Corporate Social Responsibility Doing Good while Doing Well What is Ethics? Ethics (also called moral philosophy) is a system of beliefs about how to behave. Ethics vs. morals Ethics denotes the theory of right action and the greater good Morals indicate their practice Moral—one complies with society’s system of beliefs Amoral—one does not, acting in a fashion that is neither good or bad Immoral—one does not, acting in contravention of proper behavior General Social Expectations of Ethics Societies dictate general systems of ethics through their culture, and their stated convictions about bad, good, and exceptional action. The ethics of societies is quite stable, but does evolve over time General social expectations affect all members of society. Honesty Fairness Legality Higher level: acting with consistency, coherence, and reciprocity Highest level: acting with courage and sacrifice Specific Social Expectations of Ethics Specific expectations do vary by social role (industry, profession, social function, etc.) Example: judges versus CIA spies Example: soldiers versus nurses So what are the social expectations of business ethics…?  Business Ethics At individual level One is progressively more ethical to the degree that one Works hard in a competitive environment to provide products and services, and make an income Complies with the laws of the land and obeys appropriate organizational rules Seeks to meet professional norms (i.e. providing quality goods and services) Seeks to meet social norms (i.e. exercising honesty and fairness) and strives to achieve the highest standards of integrity (i.e. preventing harm and donating back to society part of the proceeds of one’s success) Corporate Social Responsibility At the organizational level A corporation is progressively more socially responsible to the degree that it Meets basic economic needs through diligence and innovation Exceeds legal requirements by fulfilling the spirit of the law Finds ways to enhance the community and planet with mutually beneficial actions Provides outright acts of charity Carroll’s Progressive Levels of CSREconomic ResponsibilityLegal ResponsibilityEthical ResponsibilityDiscretionary Responsibility(must do)(have to do)(should do)(good to do)Corporate ResponsibilitySocial ResponsibilityProfit making and provide quality goods and services that are valued by consumersLaw-abiding behaviorThose that may not be required by law, but are socially accepted norms of honesty, decency, and fair-playInclude voluntary efforts to be environmentally friendly, enhance human rights, be an employer of choice, provide philanthropy and so on Arguments for an Ethical Business Culture Even minimalists assert the importance of economic and legal responsibilities Economic viability is a pragmatic reality and a responsibility of owners, employees, creditors, etc. Breaking laws puts a com.

1. Corporate Social Responsibility
Doing Good while Doing Well
What is Ethics?
Ethics (also called moral philosophy) is a system of beliefs
about how to behave.
Ethics vs. morals
Ethics denotes the theory of right action and the greater good
Morals indicate their practice
Moral—one complies with society’s system of beliefs
Amoral—one does not, acting in a fashion that is neither good
or bad
Immoral—one does not, acting in contravention of proper
behavior

2. General Social Expectations of Ethics
Societies dictate general systems of ethics through their culture,
and their stated convictions about bad, good, and exceptional
action.
The ethics of societies is quite stable, but does evolve over time
General social expectations affect all members of society.
Honesty
Fairness
Legality
Higher level: acting with consistency, coherence, and
reciprocity
Highest level: acting with courage and sacrifice
Specific Social Expectations of Ethics
Specific expectations do vary by social role (industry,
profession, social function, etc.)
Example: judges versus CIA spies
Example: soldiers versus nurses
So what are the social expectations of business ethics…?

3. Business Ethics
At individual level
One is progressively more ethical to the degree that one
Works hard in a competitive environment to provide products
and services, and make an income
Complies with the laws of the land and obeys appropriate
organizational rules
Seeks to meet professional norms (i.e. providing quality goods
and services)
Seeks to meet social norms (i.e. exercising honesty and
fairness) and strives to achieve the highest standards of
integrity (i.e. preventing harm and donating back to society part
of the proceeds of one’s success)
Corporate Social Responsibility
At the organizational level
A corporation is progressively more socially responsible to the
degree that it

4. Meets basic economic needs through diligence and innovation
Exceeds legal requirements by fulfilling the spirit of the law
Finds ways to enhance the community and planet with mutually
beneficial actions
Provides outright acts of charity
Carroll’s Progressive Levels of CSREconomic
ResponsibilityLegal ResponsibilityEthical
ResponsibilityDiscretionary Responsibility(must do)(have to
do)(should do)(good to do)Corporate ResponsibilitySocial
ResponsibilityProfit making and provide quality goods and
services that are valued by consumersLaw-abiding
behaviorThose that may not be required by law, but are socially
accepted norms of honesty, decency, and fair-playInclude
voluntary efforts to be environmentally friendly, enhance human
rights, be an employer of choice, provide philanthropy and so
on
Arguments for an Ethical Business Culture
Even minimalists assert the importance of economic and legal
responsibilities

