Contemporary Issues In Management: The Case Of Microsoft Regarding Corporate Social Responsibility Research Paper Examples

Introduction

The organizations work with the help of gathering resources from the surrounding societies, and they add value in the raw materials in order to convert them into final and finished products. The customers pay the companies in order to receive the value in terms of organizational offerings. The corporate entities do not have the option to turn a blind eye towards the issues of the societies that operate around them. The companies have to act as if they are citizens of the communities in that they operate. The ethical background of organizational science argues that the companies have to establish effective and efficient social exchanges with the encompassing societal systems so that they can create public trust in the people of different nations and cultures. The descriptive ethical theory determines that the cultural outlook of the nations significantly impact the values and norms that remain dominant in them. However, one culture can view one sort of actions as ethical and acceptable as well. The same behaviors can be characterized as illogical, illegal, and wrongdoings. The father of modern management Michael Porter says that cultures are the defining force that the companies have to succumb to in order to sustain in the long-term scenario. Additionally, the managers have to follow eccentric way of hiring so that they can have culturally sensitive workforce that can engage in their professions by remaining awake to the normative outlook of the society. The managers have to align the strategic planning with the global objectives of the multinationals.
The top management has to belong to home countries of the companies so that they can safeguard the vested interests of the groups by applying normative principles to their advantage. The companies use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a tool to enhance profitability, and the modern studies in the field support that particular assumption. The companies are larger than the average biological citizen of the nation is, and therefore, organizational setups have the duty to serve the objective of betterment of the society because that have significantly more political and financial power that they can use in order to cause social growth in the national systems. The defining attribute of latest managerial literature remains focused on the need to fulfill economic goals, but the managers have to do that via applying new methods and these techniques have to be less invasive as far as their individualistic and socialistic costs are concerned. Humanity is dying away in the world where humans are growing in number, and we are businessmen, pilots, bankers, and civil employees, but what we are not is humans. The concept of being human means that individuals should be filled with the power and strength of compassion, and humanistic values.
However, the capitalistic mindset has found a way to cash social services as well because they have devised a plan to use CSR as a marketing tool in the modern world of corporate jungle.

Charity Begins at Home: Focusing on the Developmental and Humanistic Needs of the Employees

The golden rule of charity begins at home is so universal in nature that its application does not limit to the interpersonal lives of the people, but it is valuably active in terms of determining ethical and unethical behaviors of the organizational world as well. The organizations of modern stature do make an effort in order to comfort their employees by providing them with the growing level of contentment through provision of various kinds of incentives that act as a set of motivating factors. The factors that motivate the employees include better monetary compensation. The reward systems help the workforce in feeling important, and respectable in the structure of their employing organizations. The organizations with progressive mindsets work to follow flattened organizational structure and they create relaxed culture so that the level of creativity can be enhanced in the employees. Furthermore, the leaders of such companies have an urge to see their subordinates grow on professional and personal lives as they value the development of human capital that has a direct link with the organizational one as well. The organizations have a fiscal objective linked with the growing degree of care for the workers that the companies tend to provide in the recent years because they have witnessed decreasing level of organizational commitment in the employees who think that they are creating wealth for outsiders that do not contribute in the process of creating organizational success.
The organizational outsiders are referred to as shareholders in the technical language. In addition, the organizations have to face the challenge to sustain organizational attachment in their employee, but in order to do so they have to offer various kinds of rewards along with the normal pays of the employees. The healthcare policies and profit sharing regimes go a long way in terms of relaxing the tensions that have proven their presence between employees and employers during the past few decades.

Humanistic and Optimistic Values of Organizational Development: Melting Glass Ceiling

The growth of professionally engaged females in the field that were reserved for males in the past tells a very different story about the professional values and norms in the societies. The females are no longer working as the sexual slaves for the male, but they have developed their own identity in the recent times, and they have misbalanced the notion of glass ceiling in the organizational world of the 21st century.
However, the cultural differences have played a notable hand regarding limiting the functionality of women in the societies. The woman has emerged as an effective leader in the countries that sport individualistic cultures that value personal freedoms of the people. The humans can prefer to have sexual philosophy that suits their personalities, and they can seek jobs in whatever profession they like to work in, and in this way, the sense of liberalism thrives in all aspects of social and economic lives of the individuals. The societies that have collective nature do not let people practice their freedom of choice, they find out at later stages of their lives that they lived like slaves to social and per pressures all their lives. The forceful presence of social pressures cause the development of psychological problems in the subjects that have to survive through toughest social and communal regimes ever known to the world.

