Amazon AND THE Carroll PDF

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This is an assignment describing how Amazon is following the pyramid of csr...

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AMAZON AND THE CARROLL’S PYRAMID OF CSR

Carrol model is the “extent to which a business addresses the concerns and obligations of to its wider stakeholders” (Riley, NA) and “the actions a business takes over and above the minimum required by law in addressing societal needs and wants” (Riley, NA). Also, a definition by Carrol himself of his model and the four-part definition or four term definition, “Corporate social responsibility encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary (philanthropic) expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time” (Carrol, 1979, 1991). Meaning that it describes how far the company reaches to its clients and customers from the baseline, also known as the minimum legal requirements. There are 4 levels of responsibilities, economical, legal, ethical and philanthropic. As PhD. C. Seymur M.Guliyev suggests on his LinkedIn profile, on economical responsibilities the company must make profit, this means minimize costs and maximize profits. On legal responsibilities the company must comply with all legal requirements, government regulations and law. Ethical responsibilities are different because these are not required by government nor are they enforced, but they are expected from the society, this means to play by the government rules and good behavior. Finally, the philanthropic responsibilities, which involve improving the quality of life of the citizens, corporate contributions to support community or charities, says PhD.Guliyev. Where does Amazon fit in this model?

ECONOMIC RESPONSIBILITY Analyzing each of the levels for amazon, on economic responsibilities, Amazon has a market cap of $815 Billion, reported by cnn money on February 6 th, and it has made a 49,000% Return on investment on its 20th anniversary, which is translated into a very good check mark on the economic responsibility column of the Carrol model.

LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY Next we have the legal responsibilities,where we can find some problems, for example in 2014, it was reported by the Guardian that Amazon.co.uk the biggest online retailer generated more than £3.3 billion but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income and even got under investigation by U.K. tax authorities (The guardian, 2014). In this technological and global age, it is hard to comply with all legalities, especially on big corporations with multinational accounts and different currencies but on most of the time amazon does comply with law.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY Moving on to the next concept, the Ethical responsibilities is more subjective criteria, what can be considered good for someone can be considered wrong for someone else. However, looking at the human rights theory which involves a definition by “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and in alienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” as United Nations (UN) suggests. Then two things can be said about Amazon, the first is that when talking about blue collar employees this company does not meet ethical criteria based on the UN definition of human rights, but on white collar employees this company can meet criteria on certain levels of its organization.

PHILANTHROPIC RESPONSIBILITY Finally, on the last level of the Carrol model, the philanthropic aspect of the model. We can clearly see donation from Amazon to charity organizations, they even have a web page “smile amazon”. This web page makes a difference by giving to your charity of choice part of the cost of the product you are buying, without costing you any extra. However, this type of donations more often than not, provide fiscal incentives such as tax deduction questioning if the company actually cares about the society or they only want to pay less taxes or maybe both. Amazon does have these types of donations in their Amazon Smile page.

CONCLUSION Companies, as it was discussed in earlier paragraphs, are on a continued trend to opt for CSR in today´s world. This trend can be originated by two factors, either the company has a genuine preoccupation for making the world a greener place and make the society a better place with higher paying jobs and donations to charities, or they look for financial and economic incentives which sometimes meet the criteria of being a company involved in CSR and greener

world or better paying jobs. Either or, they are helping society and the world to become a better place, however, companies must make a profit, it’s their main objective. This objective can be met by different means, and this is where CSR, ethics and moral values come into place. In this example, Amazon, does meet some criteria on making the world a better place but it also has its faults. It has been proven by several studies and projects, among them the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, that being a company that provides annual CSR reports and engage in Socially Responsible behavior make better profits because they are seen as companies that go beyond the basic needs of capitalism consumerism. What this Dow Jones Index does is that companies that have shown that they are engaged in these types of behaviors are put together in a list that, this list of companies have an added value of CSR which translates into more trust from public and better shareholder and stockholder profits. Amazon, as most of big companies has had its struggles, ups and downs but the general perspective of this company is to provide low cost products all around the world and it is doing it accordingly. Most companies have had ethical, moral and legal pressure from external sources as well as internal sources, so it is important not to antagonize a specific company but to learn the potential that Amazon has. This potential originates in this global company because it is at everyone´s eye and it does not have an annual CSR report, Amazon can redefine or show the world how and why transitioning in this economy from a responsible company to a well -prepared CSR company can be profitable on the long term, for both, citizenship and company....