CSR Activities in Electronic Industry Table of Contents Executive Summary……………………………………… ………2 1. Introduction……………………………………………………2 2. CSR activities of Sony, Dell and Apple………………………. 3 1. Employees………………………………………… …… ……4 2. Environment ……………………………………………….. 5 3. Consumers………………………………………………….. 6 3. Evaluation on CSR activities…………………………………. 6 3. 1 Employees………………………………………………… 6 3. 2 Environment……………………………………… ………7 3. 3 Consumers ………………………………………………. 8 4. Conclusion……………………………………………………. References……………………………………………………………. 9 Executive Summary Recent years, encouraged by cultural and economic globalization, the world market is growing rapidly. With the market becoming increasingly mature and rational, corporations not only pay attention to profit and business opportunities, but also the obligation and responsibility to employees, environment and customers. Therefore, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become more and more popular among enterprises and markets.
Thus, it is important to study the way CSR initiative depicts what corporations have to do in order to shoulder the responsibility for their employees, environment as well as consumers and CSR’s influence on various economic behaviors. This report analyses the CSR activities of Sony, Dell and Apple which are three electronic corporations. Specifically, it focuses on the effect on their employees, environment and consumers. The first part will mainly introduce their CSR initiatives and standards respectively. After that comes the second part which evaluate all these CSR activities.
The goal of this paper is to discuss the significance of CSR and how firms can involve CSR in their business activities. 1. Introduction With the development of cultural and economic globalization, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been paid more and more attention and attracted a number of economists’ concerns and discussion. Some scholars have defined corporate social responsibility as the enterprises acting in accordance with the aims and values of social requirements, formulating policies, making ecisions and taking actions. According to Heal (2005), CSR is defined as an efficient tool to enable enterprises to pay more attention to their social costs and minimize conflicts with other parties in the economic and financial arena. CSR initiative can be defined as corporations’ activities to be responsible for employees, consumers, communities and environment. It requires corporations not only to focus on economic benefits, but also give attention to staffs’ human values and contribution to consumers, environment and society.
Corporations not only pay attention to profit and business opportunities, but also the obligation and responsibility to customers, employees and other companies. In this paper, I will compare and evaluate the corporate social responsibility activities of Sony, Dell and Apple. They are all famous and large enterprises which are making a great impact on economy and society. I will mainly concentrate on their CSR activities in relation to the employees, environment and consumers. . CSR activities of Sony, Dell and Apple Corporate social responsibility is the positive fulfillment of obligations and responsibilities to employees, business partners, customers (consumers), community and nation through enterprise systems and behaviors. It is a benign reaction to enterprises’ stakeholder groups, also the enterprises’ operation objectives overall target. A growing body of evidence asserts that corporations can do well by doing well.
Well-known companies have already proven that they can differentiate their brands and reputations, as well as their products and services, if they take responsibility for the well-being of the societies and environments in which they operate. These companies are practicing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a manner that generates significant returns to their businesses. The three companies that I would like to introduce are Sony, Dell and Apple which are all electronic corporations.
Sony Corporation is a Japanese company and one of the world’s largest producers in electronics, video, communications and information technology products for the consumers and professional markets. Dell Inc. is an American computer hardware company which is the largest supplier of personal computer systems around the world as well as in the United States. Apple Computer, Inc. is also an American computer technology corporation. It develops, sells, and supports a variety of electronic products including personal computers, portable media players, computer software, and computer hardware accessories.
The reason why I choose these three companies is that they are all world-famous enterprises and have a great impact on electronic market and industry all over the world. I will introduce and compare their CSR activities in details in following sections. 1. Employees Employees, as members of an organization, contribute a lot to the enterprise’s manufacture, management and profitability. Corporations’ CSR activities definitely have an enormous influence on the qualities of employees’ behaviors. (Nan, X. & Heo, K. 2007, p. 5) Employees may react negatively when they perceive a corporate injustice because that implies a mismatching with their values and threatens their psychological demands. CSR activities on employees are consisted of many aspects, such as skill training, working condition, payment as well as health and safety. Every corporation has its own human and labor policies. First, Sony’s CSR activities on its employees are discussed. According to its CSR report, Sony Corporation has adopted a basic policy on equal employment opportunities, prohibition of discrimination and health and safety.
The labor standards of Sony Corporation mainly include the followings: freely chosen employment, child labor, discrimination, harsh or inhumane treatment, minimum wages, working hours and freedom of association. Sony’s CSR report notes that Sony Corporation has used a Basic Stance on Human Rights statement in Japan which is followed by all domestic group companies. In the USA Sony states that it asserts clear guidelines on equal employment opportunities and prohibition of discrimination. Dell’s suppliers are required to follow all applicable regulations which are in accordance with local law.
The company states that: “The key components of our approach are: Environment, Health and Safety, and Labor Rights. These standards also include adherence to Dell’s supplier principles and the industry’s principles as outlined in the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC). ” Apple also has its own code of conduct on employees’ labor and human right. For example, Apple specifies that workers should not be subjected to medical test which is used in a discriminatory way. Some of Apple’s rules are more detailed than the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct.
It clearly states that corporation must provide holiday time and leave period within proper laws. 2. Environment To monitor and audit its environmental performance Sony has developed five indices: the greenhouse gas index, the resource input index, the resource output index, the water index, and the chemical substances index. Sony has established its own global standards for management of chemical substances. Sony operates a company recycle program, which complies with the Home Appliance Recycling Law in Japan. In 2002, Sony established the Green Partner Environmental Quality Approval Program.