Organic Organizational Structure and Theory of Organizational Development

The era of command and control is almost gone from the organizational and national systems of the world; the organizations attempt to create living and organic organizations so that the human capital can enjoy working with them. The notion of a living organization became quite prevalent in the managerial literature of latest kind, and therefore, the organizations are trying to integrate the presence of liveliness in their working environment so that people can find pleasure and satisfaction while performing their jobs. The living organization has to be sensitive towards the needs and flaws of the society in, which it is operating because a living being cannot claim to be alive without demonstrating care for those who are currently suffering.
However, this is not the whole deal because too much of the servitude towards the community can kill the commercial nature of the business because the first and foremost organizational purpose is to create wealth and fortune or in other words, one can say that the managers have to engage with an aim to maximize returns of the companies. The CSR is considered to be an expense that will b deducted from the gross profit of an organization, and therefore, on can determine that only three to four percent of the total GP will be consumed in order to serve the social concerns of the societies. Human services and social development does not fall in the active domain of the organization because the governments have to pose an overactive role in this regard. Additionally, the companies consider the CSR as a tool to create goodwill in the customers, as they do not like to engage in business with an entity that is not doing anything for the society. The major cases in the area of CSR act superficially in order to create a claim that they are socially responsible when in reality they are least bothered about the construct of social considerations whatsoever.
The field of CSR is subjected to overwhelming level of corruptive forces because the organizations have to over magnify their contributions in the process of social betterment in order to create and craft positive and illusive image of themselves in the public.

CSR and Organizational Sustainability

The active part of capitalism in the world has created problems and issues of social nature from prehistoric times, and therefore, the social and communal image of the companies became stained with the passage of time. The power of media and the internet revealed the true nature of businesses, and people in the streets grew in terms of knowledge about the real face of corporatism that is a system that people use in order to practice capitalism in the modern day.
The individuals suspected that organizations cause the social divides to enhance in the global community. The researches backed up the claim as well, and the changes in information quality pushed businesses towards devising of the concept that could have the power to wash the names of the companies so that they can keep on exploiting the natural resources along with humans in order to create wealth that continues circulating in the hands of the few.
The adaptation of CSR as an integral part of the organizational strategy was a representation of a desperate act that businesses have to take in order to reinstate their positive image in the eyes of the people. The organizations found CSR a better way to manipulate the owners of resources to lend their properties to them at cheaper rates because a layman may consider an organization as the savior of the world due to its commitment towards social development. Still, there are companies that have proven to the world that CSR is an implementable concept. Managers have to come up with innovative ideas in order to keep the journey of social development ongoing because we as humans cannot succumb to the trend of entropy because it will defy our purpose of existence in the first that is to evolve into better and efficient beings.

CSR at Microsoft

The former chief executive officer of Microsoft, Bill Gates came up with the idea of installing portable washrooms and restrooms in India, and he added that he wanted to thank the world for being so generous to him and his family because it gave them more than what they deserved. He presently considers himself as the failed student of a pristine educational institution, and he did not qualify for top managerial job. Yet, he is here as the founder of a technological services and products provider that redefined the name of computer and made it personal for everyone. The Microsoft was never involved in the financial scandal, its accounting department adhered to the highest professional responsibilities of financial management in the recent years, and the company remained a heavy taxpayer as well so there is no point in suspecting the company to undermine its economic ethical duties.
Legal responsibilities of the company are overwhelmingly high in each and every society that exists on the face of Earth, and the company followed all legal regulations during the long span of its operational life. The advanced organizational structures do not only apply legal principles in detail, but they also commit to highest possible standards of service to the society that they can evade by simply stating them as unimportant in nature. The provision of relaxed work environment, and no formal dress code at Microsoft means that the company does not want to stress its employees unnecessarily. Finally, the company did not stop at the betterment of internal environment, and it has recently engaged regarding the need to improve sanitary services in the nation of India so the technological giant of the 21st century stood by the application of CSR in the widest possible horizon.

Conclusion

This paper has an objective to fulfill, and that was to highlight the definitional nature of CSR that operates on the basis of social exchange because the organizations obtain factors of production in order to formulate products and services that are sold to generate revenue and profit. Additionally, the businesses do not engage to provide social services to the communities, but their objective is to create wealth for the shareholders. The organizational science has incorporated the philosophy of humanism artificially, but one company that goes by the name of Microsoft does not take the notion of CSR lightly, and therefore, it applied all four dimensions of the construct to a fuller extend.

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