XAT helpline

Sample Essay 1 :

“Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) philanthropy at other people’s expense?”
       Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means self-regulation by a business in the form of adherence to law, ethical standards and environmental protection. In today’s business world, CSR has attained widespread importance as one of the essential functions of an organization. However, CSR has its share of critics. The first major criticism is that CSR is simply a PR exercise with obvious ulterior motives. This is somewhat substantiated: one study showed that over 80% of corporate CSR decision-makers were very confident in the ability of good CSR practice to deliver branding and employee benefits. Companies often use CSR as a cloak to hide their poor quality services, or to create emotional appeal for their brands. Moreover, CSR may often be used as a strategy to avoid regulation, even essential regulation. Companies argue that setting minimum standards hampers innovation and creativity. This is a contradiction in itself. If companies were so concerned about social well-being, why would they resist even minimum regulation? Moreover, in developing countries exposed to the free market within the last decade, the concept of CSR is not uniformly practiced, and yet companies argue for more freedom and less regulation. Self-regulation through CSR is almost always a sham – there is no measuring stick to define by how much emissions should be cut, or how many donations a company should make, or in which areas it should not be the cause of deforestation. In this scenario, though CSR is a positive ideology, its implementation is vitally dependent upon government regulation, or it ceases to be beneficial to anybody.

Sample Essay 2 :
“Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) philanthropy at other people’s expense?”
       Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is about how businesses look at tasks,funding and responsibilities not only from the viewpoint of shareholders/owners and investors but also employees,communities and society as a whole.It is viewed as not something random but a comprehensive set of policies, practices and programs that are integrated throughout the operational and decision making process. Some CSR initiatives include environmental management, human rights initiatives, social development and the like.
       Sentiment varies with respect to this aspect of corporate behaviour. Some people are of the opinion that the only job of business is to do business and that a corporate entity should not merrily make allocations from its reserves for CSR at the cost of shareholders interests and prerogatives.The contention is that bulk reservation for CSR activities benefits little in the absence of a careful cost-benefit analysis and it makes no sense to play around with other people's {shareholders, owners and investers} money. This notion however seems plausible mostly in the short term.
       CSR has the long term advantage of increasing goodwill amongst the populace besides enhancing brand image . A secondary outcome could be the opening up of new markets.
       A case in point is the Indian Giant ITC's CSR initiative E Chaupal , which has established computers and Internet access in rural areas across several agricultural regions of the country, where the farmers can directly negotiate the sale of their produce with it. The PCs and Internet access at these centres enable the farmers to obtain information on mandi[marketplace] prices,know more about beneficial farming practices and place orders for agricultural inputs . This helps the farmers get a good price for their produce by eliminitatin the trditional middlemen who were unfair to them.
        Thus, CSR as a thought-out ,sincere effort does not play with people's money but actually augments it.

Sample Essay 3 :
“Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) philanthropy at other people’s expense?”
        Profit is not the only important variable when measuring a company's success and a considerable number of corporate houses and NGO’s are waking up to this face these days. Many CEO’s, Eco-warriors and NGO’s believe that Corporate Social Responsibility is an important aspect of the company profile. However, the question is whether it is philanthropy at other’s expense or a powerful marketing tool.
       The broadest sense of the concept, CSR refers to the relationship between business and the society in which it operates. It focuses on the obligations that a business has to fulfill if it is to be considered a good corporate citizen.
        While this may be true in theory, in practice we know that there are many corporations that are simply interested in making as much profits as possible and are not interested in contributing to society in any other manner. The aim of any business is profit. It will never invest money in non-performing assets, so by similar logic it should not invest in non-profitable charities.
        Moreover, corporates criticize CSR as a charity of Shareholder’s hard earned money. The shareholder’s and the workers in the company are not investing their money and efforts in the profit making business to share it with someone who doesn’t toil for it at all.
         On the other hand NGOs disagree with CSR being non-compulsory. They argue that politicians should take responsibility for deciding how many resources companies should spend on charity. As a way out for the above-mentioned problem, they suggest corporates to take money from their share of profit and not from gross profit. In a developing country like ours, the economic divide is much evident. As the business houses use major natural resources and infrastructure facilities it’s their responsibility to give something back to the society that provides it. NGOs also note that social goals might be profitable in the long run since market forces provide financial incentives for perceived socially responsible behavior. Notable business houses like Tata, Microsoft and General Electronics also confirm that while being socially responsible might often entails short-term sacrifices for the ‘company profit’; it usually ultimately results in long-term gain.
          Implemented by these rules, then suggested by the NGOs and Business houses, CSR then can be a useful tool for marketing and development and not just philanthropy at other people’s expense.

Yet another puzzle...

Investigators break into an apartment and find the remains of 3 dead bodies on the floor in a pool of water. The only living occupant of the apartment was a cat in the corner.

The investigators quickly leave, never write up a report, investigate the dead bodies, or even send for an ambulance to pick them up.

What's going on here?


Post your answers....