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ECONOMICAL EFFECTIVENESS AND SOCIAL OBJECTIVES IN CORPORATE SOCIAL REPORTS – A SURVEY AMONG POLISH PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANIES
Abstract
Corporate social responsibility is a part of business doing and ethical standards of modern societies. It is a manager of an enterprise to decide whether he wants an entity to comply with the rules and how he wants a company to fulfill the standards. Managers cannot treat an entity as independent unit separate from other participants of free market economy and from society. Modern enterprises are important members of every society, which gives them privileges and creates obligations as well. The qualitative analysis included all 23 companies that were present in RESPECTIndex since 2011 till 2014. With regard to corporate social responsibility, actions described in reports were classified into one of four areas: business surroundings, employees, society and the natural environment. In summary, the analysis of reports published by RESPECTIndex companies shows that awareness of corporate social responsibility in Poland is increasing. Concessive arguments include diversity of actions' range and complexity of social responsible activities, as well as the quality of reports. It can be observed that the objectives and fulfillment criteria derived from corporate social responsibility idea are different from the objectives set by a business unit making rational decisions based on short-term profit. It is highly possible that different objectives constitute the biggest difficulty for business entities. In addition, a lack of unified measurement method relating to the level of goal achievement as well as difficulty in defining objectives in social responsibility activities were observed. Analysis of corporate social responsibility reports together with financial reports of modern Polish enterprises shows that obligation for economic effectiveness coexists with social responsibility of a business conduct. Changes in business surroundings has forced enterprises to widen the scope of their activities, pay more attention to company's culture and ethics, and to respect the rights of others.
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References9
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