Social responsibility is the obligation of organization management to make decision and take actions that will enhance the welfare and interests of society as well as the organization. Social responsibility is quit important to the society, organization and human.

There are several reasons to support the importance of social responsibilities. It is related to the ethical responsibility, and differentiates into difference level of social responsibilities, which is economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary responsibilities. There are six main areas of social responsibility, the employees, providers of finance, consumers, community and environment, government, and other organizations or groups.

It is known that there are many arguments for and against corporate social responsibility. These arguments have been encapsulated into two points of view. Those who believe that organizations should not be concerned about social responsibility base many of their arguments on the costs involved and whether organizations should shoulder those costs on behalf of society. Those who are in favour of corporate social responsibility feel that organizations benefit from society and, therefore, have an obligation to improve it. Although there is no universal agreement, surveys and other reports indicate that many organizations are, in fact, becoming increasingly active in addressing social concerns.

The advantages and important of social responsibilities are being discussed here. This action would be taken by some organization base on their view. To have social responsibilities, the suppliers, business associates, and customers would be more confidence on the organization. So, the products and services of the organizations increase and lead to maximize profit.

The Nature of Social Responsibility

Organizational survival is dependent upon a series of exchanges between the organization and its environment. These exchange and continual interaction with the environment give rise to a number of broader responsibilities to society in general. The broader responsibilities, which are both internal and external to the organization, are usually referred to as social responsibilities. These social responsibilities arise from the independence of organizations, society and the environment.

The definition of social responsibility is management's obligation to make choices and take actions that will contribute to the welfare and interests of society as well as the organizational (Richard L.Daft, 1988). There are two principles provided the foundation for contemporary views on social responsibility, the principle of charity and the principle of stewardship.

Social responsibility is an exercise that is very important to the business organizations. The recognition of the importance of social responsibilities can be gauged in part by the extent of government action and legislation on such matters as, for example, employment protection, equal opportunities, companies acts, consumer law, product liability and safeguarding the environment. This has formalized certain areas of social responsibilities into legal requirement.

Social responsibilities may be viewed in term of organizational stakeholders. That is those individuals or groups who have an interest in and / or are affected by the activities of the organization or the behaviour of its members. The stakeholders included of employees, providers of finance, consumers, communities and environment, government, and other organizations or groups.

Social responsibility is both an issue of obedience to the law and of ethics. There are at least three major contrasting views of social responsibility - the profit concept, the stakeholder concept, and social responsibility concept.

The Importance of Social Responsibility

Although the activity of social responsibility is benefit for social and business organizational, the arguments for and against business social responsibility exist. There are several reasons of agreement of the activity. The importance of social responsibility is state below: -

1 Best Interest of Business to Promote and Improve the Communities

Organizations, as members of society, have a moral obligation to help society deal with its problems and to contribute to its welfare. It is the ethical thing to do by the business organizations. A measurement should be made of whether the organization is performing such activities as producing goods and services that people need, creating jobs for society, paying fair wages, and ensuring worker safety.

People and organizations need each other. Social responsibility to employees extends beyond terms and conditions of the formal contract of employment and gives recognition to the workers as a human being. People today have wider expectations of the quality of working life; included justice is treatment, opportunities for consultation and participation, training in new skill and technologies, effective personal and industrial relations policies, and provision of social and leisure facilities. Organization should be, for example, give due consideration to the design of work organization and job satisfaction, make very reasonable effort to give security of employment, and provide employment opportunities for minority groups.

A number of leading companies have taken steps to develop more ethical cultures and system by involving individual employees in corporate affairs. To provide or support some benefits to the workers will lead to good communities in the business organizations. Good communication in the internal business would be leads to avoid miss understanding of each other. The workers would then enjoy their work and work out more efficiency. The quality of goods and services of the organization therefore increase. This will lead to profitable to the organization's business. Therefore, the social responsibility is important in internal environment of the business too.

2 Improves Public Image of the Firm

To many people, responsibilities to consumers may be seen as no more than a natural outcome of good business. There are, however, broader social responsibilities including providing good value for money; the safety and durability of products or services; standard of after-sales service; prompt and courteous attention to queries and complaints; long-term satisfaction, for example serviceability, adequate supply of products or services, and spare and replacement parts; fair standards of advertising and trading; full and unambiguous information to potential customers. Increasing concern for social responsibilities to consumers can be seen by the activities of such bodies as the Consumers Association, and the number of television and radio programmed devoted to this subject.

As an example of degrading the quality of life, some people believe that cigarette companies, because they produce goods that can harm the health of society overall, are socially irresponsible. By doing that, the consumers would be loses of confidence on the organization's products, and not buying their products. Then consumers will buy the goods from other organizations that they are confidence to. Social initiatives taken by organizations tend to promote goodwill, public favour, and corporate trust, and these may contribute to the long-run success of the organizations and profit. Therefore, socially responsible would acts enhance an organization's image and business in general.

3 Improving Stock Price

To having the action of social responsibility of an organization would lead to their suppliers, and business associates more confidence to the organization. The examples of social responsibility might include: fair standards of trading, honouring terns and conditions of purchase or sale, and settlement dates, for example payment of accounts, assistance to smaller organization; engagement only in fair competition; respect for copyright and patents. By doing that, the other organizations would view the company as less risky. This is in the stockholders best interest. It will improve the price of stock in the long run because the stock market will views the company as less risky and open to public attack. So, it would reduce the cost of the production of the company. Therefore award it a high price-earnings ratio.

Some organizations extend the range of social responsibilities even future by, for example: giving recognition to the needs of developing countries; limiting the extent of political involvement or campaigning; donations to, or sponsorship of, the arts, educational or educational or research institutions, sporting organizations or charities.

