This article will analyze in detail the role of managers in the adaptation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and contemporary management practices. The corporate social responsibility is a term used to define the concept of management where companies and organizations implement as well as integrate social and environmental concerns in the way it interacts with the stakeholders and the way the business processes (Dahlsrud, 2008).
Sustainable Management is a management practice that business applies inside their organizations or companies to make the sustainable or better use of resources that may be financial, human or technological which can result in better outcomes for the organization’s present and future both (Schüz, 2012).
The manager or managers play an integral role in any organization’s operations. The manager is responsible for reinforcing the core vision and mission of the organization as well as to communicate effectively like a responsible figurehead to employees and stakeholders. The manager is also responsible for carrying out the duties and roles associated with corporate social responsibility and sustainable management, and this report will lay down an argumentative discussion critical analysis defining the role of managers in Google’s success story.
This article will cover three sections in total; the first part will cover the CSR and environmental management’s goal in Google’s goal achievement and its importance to the organization. The second will be more focused on Google’s managers in adopting CSR and sustainable management along with its knowledge and impact. The third part will be focused on analyzing the problems in Google’s management role and change suggestions as a whole.
Critical Literature Review
Over the time many studies have been published regarding the emergence of CSR and how it came into existence. However, no sure facts are given about its emergence history. It has been considered that, the CSR i.e. Corporate Social Responsibility that deals with the ethics in business operations has its roots even before 1945. For this argument, one justification could be that organization would have been considered being ethical from start of time which then led to the foundation of CSR as a whole (Valor, 2005).
Further studies also suggest that the emergence of CSR first came into existence in the under-developed countries such as Chile. In Chile, the multi-national companies (MNCs) and the non-governmental agencies (NGOs) are the leading force, and it is believed that MNCs brought their beliefs regarding the importance of CSR in business operation to the country. After MNCs, the domestic businesses also adopted the same CSR strategies to stay in league with the multi-companies and as a result the concept of corporate social responsibility kept on spreading and developing (Beckman, Colwell and Cunningham, 2009).
For decades now, CSR has been studied through practice and publications. By 2012 it was found that 181 articles regarding this topic have been published and around twenty journals have focused entirely on the CSR that are primarily reviewed journals. Furthermore, companies are also actively reporting their business’ CSR operations. The studies are primarily focused on organizations, institutions as well as the impact of stakeholders on the business process (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012).
1. Brief Background of Google
Google is a known technological company founded by two Stanford University students named as, Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1996. It was started off as a research project at first when the two founders were doing their Ph.D. at California’s Stanford University. However, the company gained exposure and success, and it has been ranked as world’s most visited website. The company deals in products and services related to the internet such as the search engine service, the cloud computing service, online advertising techniques, etc. Today, Google has become a favorite global company all over the globe with around seventy offices present in various countries.
1.1 Role of CSR and Environmental Management in Google’s Success
Many organizations release their CSR performance in a PDF format; however, Google has a different approach. The famous company has a site known as Google Green where it posts about its CSR initiative and programs. The Google’s CSR performs activities such as employee relations, energy consumption, and carbon emission. The CSR performance of Google regarding employee relations and satisfaction is considered to be an exception as Google offer an appealing working environment to its employee that work towards the achievement of the goals of the organization. Furthermore, the energy consumption is also highly effective in Google data centers i.e. its Google centers consume almost half energy as compared to other data centers. Google Green is a project of Google focusing on making the environment healthy and green, and as a result since 2007, it is carbon neutral and keeps around fifty-seven hundred vehicles away from roads, plus it is also working hard in the cloud platforms which is also environmental friendly (Smith, 2013).
The above discussed corporate social responsibility initiative has helped Google in its goal achievements greatly. Along with these initiatives, one other initiative has proven to be the driving force in Google’s success and it its environment management. Google is known for its inside organization culture as well as employee happiness. The inside culture of the organization is somewhat like a playground for grown-ups, and it is nothing like any corporate organization. The company has even got individuals working solely towards maintain and increasing the productivity of employees as well as their happiness. The environmental management of Google is effective and has a completely different approach as compared to other organizations. The happy and satisfied employees work hard towards the achievement of the preset and predefined goals of Google. The CSR and environmental management played an integral role in bringing Google in the place it is today (Bock, 2015).
