Reconceptualizing corporate social responsibility (CSR) as corporate public responsibility (CPR)

• Main Authors: Soojin KIM, TAM, Laishan, KIM, Jeong-Nam
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
• Subjects: Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/4772
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Although CSR scholarship spans a variety of disciplines and professional fields, the variety of CSR definitions and approaches presented in existing literature causes confusion. The “social” aspect in CSR is too vague and broad that there is a lack of specific direction as to whom the corporation is responsible. It is doubtful whether organizations which are active in CSR can be considered good corporate citizens when they fail to address immediate issues with their strategic publics. Hence, we propose to reconceptualize the concept of social responsibility as Corporate Public Responsibility (CPR). Corporate public responsibility is about prioritizing resources to first fulfill corporate responsibilities for key publics before addressing other broader social issues. Businesses would be able to discover a clearer link between “public responsibility” and their bottom line, rather than with “social responsibility” in general. We suggest that being “socially responsible” means being “responsible to key publics” and that good CSR is equivalent to good public relations. In this book chapter, two case examples are used to explicate the reconceptualization of CSR as CPR.