Corporate Social Responsibility Essay - 1543 Words

The Warehouse Group Ltd is a typical half-hearted company that does not do what it preaches in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility. From the Warehouse Annual Report and Social and Environment Report 2009, I found that the company is not only focusing on its financial performance, but also on social and environmental external effects. A critical analysis of this reporting practice suggests that the Warehouse is not truly responsible socially and environmentally but more a public relation exercise of the company. The Warehouse was established in 1982 to operate some discount stores. The company has over 7,600 employees in the all network stores and has 253 stores through New Zealand from Kataia in the North Island to Invercargill†¦show more content†¦Therefore the main motive of the Warehouse to disclose the information on CSR activities is to portray its Corporate Social Responsibility image in order to pursue profits. There are four activities of the Warehouse I would like to analyze to show this motive. In dealing with the customers, the company is showing only things that exhibits the customers’ interests, in this case low price. Customers get cheap products, but they also get low quality products from their stores. Even though the Warehouse is showing their efforts in helping (pressuring) the suppliers to increase the quality, but the products offered are still in low quality. From this, we can infer that the main point of the company is to maximize their profit: low price means low quality. If the quality is better, it is because they exert power to their suppliers. In showing that the company is trying to be environmentally responsible, the Warehouse is talking about their main point of activities, which is a ‘zero waste’ by trying to minimize waste and supporting the practice of recycling. The company is one of the first companies that decided to minimize waste by charging fee on their plastic bags. With this initiative, the Warehouse has been selected as one of the top environmentally responsible companies when they won the Keep New Zealand BeautifulShow MoreRelated Corporate Social Responsibility Essay1698 Words   |  7 Pagessocially responsible and now stakeholders almost expect a company to have CSR policies. Therefore, in twentieth century, corporate social responsibility (CSR) became an important development in public life (Barnett, ND).Corporate social responsibility is defined as â€Å"the ways in which an organisation exceeds the minimum obligations to stakeholders specified through regulation and corporate governance † (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). Stakeholders can be defined as â€Å"those individualsRead MoreCorporate Social Responsibility Essay2817 Words   |  12 Pagesto address social responsibilities. 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