The Importance Of CSR Principles In Business

The term CSR could lead to an understanding that only companies or enterprises could actually apply the CSR principles in their business. For example, the definition of the corporation itself could vary in different English speaking countries as according to the dictionary of American English, the word corporation is most often used to describe large business corporations. In British English and in the Commonwealth countries, the term company is more widely used to describe the same sort of entity while the word corporation encompasses all incorporated entities (Word Heritage Encyclopedia n.d). However, the wider meaning of the word corporate is an internal corporate management and internal business administration of any organization, where …show more content…
However, more and more of the IFIs realized the importance of their leadership responsibility in this area and of the importance of leading by a good example. Therefore, they apply the CSR concept internally as well, as expressed by the president of the World Bank Group while speaking to his staff in 2014:
The World Bank Group is committed to reducing extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. This includes striving to manage the planet’s resources for future generations, ensuring social inclusion, and adopting fiscally responsible policies. We are equally committed to this in how we operate on a daily basis […]. I want us to lead by example as we manage our triple bottom line -- environmental, social, and economic impacts […]. The wellbeing of the people and the communities where we operate is just as important as the wellbeing of our staff. (The World Bank …show more content…
This explicit presentation of their actions as socially responsible could further spread the importance for such actions among their stakeholder and among the general public. This could encourage further expansion of those practices in the global economy, especially if those CSR practices and activities are revealed to the public either via the IFIs' web pages or via various types of reports and publications. Annex 1 represents the results of the analysis of the information provided by the IFIs on their CSR. The details about the explicit and the implicit presentation of CSR per individual IFI is reflected in the Annex 1. As per the tools used by the IFIs to present their CSR activities, the most common is a presentation in the annual report (75 % of the selected IFIs). The second most common tool is a stand-alone CSR report (67 % of the selected IFIs). An individual page on the IFIs website is used by half of the analyzed IFIs. The graphical representation is available in Annex 3.
To summarize, IFIs are applying the concept of CSR either externally or internally. The external application is done by simply following on their mandate, which is by default socially responsible. Most of them are applying the CSR concept on the management of their own resources as well. IFIs could further either express their CSR activities explicitly to their stakeholders or those could be perceived