1.2 Importance of CSR and Sustainable Management to Google
The corporate social responsibility and the sustainable managements are considered as a great driving force and are integral with Google. Since Google is a global company, it has stakeholders that are governments of various countries. The company’s CSR’s main approach is to follow the law in all countries it functions.
The company follows a philosophy that business can be done without performing any evil activity and therefore, CSR’s role includes the compliance of business operations with the regulatory law and requirements. For Google, the communities are also considered as an effective stakeholder, and CSR helps the company in initiating charity programs that can benefit the communities by solving problems such as poverty, climate change, and health issues. The overall statistics of Google’s corporate social responsibility are satisfactory, and it is playing a key role in satisfying the major stakeholders of the organization, its employees as well as the communities and complying with the regulatory laws formed by the governments. Without CSR, Google may not be able to satisfy the stakeholders and employees (Turker, 2009).
Identically to the CSR, the sustainable management’s importance for Google is also high. The Company believes that organizations should implement effective sustainability strategies to reduce the consumption of the resources. According to the director of energy and sustainability, Rick Needham, Google has a great vision when it comes to sustainability, and this is one of the main reasons that Google is doing everything in its power to reduce the overall power consumption as it moves forward towards the way of success. The company works hard towards making the world a better and greener place, and it can also be analyzed from its corporate social responsibility initiatives such as the carbon neutral and the renewable energy grids. The company focuses on going completely renewable regarding energy consumption and usage so that the environment can breathe and survive healthily. This vision of Google, make CSR and sustainable management highly essential in the business operations (Carus, 2013).
1.3 Relation to Organizational Goals
The central goal of Google being a technological company is to become the core pool of information that has the entire world’s data accessible for individuals all over the world. However, the company has other objectives and visions too such as the one where the company wishes to be fully renewable to save the over usage of power and energy. The data centers of Google consume fifty percent less energy, and it purchases and produces renewable energy too. It aims to make the environment green and healthy with the low carbon emission rate.
All the goals of Google related to the world’s environment and making it greener are related to corporate social responsibility, sustainable management, and environmental management. Since, the sustainable management is a process of sustaining usage of resources it allows the company to sustain its energy usage as much as it can, to bring it near to its goal of becoming entirely renewable. Furthermore, CSR also helps Google achieve its goals since it is a way to reinforce mission among stakeholders, customers, and employees. The initiatives of employee relations and reduction in power consumption as well as carbon emission are helping the company moving towards its goals and objective with each day passing.
2. The Role of Managers
2.1 The Role and Motivation of Google Managers
The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), according to the definition described by the United Kingdom organization of Employees named as, CBI is the concept of taking into consideration that organizations not only be accountable for their financial or economic status in the society. However, they should also be considered to stay accountable for their social, environmental responsibilities and performances i.e. they organization should work towards in making the environment better to benefit the stakeholders, communities and to promote the sustainable development across the globe. The managers are the driven entities in the companies responsible for implementing the required CSR throughout the business processes; however, it can be argued that this motivation to involve in the CSR has come from personal values (Hemingway and Maclagan, 2004).
The managers are responsible for identifying the issues and challenges associated with their business processes and creating and implementing the required social, ethical means to counter the situation to benefit the external stakeholders. However, it is mostly considered that the managers do the ethically correct thing in the business activities out of altruism i.e. a sense of selfless concern to consider the well-being of others. This concern comes truly from personal values. For instance, a good manager who is good as a person with great values then he will always consider others above his interest. It is also a quality of being a leadership, where managers consider their subordinates equal and treat them with respect and value. As a result, they follow the managers willingly. The CSR has the same formulation, a bad manager with the lack of motivation and value for human rights and community well-being will only consider raising the financial status of the organization even at the cost of environment and external stakeholders because he lacks personal ethical values. In the CSR, the role of managers are crucial, and this role is primarily powered by the personal values of the managers mostly rather than the corporation.
It can also be said after analyzing the role of managers in Google’s corporate society responsibilities that the managers are motivated by two forces mainly i.e. one force is their personal values and sense of responsibility towards doing the ethically right things even if they cause them greatly. The second force is external to the managers but internal to the business organization itself. This force is the organizational goals, objectives, and policies that are already in place and action from the beginning of time. The organizations that work towards the benefit of external stakeholders will allow managers to apply their personal values in the process. In contrary, if the organization in question do not consider the external stakeholders’ benefits, health and overall wellbeing as its responsibility then the manager having an exceptional sense of responsibility will be unable to do any good towards the society. Both personal values and organizational values hold great importance in the effective implementation of CSR.