5. Economic viability is a pragmatic reality and a responsibility of
owners, employees, creditors, etc.
Breaking laws puts a company at risk; exposes a company to
loss of value and revenue
Widespread industry law breaking and flagrant market
manipulation leads to government intervention and increased
regulation (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley) and Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010
Social Responsibility Arguments Increasingly Important
Social responsibility is increasingly an interest and concern of
public, investors and employees
Frequently social responsibility can provide win-win scenarios,
e.g., the environment can be protected and costs can be cut
Poor social responsibility gets more attention from “cause”
organizations providing bad press
The moral argument is that all companies must abide by
society’s minimum standards, and that wealth and success bring
social obligations to be more responsible
Encouraging Ethical Behavior
Ethical Reasoning Framework

6. Step one: Am I comfortable publicizing this decision broadly?
Step two: What if everyone make this type of decision?
Step three: identify stakeholders and their interests
Direct/indirect/remote stakeholders (or internal/external
stakeholders)
Interest of each stakeholder involved
Step four: identify critical issues and the competing values
involved
Major issues
Right-and-wrong vs. right-and-right
Step five: identify solutions and their potential impacts
Possible solutions
Moral level of each solution involved
Encouraging Ethical Behavior
Tools and Approaches
Stakeholder analysis
Mission and values statements
Guidelines and codes of conduct, codes of ethics
Ethical training
Ethics officers and ethics hotlines
Provide and highlight role models
Ethics awards
For individuals in the company
Seek award for the company
Social responsibility audit
Social initiatives
Strive to be a CSR leader

7. Example: Encouraging Ethical Behavior
at DellCause PromotionsCause-Related MarketingCorporate
Social MarketingCorporate PhilanthropyCommunity
VolunteeringSocially Reasonable Business PracticesDell
sponsors efforts to collect used computers for donations to local
nonprofits and public agenciesDell offers 10 percent off
selected new products when up to three used products are
recycled onlineDell offers free and convenient return of used
printers for recycling or reuseThrough Dell’s “Direct Giving”
program with employees, employee donations are made to Earth
Share, which supports multiple environmental projectsDell
employees around the globe participate in “Global Community
Involvement Week” each September, including activities such
as park cleanupDell creates product design programs with
specific environmental guidelines, policies, and goals
Kotler & Lee 2005
The Case of Big Box

8. Analytic case: Big Box Store
Big Box Corporation is a modern low-cost department store. To
keep its costs down, it has a number of standard practices that
ensure profitability.
First, it aggressively keeps costs low and does not rely
extensively on sales to build long-term rather than temporary
customer loyalty. Therefore it is a global buyer with no “buy-
American” policy. In fact, while it does ensure that its products
are legally made, it does not concern itself with non-
governmental protocols on recommendations about working
conditions or child labor.
Second, it keeps its market prices extremely low by ensuring
that the jobs of line workers are as simple and repetitive as
possible, so that workers can easily be trained and replaced. Big
Box Corporation has been largely successful at keeping unions
out of its stores in all but a few instances. This means that many
of the workers are the second or third wage earners in homes
and that many of its employees are parttime retired workers or
young workers seeking their first jobs. As importantly, these
wage earners, who are just above minimum wage, do not
normally have significant benefits such as health care and
retirement. Many of the workers do not need them because they
are covered by a first wage earner or do not care about them
because retirement has occurred or is a distant concern.

