Corporate social responsibility in the sustainable development of enterprises

Abstract

The idea of corporate social responsibility and sustainable development of enterprises is of growing importance for both the theory and practice of business. The need for development of the mentioned concept arises not only from the side of enterprises but also local communities, business competitors, local and central authorities as well as many other participants of social and economic activity with direct or indirect influence on business entities have a vested interest in the concept being implemented. This article presents the idea of social responsibility of businesses with particular consideration given to its benefits and difficulties encountered by the enterprises willing to expend effort to create social equity. There are also presented results of a survey the main purpose of which was to investigate the importance of corporate social responsibility to branding and company image. The survey covers also the aspects which make functioning of the analysed enterprises impossible. The respondents indicated the following main obstacles to running a socially responsible business: ignorance of benefits resulting from CSR, lack of knowledge about how to promote CSR among employees of all levels, lack of management commitment to implementation of CSR and too low budgets to implement the concept. Other important barriers mentioned by about one third of the respondents are the companies focusing on pending business and pursuing short-term strategies as well as the disbelief in a correlation between social responsibility of a company and its commercial success. However, consistent implementation of the social responsibility concept may contribute to improvement in competitiveness and give lasting advantage over business competitors. Corporate social responsibility starts to bring notable benefits probably by reason of changing social expectations.