2.1 Impact of CSR on Google Managers’ Everyday Life and Role – The Guidance
The Google managers while taking on the role of corporate social responsibility primarily consider the three major roles and duties i.e. securing a motivated and exceptional work environment within organization to benefits employees, protection of the environment outside the organization by adopting techniques that will cause less pollution and carbon emission and finally the protection and consideration of the consumer’s health and interests. For managers of various organizations, the view towards the protection of the environment will differ greatly. For instance, some managers will work towards protecting the historical venues; other may initiate actions to reduce the usage of plastic bottles and utensils, while others will simply consider the health as the main preservation. Therefore, the personal values are a driving force towards the implementation of CSR, but it is also affected and influenced by the values of the corporation and its goals (Pedersen, 2010).
The practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) also influences the everyday life of the managers and employees of the firm in various ways. For example, the managers who are responsible for initiating the environmental correcting policies will also try to keep the environment safe in their day-to-day life too. They will treat the people whether family or strangers with respect and concern and take into consideration their well-beings. They will try not to hurt anyone in any way because of their personal benefits. In everyday life, the managers will also try to control the habits that can influence the environment and they may adopt new habits to protect the environment. However, these responsibilities also come from the personal values too, the managers performing CSR willingly for the sake of the external stakeholders because they consider it their responsibility have more potential to adopt the same practices in everyday life as compared to the managers, who lack the self-values and altruism and are conducting CSR only to put up with their job responsibility (Jamali and Mirshak, 2007).
Google is considered to be one of the top companies in the performance of CSR by the managers. It has its vision and mission straight that must work towards making Google the best technological company globally while keeping the environmental well-being its priority. The CSR initiative in action by the company is generating sound relations with employees as well as actions that are by environment benefits such as to keep it green on low carbon emission and energy consumption. The managers of know about the CSR by the active policies of Google that it has applied within the boundary of organizational culture. All the managers are aware of these policies and use the policies as the main guiding force to carry out the business operations in accordance and compliance with the CSR policies. The guidance is internal and external both in the case of Google managers because of the personal leadership roles and qualities that managers have allowed them to willingly implement on the business process ethics defined by Google policies i.e. an external force. The more the managers have the sense of altruism inside them, the better they will respond towards the guiding principles of corporate social responsibilities to make the inside environment of organization friendlier and the outside environment healthy, green and pollution free (Matten and Moon, 2008).
3. Future Improvement of CSR and Sustainable Management Practices
Google is a company i.e. very familiar with the corporate social responsibilities and trying its best to accomplish its goals and objectives along with creating a positive image in the society regarding its responsibilities and performance towards the betterment of society. However, Google is a global company i.e. generating billion-dollar revenue because of its exceptional technological services. The company’s central focus is towards making the environment green and clean with its energy initiatives. The company also focuses on making the health and poverty issues of the society better by charity initiatives.
By what we have learned throughout the research process and analysis of this report that Google want to acquire a position in the society of becoming the central hub for the production of renewable energy. It has implemented its renewable energy consumption grid and is also purchasing renewable energy from others. It is far behind achieving its goals yet, but it is moving steadily towards making its dreams, the reality in the future and wants to go 100% green by converting all its products, services, data centers and other technologies consume less energy and produce less harmful materials such as carbon. Carbon dioxide is considered to be the main variable in the increase of global warming that includes issues such as the rising temperature, irregular rain cycle, increased floods, and pollution. By reducing the carbon emission, Google wants to protect the earth and make it worth living as it will also reduce the health issues associated with the global warming (Omer, 2008).
The CSR initiative involves the friendly environment of the organizational culture that Google follows inside its boundaries to increase the productivity of the organization towards achieving the common goals and having a performance check and monitoring of every employee. The managers of Google are doing a great job in accomplishing the CSR goals set by the organization. However, the approach of the managers can be improved more in the future to increase the overall performance of the organization and benefit not only the external stakeholders but also other stakeholders that include the governmental agencies, investors, and shareholders of the organization. Since Google is a global organization with its physical offices expanding in various parts of 40 countries; the company must take into considerable the well-being of various countries, since culture differs from country to country (Johnson, Lenartowicz, and Apud, 2006).