9. A small, but not tiny, percentage of the line workers qualify for
government benefits such as child health care. Middle managers
are recruited from “the floor” and get improved wages and
modest benefits, but are still paid very modestly by management
standards. Store managers are generally professionally trained
and analysis driven to examine profitability trends, cost–benefit
ratios, contingency analysis, etc., and thus rarely come from the
floor. They are largely recruited from corporate manager-
training programs populated by college business majors and
MBA graduates. After serving as an assistant store manager
with modest pay (each store has three to five assistant store
managers) for a period of three to seven years, opportunities to
become a store manager often open up. Store managers are well
paid for retail.
Third, Big Box Corporation prefers to locate its stores just
outside of cities, when they are not land-locked by other cities,
in order to avoid city taxes. This has the side advantage of
cheaper land for large parking areas. Alternatively, when
locating in an urbanized area with adjacent cities, as is common
today, Big Box always considers two or three options in
adjacent jurisdictions that will be desirous of having the store.
By doing so, the store can make the jurisdictions compete
aggressively, and can get excellent multi-year tax concessions
(sometimes up to a decade) as well as infrastructure
improvements such as road widening on the arterial to the
store, traffic lights, and sewer and utility extensions.
Fourth, Big Box Corporation is large enough that it can force
suppliers to maintain ownership of products until point of

10. customer sale. In other words, unlike smaller retailers that must
buy goods to stock shelves and then discount unsold goods,
thereby competing with their own goods not on sale, Big Box
does not pay suppliers until goods are registered as sold. In
experimenting with new products, it risks the loss of shelf space
but has no inventory cost liability. Unsold goods are simply
returned, although the supplier must pick them up or abandon
them. Fifth, because of its size, Big Box is able to stay abreast
of current trends and appeal to all but the smallest niche
markets. This means that it is able to push old fashioned stores
with less efficient practices out of business, absorb their market
share, and maintain a lock on the market environment for the
cost-conscious buyer who is impervious to all stores except
other corporations with a similar style, or stores that carry only
discontinued products that they have purchased for pennies on
the dollar but whose product lines vary enormously month by
month.
Sixth, while not immune to “green” initiatives, Big Box knows
that most of its customers place a much larger premium on
value than on environmental concerns and thus it caters to that
preference. When enough customers are perceived to be
interested and the cost differential is modest, Big Box
occasionally offers a product that can be marketed as
“environmentally friendly.” Seventh, Big Box is careful not to
dilute its efficiency and profits thrust with local charity issues.
Charity is done, but almost exclusively at the corporate level, so
that it can easily be “counted” for accounting purposes, and
easily be identified for corporate public relations.
Discussion
1. What are the possible ethical questions that are involved? (At
least seven are implicitly identified in the case.) This question

11. is often asked at the same time as the following question.
2. Who are the stakeholders who are/will be affected in this
scenario and what are their interests?
3. What are the concrete ethical issues that you feel need to be
considered? (This requires narrowing down the list of possible
ethical issues, which should be done after identifying
stakeholders and their interests.) What alternatives exist? How
do these alternatives maximize various values, given the weight
of those values?
4. What recommendations do you have in how the situations you
chose to address could be/should have been resolved or
improved? Or, state if no changes are necessary, and the reasons
why the status quo is acceptable.
Question: your opinion
Which aspect of the Big Box store system would you address
first and foremost, if you had the power to do so? (Don’t worry
about pragmatism for this question.)
Not having a buy-American policy
Low wages and no benefits for floor-level employees
(associates)
Use of aggressive tax avoidance strategies (including tax
havens)
Indirectly forcing suppliers to use illegal labor practices in
many product lines in order to compete
Ignoring “green” and environmental issues

12. Main Discussion Posting
The Work Environment Assessment is an “evidence-based tool
to raise awareness, assess the perceived health of an
organization, and determine strengths and areas for
improvement” (Clark, 2015, p. 19). After completing the
assessment tool, my current workplace scored a 68 which places
our work environment in the “barely healthy” category. For
example, one statement on the assessment asks if there is a clear
level of trust between formal leadership and staff in the
workplace. I rated this completely untrue. There are many
nurses in our clinic that don’t feel like they can trust our
nursing supervisor. He will tell you what you want to hear to
your face and do the complete opposite just to get you out of his
office. He will also talk to one nurse about another nurse
negatively. This is not a good example of a leader. This is why
I believe that my workplace is not civil because of our poor
leadership. The common theme is that leadership is addressed
with issues and then nothing happens. According to Marshall
and Broome, “doing nothing and not making decisions when one
is in a position of responsibility is simply unconscionable”
(2017, p. 139).
Incivility can be defined as “a low-intensity behavior, or uncivil
behavior, with the intent to harm the target” (Kisner, 2018, p.
36). Here is an example of incivility between a nurse, fellow
collegeaus, and leadership. This is a Department of Defense
facility so there are always formal leaders, providers, and
nurses coming and going. Almost everyone in the facility is
directly linked to the military system. When I first started
working here, the clinic was developing a new team or clinic for
the 65 and older community. My preceptor and several others
were being moved to the new team due to colleagues not being
civil to each other. My preceptor took me with her to the new
team, stating that based on my personality it would be better for
me. Our team worked so incredibly well together. Everyone

