A Conceptual Framework on the Power of Consumers in Pushing Corporate Social Responsibility Towards Sustainable Development

In: Indian journal of corporate governance, Band 8, Heft 1, S. 68-83

Abstract

In recent times, sustainable development has received huge attention of academia, corporations, government and society at large as there has been an increasing concern about the rapid exhausting of the earth's natural resources and related environmental issues.There has been plenty of research done on corporate social responsibility (CSR) which leads to the growing realisation that corporate inclination towards it results in sustainable development. This is important because corporates are the major users and often abusers of our limited stocks of the various forms of natural capital upon which our economic, social and cultural well-being are based. Interestingly, many authors believe that those corporations which are socially responsible are considered to be good companies by the society (customers). Thus, customer acts as a primary stakeholder and it affects the long-term survival of the business. A conceptual framework on CSR orientation has been developed for sustainable society development on the basis of two dimensions, namely, corporate orientation and consumer orientation. It has four quadrants where the best case is both corporate and consumer showing high orientation towards social responsibility. The worst scenario is Menace when both display low orientation. The quadrant Blind is also not favourable because only corporations are highly oriented whereas consumers are not.The case may be contrary when consumers are enlightened and corporations are not.The main endeavour behind this study is to unleash the power of consumer and in extreme cases employ the method of boycott to pressurise business firms to follow sustainable guidelines. Effort has been made to highlight how consumer can be a key driving force for CSR.