to build the image of the corporation. That denotes building corporate eminence by ensuring superiority products and services, inspiring social accountability by exerting in an overt and lucid fashion, and avail best management practices through profuse and conscientious communication with employees, and proffer congruous training and development. CSR can link the enterprise and brand; therefore in the long run this relationship contributes to the society. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development elucidate CSR as the continuing devoir by business to demean oneself ethically and confer to economic progression while meliorate the preeminence of life of the workforce and their lineage as well as insular community and society at large. The intent of this paper is to delve into the praxis of CSR as a contrivance apprehension of a today‟s business organization. This concept paper proposes that strategic CSR is good for business and the nation and the paper advocates that marketing may take a leading role in imperative CSR exertion.

hELLO Divesh Mohun

I think it depends: if the enterprise is very compromised with that type of practices - sure it should be considered.

However if the CEO or the Leader of the company doesn't value that kind of behaviour, even if it is embedded on the mission or the vision it won't work.

In my opinion what is really relevant is the intention of the leader of the company - if he/she is commited to this kind ou causes, than the company will follow his pathway.

Yes, It should be.

Moreover, it should be a part of business performance evaluation, as well. 

It depends whether your question (i.e should)  is legally or socially generated.  Looking at the UK there is no specific legislation requiring the information your question suggests.  UK Report and Accounts are normally (not always) divided into three sections: Strategic report including business model; financial statements and notes; Governance.  The legislation (Companies Act 2006) does not include corporate social responsibility.  Some companies will include it and usually it falls under the Governance section. Some companies publish a Sustainability Report that includes the information

I agree with the other answers that companies are now voluntarily providing such information and you may find that the websites of companies provides more than the annual reports.

See my article in Accounting and Businjess Magaxzine (ACCA) October 2015 for sone guide to the grwoth in the Annual Report and Accounts

It seems to me that the problem of CSR is not one of reports and mission statements but of actual institutional mechanisms generated towards a corporation's core commercial activities.  Mandatory reporting and voluntary statements of good citizenship may even serve as 'white wash'

It depends on the company. 

Yes, but not as a separate entity - CSR is integral to the objectives of the organisation, its culture and its ethics.  Determining what these should be is the key to effective governance, see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1096_Six_Functions_Governance.pdf  

Yes, but not as a separate entity - CSR is integral to the objectives of the organisation, its culture and its ethics.  Determining what these should be is the key to effective governance, see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1096_Six_Functions_Governance.pdf  

http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1096_Six_Functions_Governance.pdf

Very difficult to generalize, and depend on the institution and it's history and context. As Lynda said, it must be part of the institution and built into it's systems, in keeping with the corporate objectives.

This is the very idea behind the "Triple Bottom Line" framework—aka "TBL", "3BL", "People—Planet—Profit", and "The Three Pillars". In 1994, John Elkington suggested that a company should prepare different and separate "bottom lines": the first would provide a "people" account—an indication of the company's social responsibility; the second would constitute a "planet" account—a reckoning of how environmentally conscious it has been; the third is the traditional "profit" account—the measure(s) of its profit, return on investment, shareholder value, etc. The TBL aims to gauge the "full" cost of a company's involvement in business. A challenge is that it is difficult to compare the "people" and "planet" accounts in terms of cash; therefore, the three accounts cannot be combined and must be considered separately. One of the most established means of reporting for TBL is by means of the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative.

Yes, and with 'pure' motive :)

See Maritz et al., (2011) and Mostovicz et al., (2009) that emphasize the role of board of directors oriented to CSR as a change agent to spread the culture of CSR into the organization. We have worked on this aspect with an article about leadership and CSR that will be soon published (authored by Salvioni D.M., Franzoni S., Gennari F.)

Managing Corporate Reputation, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254582908_Managing_Corporate_Reputation, argues that beyond gaining control of issues, crises, and corporate social responsibility, organizations need to reconceptualize and manage reputation in knowledge-based economies.

Article Managing Corporate Reputation

For a first impression on the topic you can read Lockett et al. (2006) in the Jounral of Management Studies. They investigate the status of CSR research within the management literature. They particularly examine the focus and nature of knowledge, the changing salience of this knowledge and the academic influences on the knowledge. Althrough it is already 10 years old, it may give you a good first overview and sorces for more literature.

Furthermore CSR is an important topic in the Strategic Management Journal and the Strategic Management Society- a good source for excellent work on the topic (e.g., Godfrey & Merril, 2009).

