Introduction
In this article, the review intends to ensure that the shareholders are able to get their financial returns at a higher level than they used to get before. This was to be effective as provided by the land’s laws. As a result, the corporate executives decided to expand their territory by involving the consumers, employees and the environment as legal stakeholders. The author (Archie B. Carroll), studies the nature of corporate social responsibility with the aim of getting its components so as to characterize it in different ways that will help the top management improve their relationship with the shareholders (Carroll 1991) and as stated by the title, “The pyramid of corporate social responsibility toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders,” it clearly shows that the executives of the firm are trying hard to ensure that the organization’s stakeholders are treated with social responsibility and management’s behavior is upright morally. In view of the article, it focuses on the basics of social responsibility being enforced by the act of managers’ morality. I think this ethical approach of morality is a big step towards achieving the goals of the firm.
Background information
The article achieves its goal by isolating the ethical approach of corporate social responsibility and bringing it to a close relationship with the perspectives that show the three common management ethical approaches. The author also fleshes out the meaning of managing stakeholders in a moral and ethical manner. The article tries to understand the real meaning of corporate social responsibility and as Eells and Walton (1961) puts it, “it refers to the problems arising when corporate enterprise casts its shadow on the social scene” (Carroll 1991 p.39).The article suggests the possibility of the management getting involved with various responsibilities which will help them understand the shareholders and what they need to get full satisfaction. These responsibilities are the economical, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities. Once the management has ensured that all these responsibilities are fully covered, there is a possibility that the firm will be able to make profit and thus be able to maximize shareholders profits. As stated by Carroll (1979), “it is possible for the firm’s management to make a lot of finances in the process of adapting to the society’s rules together with all those firms that are under this law and also those that are in this ethical custom.”
This article has several shortcomings arising whereby some legal claims may come up when the management of the firm fails to treat the people they are responsible for in such a way. These legal claims may be raised by the shareholder, the consumer or even an employee. Other than a legal claim, there can arise a moral claim whereby the people involved would want to be treated like everybody else and demand that their views and opinions be put into consideration when the managers are deciding the fate of the firm. This might put the management at a state that they are unable to control the activities of the firm any more. They are at a loss of deciding whom to consider among the stakeholders and their important issues that they should include when making decisions for their businesses. There may also arise a large number of stakeholders with different claims whereby the management is supposed to draw their attention to. It becomes hard for them to manage all these groups without hurting any of them. With this, the management has to put into consideration the issue of legitimacy whereby the stakeholder has the right to make a claim and also their power.
Considering other articles I have come across on the same subject, this article to me is of higher quality because it lays its emphasis on giving out an overview of corporate social responsibility and how the management can control the firm’s activities by ensuring that they treat their stakeholders with moral responsibility. Other articles leave their readers in suspense such that they are unable to understand the content fully. Writing a review of such an article becomes very hard because of the failure to understand the content. The most convincing point in this article is that the management is able to describe the type of stakeholders they are dealing with; able to get to know them better and analyze their likes and dislikes as well as control the activities of the firm but, am not convinced with the fact that the author of this article declares that the stakeholders’ responsibility, makes decision- making process hard and consumes a lot of time. I fail to understand how this can be, yet everybody involved with the firm should be responsible in one way or another. By saying this, I have related this subject to a personal experience from another firm where the management based their responsibility on one side, that is, they only considered the well being of the customers without looking at the employees’ rights. The employees failed to perform effectively, and this led to a drastic downfall of the firm.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would say that the issue of morality and ethics in managers should be considered when recruiting managers. This is because some managers can be immoral like the case of “Charles Keating”, where a major accounting firm said this about him, “seldom in our experience as accountants we have experienced a more egregious example of misappropriation of generally accepted accounting principles” (Carroll 1991 p.39). According to Carroll, their goal is to put into action the ethical types and emphasize on moral management. This will be achieved through taking into consideration the four types of corporate social responsibilities.
References
Carroll, A. B., (1979) “A Three-Dimensional Conceptual Model of Corporate Social Performance,” Academy of Management, Review, 4, 4 (1979): 497-505. Web.
Carroll, A.B., (1991) the Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility: toward the Moral Management of Organizational Stakeholders, Elsevier.