This program points out Sony’s standards for chemical substance management and examines suppliers’ policies and activities based on these standards. Sony states that it only purchases electronic parts from suppliers who have passed the examination and been certified as Green Partners. Dell actively participates in a number of environmental standards. Dell’s environmental policies are consisted with the followings: 1. Design products with the environment in mind: reducing energy consumption and avoiding environmentally sensitive materials. 2. Prevent waste and pollution: waste minimization, recycling ad pollution prevention. 3.
Continually improve performance: implementation of environmental management system. 4. Demonstrate responsibility to stakeholders: communication and engagement of stakeholders. (van Dijk & Schipper 2007, p. 12) Apple has adopted the precautionary approach and claims that throughout the complete production process, from design through manufacturing, use and recycling, it ensures that its products and activities are environmentally sound. It focuses on four areas: product design, manufacturing, energy efficiency and recycling. (van Dijk & Schipper 2007, p. 10) Since 2001 all Apple computers and displays have earned the Energy Star Rating. . Consumers Sony, Dell and Apple are all world-known enterprises in electronic industry. As sales companies, the quality and update speed of products are significant. Recent years, Sony, Dell and Apple have imported higher technology to create new products and improve the qualities to meet consumers’ different demands. As service companies at the same time, they also improve training system and methods to deliver better services to customers. For instance, Sony launches a series of humanized services with high quality, such as immediate maintaining which means customer services ill maintain or repair customers’ products on the spot; customers can watch the whole process of maintaining and repairing and so on. 3. Evaluation on CSR activities 3. 1 Employees A number of discrimination cases were found in Sony Corporation. For example, in some factories contract workers were denied certain bonuses, insurance, and holiday or received less wage. At Sony Mexico Workers said they were screened on tattoos, pregnancy, trade union affiliation and religion. The safety and health conditions vary significantly across factories.
General complaints include: (1) bad working conditions in terms of temperature, smell or dust, low quality infirmary, frequent small accidents such as cuts, allergic reactions to the soap used for everyday cleaning before going into the clean-room. In Dell and Apple, similar problems also happened. In one of Dell’s supplier companies in China, one case of child labor was encountered. It was found to be hiring more than 200 child workers under the age of 16, mainly students from rural villages seeking for summer jobs. Since they were considered ‘unskilled’, the factory required them to work an extra 1. hours daily without pay to compensate for the ‘lower than normal productivity. ’ Normally, they worked 13 hours per day or 390 hours (for 30 days) per month. During peak seasons, they worked more than 400 hours and 60 of those hours were without payment. Apple also has discrimination issues. In addition to that, in all the Apple factories workers complained about their wage. They stated that their wage is not a living wage because it is simply not enough to cover their living expenditures. 3. 2 Environment In the Greenpeace report ‘Greener Electronics Guide’, Sony scores 4. 7 points on a scale of 10.
But despite having some models without the worst chemicals, Sony has yet to provide timelines for substituting toxic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominates flame retardants (BFR) for key applications. (van Dijk & Schipper 2006, p. 12) Sony’s website makes no reference to the precautionary principle. Although Sony is part of the European Recycling Platform which supports Individual Producer Responsibility, Sony’s website provides no explicit support for worldwide Individual Producer Responsibility. In the Greenpeace report, Dell scores the number one position Dell’s position due to its strong definition of the precautionary principle.
Dell designs products with the environment in mind: it reduces energy consumption and avoids environmentally sensitive materials. It also prevents waste and pollution: Dell tries to goal in waste minimization, recycling ad pollution prevention. The Apple Supplier Code of Conduct includes the following parts on environmental policies: wastewater and solid waste emissions; air emissions; pollution prevention and resource reduction. However, according to Greenpeace, for a company that claims to lead on product design, Apple scores badly on almost all criteria.
The company fails to embrace the prevention principle, withholds its full list of regulated substances and provides no timelines for eliminating toxic materials. Apple performs poorly on product take back and recycling, with the exception of reporting on the amounts of its electronic waste recycled. 3. 3 Consumers When it comes to consumer aspect, I think these three companies have done well. They launch new products in time which have high rates of costs to meet consumers’ demands. At the same time, their after-sales services have the ability to satisfy their customers. 4. Conclusion
Many companies made it clear that the strength of CSR is flexible and voluntary. These three companies have the ability to perform better CSR activities, especially on employee and environment aspects, to fill the gap between the expected and actual compliance in a more effective way. References Heal, G. 2005, ‘Corporate social responsibility: an economic and financial framework’, Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance – Issues and Practice, vol. 30, pp. 387-409. van Dijk, M & Schipper, I 2006, ‘Sony CSR Company Profile’, Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen (SOMO), pp. 9-19. an Dijk, M & Schipper, I 2007, ‘Dell CSR Company Profile’, Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen (SOMO), pp. 10-22. van Dijk, M & Schipper, I 2007, ‘Apple CSR Company Profile’, Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen (SOMO), pp. 8-17. Rupp, D. E. , Ganapathi, J. , Aguilera, R. V. & Williams, C. A. 2006, ‘Employee reactions to corporate social responsibility: an organizational justice framework’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, pp. 537-543. Nan, X. & Heo, K. 2007, ‘Consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives’, Journal of Advertising, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 63-74.
