2012
_NEWS Business

_Corporate Responsibility

Nearly every large company runs corporate responsibility programs, but the larger public—and the companies themselves—may not fully understand what corporate responsibility actually is.

Nearly every large company runs corporate responsibility programs, but the larger public—and the companies themselves—may not fully understand what corporate responsibility actually is. Daniel Korschun, a LeBow College of Business marketing professor, recently co-authored the book “Leveraging Corporate Social Responsibility – The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value,” in an effort to help companies navigate the complex world of corporate responsibility and ultimately maximize their corporate social responsibility efforts.

Korschun notes that it is widely accepted that corporate social responsibility programs can improve both corporate performance and societal welfare. It is therefore no longer a question of whether or not these programs have the potential to benefit companies; rather, the issue is what companies can do to ensure that corporate responsibility pays off as much as possible.

Corporate responsibility is a type of community engagement that has existed for some time and has been the subject of a number of books. However, this book is one of just a few that use empirical research to get at the actual worth of corporate responsibility programs.

The authors’ own research, compiled over the course of a decade through experiments, surveys, focus groups, interviews and analysis of secondary data, is at work throughout the book. Says Korschun: “Our hope is that readers use our approach to create [corporate responsibility] programs that not only provide societal benefits, but also benefits for the company. That way, the programs themselves will become sustainable.”

Korschun co-wrote this book with Sankar Sen, professor of marketing at the Zicklin School of Business; CB Bhattacharya, dean of international relations and E.ON chair in corporate responsibility at the European School of Management and Technology.