Nowadays, consumers expect more from a firm than just its products. Businesses are expected to be socially responsible and transparent, and produce and deliver the goods in an ethical way. A post from the blog “My New Neighbour” deals specifically with its issue, with respect to the example of Pantagonia.
Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR refers to the “business practices involving initiatives that benefit society” According to the blog, Patagonia’s “humble honesty, transparency, commitment, and diligence with corporate social responsibility [is] groundbreaking and necessary.” Patagonia’s “love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them”. This also translates into “a love of people, with Patagonia having a robust involvement in corporate social responsibility of it’s factories in all tiers of production worldwide.”
This ethical practice relates to the way of decision making of care. The ethics of care can be stated as “the morally correct action is the one that expresses care in protecting the special relationships that individuals have with each other.” Pantagonia focuses on fulfilling this “care” with its effort to help the environment and the people.
Pantagonia pays close attention to every step in the supply chain. “Over the past four years, it’s beefed up its social responsibility office and enlisted Verité to help it with additional audits. It’s increased its investment in corporate social-responsibility efforts by about nine fold over the past five years, and has been working on initiatives internally as well as trying to broaden awareness and cooperation about problems across the industry…. when I spoke with experts on the issue of forced labor, Patagonia’s name continually came up as one of the few brands that seeks to take the high road by choice rather than necessity ”
Our society’s needs are also changing to place greater importance on social awareness. In our world now, businesses are held to higher expectations than just making profits. Consumers expect businesses to be transparent and ethical in their actions, and to create positive social impacts, with regards to education, health, and the environment even while making profits.
For businesses, a corporate social responsibility is a source of motivation and a point of differentiation. Nowadays, it is common for businesses to start out because of a social need. Successful entrepreneurs identify what is missing in our society and work to bridge that gap. Businesses seek to leave a positive, lasting change in people’s lives, instead of being lost in the influx of organizations.