13. knew what their duties and responsibilities were every day. Our
team was growing in patients, providers, and nurses. A new RN
was added to our team and conflict immediately started. She
came in on the first day acting like she was above everyone
else. In orientation, she would always say well where I came
from we did it like this and her preceptor would always reply
with that is okay, but this is how we do it here. There were
several conflicts and arguments between providers, nurses, and
formal leaders with this nurse which lead to conflict between
our team. She would pull up provider’s notes and critique them,
tell them what they were doing wrong, and take it to our chief
nursing officer. She would also take pictures with her phone
about other nurse’s work and state that she was going to save
them for when she needed them. At one point, she called our
chief nursing officer incompetent and our Chief Department
Officer a curse word to their face. Nothing happened to this
nurse and leadership overlooked this situation. There were
several comments made among staff that it must be okay to call
your supervisor profound words because nothing will happen to
you. Our work environment went from civil to not civil over
the short three months that this nurse was there. “Lack of
action frustrates others who are looking to you to decide so that
they can move on and implement plans aligned with that
decision” (Marshall & Broom, 2017, p. 139).
When issues develop, mediation has been a key component
to resolve the issue at a lower level. “Mediation is described by
legal scholars as a facilitated process designed to resolve
conflict between two parties in a voluntary and mutually
acceptable way through neutral third-party assistance as an
alternative to proceedings that are more coercive” (Knickle,
McNaughton, and Downar, 2012, p. 1). In this situation there
were several levels of mediations that started at the lower level
first (person to person), then lead RN to individual, then as a
team, and then to our chief nursing officer. This issue went all
the way to our chief of department officer, because our chief
nursing officer didn’t do anything to help solve the issue. For

14. example, this new nurse requested many times to change teams
because personalities were clashing and she stated that she was
being bullied. Our supervisor would continue to say that
conflicts needed to be addressed within the team. This clinic is
huge and there was a need for this individual on several teams.
Eventually, this nurse found another job and left.
References
Clark, C.M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a
more civil workplace. American
Nurse Today, 10(11), 18-23. Retrieved from
https://www.americannursetoday.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/11/ant11-CE-Civility-1023.pdf
Knickle, K., McNaughton, N., & Downar, J. (2012). Beyond
winning: mediation, conflict
resolution, and non-rational sources of conflict in the
ICU. Critical care (London, England), 16(3), 308.
doi:10.1186/CC11141
Marshall, E., & Broome, M. (2017). Transformational
leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential
leader (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Response posting to Professor
Nurse to nurse incivility is “associated with high rates of
employee turnover and decreased quality of care” (Clark, 2015).
In the clinical setting that I am currently in, I have not seen this
type of behavior. On one hand, senior nurses may be leaving
due to incivility from less experienced nurses. On the other
hand, the older generation nurses are not technology savvy and
nursing has changed to be more computer based. This could be
another reason why senior nurses are leaving. Senior nurses
could also be leaving the workforce because the patient load has
become too intense and they are burnout.

15. Senior nurses “may feel threatened by novice faculty and
their attempts to retain their power and territory may contribute
to the lack of professionalism leading to incivility” (Peters,
2014, p. 223). For example, in my clinic we have a nurse
practitioner that has been there for over 10 years. We have
recently added three new, but more experienced, nurse
practitioners to the clinic. Leadership will go to them for
advice first. This has caused a lot of incivility between
providers because the senior providers that have been there
longer, feel like their opinion is more valuable. Some providers
have left the clinic or are looking for new jobs because of the
lack of worth they feel from leadership.
References
Clark, C.M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a
more civil workplace. American
Nurse Today, 10(11), 18-23. Retrieved from
https://www.americannursetoday.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/11/ant11-CE-Civility-1023.pdf
Peters, A. B., (2014). Faculty to faculty incivility: Experiences
of novice nurse faculty in
academia. Journal of Professional Nursing, 30(3), 213-227.
Doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2013.09.007
Scanned by CamScanner