Best Practices in Corporate Social Responsibility

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,6, University of applied sciences, Duisburg, course: Strategic Management, language: English, comment: Dr. Iris Pufé, MBA, ist Politologin und Ökonomin, Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftswissenschaftlerin gleichermaßen. Sie wirkte an der Konzeption von Nachhaltigkeitsstudiengängen ebenso mit wie in der praktischen Lehre und kennt durch ihre Arbeit für Nichtregierungsorganisationen wie Unternehmen die vielfältigen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten von Nachhaltigkeit. Ihr Forschungsschwerpunkt sind Themen rund um die Bereiche Nachhaltigkeit und Corporate Social Responsibility. , abstract: Companies engaging in CSR do better: they tend to benefit from lower costs, better reputation, more motivated employees, improved stakeholder relationships, in short a better performance, reputation and competitive advantage. The problem is: Most companies still do not know how to integrate CSR into their existing business processes and infrastructure. Some miss to select appropriate activities and instruments, others do not go far enough. The knowledge and insight from leaders and best practices in their field remain ignored. The study at hand seeks to verify the initially stated hypothesis. The purpose is to identify what CSR concept is suited for what industry and company as well as parallels and differences among industries regarding CSR strategy and their implementation. As enticing CSR appears as new key concept in business and management, there is little research and literature, in particular when looking at empirical cross-industrial analysis. The study at hand seeks to adress that black spot in CSR knowhow and theory by proceeding in four steps: First, the theoretical background and the concept of CSR is explained; second, the empirical resesarch and cross-industrial is conducted; third, based on the analysis an evaluation is made, results and conclusions are stat