Introduction
Asda is one of the leading UK retail chains involved in food, general merchandise and toys selling. Asda has a great impact on community and local businesses obtaining near monopolistic position of the market. In order to meet ethical rules, Asda signed so called Ethical Trading Initiative, which stipulates rights and freedoms of workers. The company affects society in several ways: it influences economy of local community, living standards and wellbeing of employees and consumers. There is cooperation between the city government and the private sector things accomplished rapidly. The case of Asda shows that any time that a business becomes involved in community affairs it must be concerned with at least four major areas: knowledge of the company’s resources, knowledge of the community, which projects to select, and monitoring and feedback of the projects. In order to know what the business can do for the community, it must first thoroughly know and understand its own resource capability in the areas of money, manpower, equipment, space, and managerial and technical expertise.
Body
Impact on community is achieved through employees and their skills. A small number of initiatives which could generate large and distinctive benefits are additional training for employees and knowledge improvements. Job training to keep unemployment rates down is of vital concern to both business and the community. Both have been sympathetic to this area and have employed and trained people whenever practical. Today, most programs are operated by individual firms. It is imperative, however, if these people are not to end up in the unemployment lines of the future that the training be in meaningful work areas and not just “handout” jobs where the person is paid something like summer work but actually gains very little useful work experience. It is just as important to know the community and its needs as it is to know the company’s capabilities. Someone within the company must work with the community to become familiar with the community needs, or the company must establish some type of internal committee or board to study community problems. The committee or board should be composed of people from the company and various representatives of community organizations. Once both company capabilities and community needs are established, then some form of selection process must be established for determining which project or projects will be undertaken by the company (Kotler and Lee 2004).
Conclusion
Finally, once a program selection has been made it must be carefully monitored; this must involve both review and control. Proper monitoring will enhance the image of the company and improve the chance of program success. Project feedback and follow-up will ensure that the project is being executed within time and funds limitations. A well-managed company of today will make every effort to meet its obligations to society. To help them with this, some companies have written objectives and policies in this area. In spite of this, social objectives and goals exist in an area that is not always easy to assess and objectively appraise. Just because it is not easy is no excuse for not trying to do something constructive about it. To gain some semblance of control in this area and to make certain that social objectives are actually being met, more companies have started using a social audit to measure, monitor, and evaluate the contributions that the company is making to society. It may be as simple as supplying a few employees for local volunteer work to assisting the community in an in-depth study program or building program in a particular area.
Works Cited
Kotler, Ph., Lee, N. Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause. Wiley; 1 edition, 2004.