Abstract: The dominant issue surrounding corporate management today is the concept of corporate profit maximization in relation to corporate social responsibility. The idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a vision of corporate accountability to an array of stake holders which includes shareholders, employees, customers, environmental protection, civil society and the communities. CSR is intended to be an inbuilt and self-regulating mechanism fostering corporate adherence to laws, international norms, and ethical standards and codes of responsibility. Through this mechanism, it is assumed that as a business maximizes profits, it will accept the spillovers of their activities and actively seek to protect, encourage community growth, development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of consequences. The recent corporate scandals have increased public mistrust of corporations as to their ability to maximize profit and at same time be socially responsible.. In this paper we seek to answer the question, “Can a corporation continue maximizing profit and at the same time pursue social responsibility initiatives? We drew on different theories of corporate social responsibility in answering this question. A case study approach was used in this study. The companies studied were Wal-Mart Stores and AXA Group. These companies were selected based on their strong emphasis and commitment to corporate social responsibility. The result of the study indicated that both companies are actively engaged in various social responsibility initiatives both domestically and internationally. The Gold medal award received by Wal-Mart accentuates its overall success in the implementation of its sustainability corporate strategy in which in it ties its profitability strategy to its corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Keywords: Corporate, social, responsibility, maximizing, profit, stockholders, community, development, scandals and sustainability.
Title: Profit Maximization and Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of Wal-Mart Stores and AXA Group
Author: Professor William Kwame Dadson
International Journal of Management and Commerce Innovations,
ISSN 2348-7585 (Online)
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