Scholarly record

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN PANDEMIC TIMES. APPLIED PRACTICES

Maria Alina Caratas, Raluca Andreea Trandafir

Abstract

This research aims to present the challenges that companies faced in pandemic times and the ways corporate governance influence their corporate behaviour and made the difference between companies that succeeded to adapt to their strategies to the new business environment and the one that failed. Data was collected from different scientific libraries, presenting the pandemic environment and continued with what corporate social responsibility means and its importance at companies’ level. Noticing the global context, we could affirm that at present, any business in the world operates within different communities create a positive or a negative impact on them. Also, the importance of environment, social and governance aspects was highlighted and the difference between them. The pandemic encouraged a shift in corporate governance from shareholders supremacy to serious surveillance of sustainability, corporate responsibility, community commitment, corporate citizenship and ESG as standard. Finding the middle way in aligning business resources with CSR leads in discovering how the key skills of a company can be applied in a social cause, or better said determining a company’s competitive advantage in terms of doing good. This study contributes to present literature on market reactions to COVID-19 outbreak in terms of corporate governance responses, emphasizes key guidelines of good sustainability practices while raising an alarm signer over corporate abuse hidden under corporate social responsibility initiatives. Corporate abuse refers to a certain behaviour of a corporation that is either unethical or the involvement in a scandal, fraud cases or negligence towards employees or the local community. The importance of the research resides in the exposure of corporate abuse cases and the reasons behind the adoption of corporate social responsibility. The contribution on the subject comes from describing the difference between abusive corporate behaviour and the sustainable behaviour, highlighting some ways that companies can adopt to align their corporate social responsibility campaigns with their business strategies, to grow their return on investment and from the examples exposed.

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