4 Solving Social Problems

Organizations have a responsibility not to misuse the scarce factors of production upon which the wealth of the country depends. Organizations have a responsibility to society, to respect environmental considerations and take care of amenities. For example, the effects and potential dangers of pollution, noise, disposal of waste; the sitting and appearance of new buildings; transportation policies, such as the routing of heavy vehicles through narrow village roads; and avoidance of excessive packaging and more use of biodegradable materials. All of that must be think off since the decision making of the organizations to have their process of production. For example, is the protest against aerosol sprays containing chlorofluorocarbons? These have been blamed for damaging the ozone layer, which protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays from sun. Organizations should, of course, respect and obey the law which is set up of government even where they regard it as not in their best interests. But what is debatable is the extent to which organizations should co-operate voluntarily with actions requested by the government. Some examples are: restraint from trading with certain overseas countries, and the acceptance of controls over imports or exports; actions designed to combat inflation.

By the side, some pollutions can not be avoid, and sometime, our government is too busy to solve the others problems, society should give business a chance to solve social problems, such as air pollution and water pollution, that government has failed to solve. To solving those social problems, the environment will be cleaner. This would lead to a good image of the companies to their consumers or other companies. The confidence of consumer's increases, and favour to buy the goods from the companies. The profit of the companies will increase eventually. Therefore, acts of social responsibility is very important by organizations help correct the social problems that the organizations create.

5 Resource given by the organizations to solve the social problem

The measurement of social investment deals with the degree to which the organization is investing both money and human resources to solve community social problems. Here, the organization could be involved in assisting community organizations dedicated to education, charities, and the arts.

For example, Ben and Jerry's have a great reputation for being a socially responsible company. Management seems to include social responsibility issues in everything that it does. As an example, when recently looking for a site to build its new factory, the company was torn between building a new factory in its native Vermont to support struggling farmers or closer to the West Coast to avoid the pollution caused and energy expended by transporting the ice cream a couple of thousand miles. The Vermont site was eventually chosen.

A lot of money would be used for solving the social problems. Most of the time, there is limited money for that. Technical also been used to solving problems. So, in order to avoid the limited of resources, most of the organizations will possess the resources (such as money and expertise) needed to tackle social problems. A good image of the companies develops. It will lead to even more consumers to have confidence on those companies and more consume on the goods of the companies. These companies would be profitable in the long run period. Therefore, being social responsibilities is very important to an organization in order to create a good image to the company.

Can a business be socially responsible?

This brings us to the next question in the search for the meaning of socially responsible ethics and what it means to business. Can a business be socially responsible? If it can be then what criteria does it need to ensure that it is perceived in this manner? For each business it must be a different measure. (Kaliski, 2007) After all, each business is trying to reach different goals. However, there are four areas that should be measured no matter what the outcome that is needed. Those measurements are Economic function, Quality of life, Social investment and Problem solving. In economic function, the goal that is trying to be achieved should be measured to see if it meets with the cost guidelines that the business is willing to contribute. (Kaliski, 2007) For instance if the business were to try to better the plant by reducing its carbon footprint; how would it go about doing this? (Carbon Footprint, 2006) Would it begin by doing something major like installing water heaters throughout the building or re-doing the building insulation? Or would they begin in small ways that would be more cost effective like mandating that parking lots lights are turned off at a certain time? Or that office computers all be turned off at the end of the workday instead of being left on and simply logged out.I like responsibty In the quality of life measurement “should focus on whether the organization is improving or degrading the general quality of life in society”. (Kaliski, 2007) Does the business produce a tangible good? Is that tangible good anything that betters society and how people live? If the business produces a service, then does that service do anything to improve how people live? If the answer to those questions was no, then how could the good or service produced better society?
Social investment looks at what the business is doing for the community. (Kaliski, 2007) Does the business work with the community to fix outstanding issues and social problems? How much of an investment does it make? What issues are they addressing? To what depth are the problems that they are working to fix? Are they trying to fix major issues like drug addiction in impoverished areas or are they working on smaller issues like providing recreation activities for youth? Is the problem they are working on fixing a large social problem with far-reaching consequences? Or is the problem a localized one that is area specific?
Problem solving looks at to what extent the business will work to fix the problem. (Kaliski, 2007) Will the business simply contribute money to an organization working on the issue? Will they allow company employees to volunteer on company time to fix the problem? Will it pay others to fix the problem? Will is actually be in the trenches working on the issues? Will they company actually have a department working on the issue and nothing else?
Social Responsibility Conclusion

The first responsibility to society is to operate at a profit, and only slightly less important is the necessity for growth. The business is the wealth-creating and wealth-producing organ of the society. Management must maintain its wealth-producing resource intact by making adequate profits to offset the risk of economic activity. And it must beside increase the wealth-producing capacity of these resources and with them the wealth of society.

Ethics play an importance role in social responsibility. The business organizations must have ethical responsibility as they are doing business, including production, management, and services and so on. Without ethics, it would be danger to the human. Ethics is simply the rules that say what is right and wrong, as defined by a particular reference group or individual.

The social responsibility is very importance to both society and business organizations. Although there are some arguments for and against social responsibility, even more of the organizations would take action on social responsibility. Many of the advantages being social responsibility was created, some of that was already discuss on previous pages. Believed that, the best interest of business organizations is social responsibilities, that would be benefit in the long run of company, can be earn more profit, and benefit to the human and the environment.

Olabode M. Abiodun (OND)
Audit Manager
Olajide and Associates Nig.
www.olajideassociates.com