Organizations are required to have an effective and efficient corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy in action to make sure the company is heading in the right direction to achieve the overall organizational goal. Managers of Google are required to come up with the strategy that will not only propose the existing goal achievement approaches but will also try to fill up the voids and gaps in the existing strategy to increase the productivity. The strategy planning will require Google managers first to do research on the ways of reducing it. Such as the carbon emission can be reduced by implementing methods that require less energy consumption, as well as the physical elements, should also be environmentally friendly and in the case of disposable items do not harm the environment, the way increased usage of plastic is making the environmental conditions worst. After the required research has been conducted, the managers can then come up with a strategy that will help the organization in the advancement of its products and services by the communities and environments (Rangan, Chase and Karim, 2012).
The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a norm for many organizations and companies are now working hard towards its implementation of their business processes. However, likewise, the other strategies that company implements within the organization, the goals and objectives decided for CSR must also be realistic. CSR is a mean for organizations like Google, to reflect their business values towards the human and society right by working towards the benefits and well-being of consumers or customers. In case, a company gives false hopes and set unrealistic milestones regarding their CSR advancements; then the company will eventually fail in achieving these goals. Therefore, Google managers should also decide on their milestones efficiently. They want to go totally renewable, but it is a long way to go, they haven’t achieved their quarter goal in the past decade’s performance. Therefore, for CSR, Google managers should work towards setting up step-by-step milestones for the goal achievements e.g. what tasks the organization should perform in one week period, what outcome it is expecting to get in one month period and will the yearly accomplishments of the organization is reflecting the potential in the applied CSR strategy to accomplish the long-term future goals of the organization (Polonsky and Jevons, 2009).
There should also be an effective monitoring system to make sure the company is achieving its objective milestones, in case the company lags behind the decided milestone in a given period then effective measurements should be taken into consideration for the changes in the ways managers are pursuing their corporate social responsibilities. Monthly reports should be submitted to the operation, and quality assurance management and risk must be evaluated regarding all the actions before engaging in the situations. Furthermore, it is also important to acknowledge all the cost factors. All investments regarding the CSR must be within the decided budget; it is important for the company to follow-up with its past CSR performance threshold, however, it is also crucial to stay in budget and progress accordingly. The sustainable management will help in the better allocation of resources as well as the strategic implementation of the financial, technological and human resources (Christmann and Taylor, 2006).
Recommendations & Conclusion
Before concluding the report, the following are the major recommendations for the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within the organization will be discussed briefly.
The first recommendation for any organization is the effective integration of CSR. The better the CSR is integrated with the organizational hierarchy from top to bottom, the more effective it will be throughout the goal achievement process. It is integral that the CSR intertwined within the organizations each operation and reflect the organizational vision to every employee working within the premises, so that they know the importance of CSR and adopt in everything that they do in the name of organization as well as in their personal everyday life to help make the world a better place.
The formalization of social justice and environmental well-being is also important in the effective implementation of CSR. Any organization or company willing to implement CSR with its organization must consider social justice and climate change issues into consideration. For instance, the company should work towards making the social situations good, like the ratio of female employees so that women have an equal chance at achieving the success and making a career. Friendly organizational culture i.e. all employees from top to bottom should consider themselves valued in the goal achievement process of the organization. Furthermore, the company should also work towards in making the rapid climate changing situations better i.e. working towards producing product and services that are environmentally friendly and will not harm the consumer or community in any way possible.
Furthermore, the organizational managers should have the required leadership qualities in order to bring effectiveness to the CSR implementation as well as to make the inside organizations’ culture more workable by motivating the employees and initiating effective communication session before making the required CSR decisions for the organization and company.
Finally, from the above detailed recommendations as well as the approach the report has taken in the understanding of sustainable management and the corporate social responsibility in light of the famous technology firm known as Google that, in today’s modern society the businesses and organizations are the driving factors in making the environment healthier and carrying out activities that can influence the human rights as well as the environmental conditions as a whole. In the past, factories and urbanization were the factors that made countries economically established but destroyed the environment because of the waste production of harmful substances and consumption of material that are responsible for global warming and climate change. However, today Google being the most successful CSR operator is proving that now the businesses have the means to counteract the harmful effects and threats that the society has faced by implementation the CSR standards in companies. Companies now can help the society by the charity as well as by making sure its business processes are of the corporate social responsibility in the internal environment of the organization as well as in the external environment and for the external stakeholders.
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