Page 67 - MARKETING & PUBLIC RELATIONS EBOOK IC88

 develop mutually cooperative attitudes (good neighbourliness), by building up work teams that
recognise interdependence and provide experience in the benefits of trust, support and
consensus decisions.
 make people assert themselves against injustice, exploitation, abuse of power, etc and to show
concern for others, through practices that recognise fellow workers as also customers.

(c) Social Responsiveness

1. Apart from the social impact, the organisation, as a responsible citizen is expected to use its
resources to support the society's attempts to upgrade the quality of life of its people. This may
be in the nature of sports, hospitals, schools, patronage for local arts and crafts, sponsorships,
etc. If the organisation responds to the society's concerns, it is said to be socially responsive. On
the contrary, if it is concerned only with its own purpose, and ignores the society's concerns, it is
socially not responsive.

2. Should social impact and social responsiveness be the concern of the organisation? It costs, to
manage these impacts without adding direct value to the customer's satisfaction in the short
run. According to some observers, the responsibility for managing these impacts should not be
thrust upon or accepted by business organisations. The grounds for such a stand are:

 Business managers are specialised in the narrow disciplines of technology and business and
cannot be expected to have experience with social issues.
 A business organisation is an agent for economic performance and should not be burdened with
non-economic issues of social relevance.
 Social issues should be the concern of elected representatives of society, answerable to society
for their actions. Business managers are answerable only to themselves or at best to
shareholders.
 Responsibility of business managers for economic performance precludes their using non-
economic criteria, in making strategic and policy decisions.

3. On the other hand, those who believe that organisations must be socially responsive, argue that

 Corporate power, vast in potential strength, must be brought to bear on certain social problems,
if the latter are to be solved at all.
 Business managers with the integrity, intelligence and humanity, adequate to run organisations,
with enormous budgets and thousands of workers, cannot be impervious to the consequences
of their economic activities on society.
 A business organisation is created by society as an instrument to serve it. It cannot pursue its
immediate purpose at the cost of other impacts. The society has the option to prevent the
organisation from functioning at all. The right to regulate, includes the right to prohibit, even in
a free society.
 Social issues are not the concern of only a few elected persons, but are of all responsible
citizens.

4. The debates referred to above have largely been resolved in favour of corporate bodies having
to be socially responsible, increasing in scope and complexity, as corporate size and power

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