Rick Goossen’s Blog on www.makegood.com brings up an interesting outlook on corporate social responsibility. Through an interview with Costco’s CFO Richard Galanti, Gosseen touches upon how corporate social responsibility can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage.
What I found extremely intersting was how corporate social responsibility was defined. According to Galanti, CSR is a fancy name for treating the society, employees, and environment right. In the blog, Gosseen uses an interview conducted with Galanti to paint a picture of how Costco uses CSR not as a marketing scheme, but as an internally subtle act of kindness.
This blog is useful because it shows an example of an organization that does not publicize their good deeds, but instead conducts them purely for the benefit of others. Rarely does one see Costco’s name appear on a local, regional, or even national newspaper as a socially responsible organization. However, through this blog, I learned that not all socially responsible organizations use CSR as a marketing scheme.
Costco rarely shows up as a socially responsible organization. However, it is indeed one.
Despite Costco’s lack of spotlight, they provide an abundance of support to education for children and their employees. Not only do they give away 1% of the year’s pre-tax earnings a year, they also adopt elementary schools to encourage education.
It is through this blog that I learned that you can’t judge an organization by it’s cover. Just because CSR is not publicized does not mean it does not exist.
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