Evolving right vision, is important top management function. vision must percolate down and must be understood and accepted by all the stakeholders. vision also provides a direction to business strategy. Corporate Social Responsibility has assumed a strategic dimension in today's context. Therefore, CSR could be a part of corporate vision statement. Vision leads to mission. An adaptive organization must re-conceptualize, as per the evolved visions, its mission in a volatile business environment. A corporate leader who can metamorphose in changing times, can lead the organization to success. 

Mission and Vision statements are important building blocks of a company's strategy. If one goes back to Andrew's seminal book 'The Concept of Corporate Strategy' (1971), CSR is one of four design component of strategy - along with Resources, Environment and Managerial Preferences. So yes it should be considered when designing one's mission and vision statements.

Yes, without incorporating in vision and mission of the organization, there going to be no auditing of CSR by any auditor.

Yes,it should be.A mission statement defines the basic reason for the existence of the organization. It consists of its long term vision of what the company wants to achieve and what are the basic reasons of its existence.In order to serve all these purposes, a mission statement should focus more on a social aspect of the operations rather than a profit motive to repay shareholders that the company must strive to follow in order to achieve corporate excellence. It must incorporate the ethical values.The vision and mission of a company must be formulated in the light of CSR. By always choosing to do the right thing, the company definitely becomes more successful. Developing a business through the use of sound CSR practices will reap not only the benefits of growth and prosperity, but also the satisfaction of being able to sleep soundly at night. An effective mission statement formulated in the light of CSR provides a positive work environment resulting in the synergy of ideas and talents which helps a company in becoming a great company. Such a mission statement lays the groundwork for what the company will be tomorrow. There must be a meaningful synergy between organizational competence, reality, and societal needs i.e. between the mission of the enterprise and its relation to society.

I attach a few paras (still to be edited) from a new book I have coming out in 2017 (Corporate Financial Reporting) published by Macmillan. 

Increasingly the terms sustainability and corporate social responsibilities have been appearing in companies’ annual reports and accounts, usually included either as part of the strategic report or in the corporate governance section. Other terms such as social and environmental reporting, social responsibility reporting, and environmental accounting are also used.  These disclosures attempt to bridge the possible divide between economic growth and protection of the environment or societal interests.   

Sustainability has been defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on the Environment and Development, 1987, p. 43). [SD1] 

A broader view is “the generation, analysis and use of monetarised environmental and socially related information in order to improve corporate environmental, social and economic performance” (Bent and Richardson 2003).  This incorporates economic viability, social responsibility and environmental responsibility.  Elkington (1998) coined the phrase the Triple Bottom Line (Elkington 1998) and it is frequently used in relation to corporate social responsibility.[SD2] 

This term corporate social responsibilityis used to include many different corporate activities.

In 2010, the European Commission renewed its efforts to develop Corporate Social Responsibility to encourage long-term employee and consumer trust. The Commission considered that environmental issues were a priority subject for greater disclosures.  This is not a compulsory standard but a guidance document providing advice and recommendations to those organisations wishing to embrace CSR. It discusses the following subjects

Organisational governance

Human rights

Labour practices

The environment

Fair operating practices

Consumer issues

Community involvement and development

The EU has now decided to move from the voluntary approach to a legal one. The European Parliament adopted two resolutions in 2013:

·       Report on Corporate Social Responsibility: promoting society’s interests and a route to sustainable and inclusive recovery;

·       Report on Corporate Social Responsibility accountable, transparent and responsible business behaviour and sustainable growth.

In December 2014, the Directive on disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large companies, entered into force. Member states now have two years to transpose it into national laws.   The Directive introduces measures that will strengthen the transparency and accountability of approximately 6000 companies in the EU. These so-called ‘public interest entities’  with more than 500 employees will be required to:

·       report on environmental, social and employee-related, human rights, anti-corruption and bribery matters

·       describe their business model, outcomes and risks of the policies on the above topics, and the diversity policy applied for management and supervisory bodies.

Companies will be encouraged to rely on recognized frameworks such as GRI’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, OECD Guidelines, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 and the International Labour Organization (ILO) Tripartite Declaration.

It is expected that the first company reports will be published in 2018 covering financial year 2017-2018.

These two articles may be useful:

Hausken, K. (1996), “Ethics and Efficiency in Organizations,” International Journal of Social Economics 23, 9, 15-40.

Hausken, K. (1996), “Self-Interest and Sympathy in Economic Behavior,” International Journal of Social Economics 23, 7, 4-24.

Article Ethics and efficiency in organizations

Data Self-Interest and Sympathy in Economic Behavior Internationa...