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Assignment focuses on Corporate Social Responsibility is private business self-regulation,which is used internationally

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Corporate Social Responsibility

Executive summary

 

Introduction

CSR or corporate social responsibility is the international social responsibility is the private business self-regulation, which is used internationally in several organisations (Fallon 2012). Primarily, it was known as the corporate ethical strategy, however due to the changes in international laws and regulations that provided organisations to push the boundary of the system as per their limits determined the term corporate social responsibility (Nordmann 2012). Due to these controversies the definition of CSR is also controversial and as per the economists it is a socio-political movement in which the company sacrifices a specific amount of its profit and

provide it to the consumers and workers (Aguinis and Glavas 2012). Hence, it is the sense of responsibility of the international or national organisation by understanding which it provided monetary or other form of help or relief to the community, race or the society so that their upliftment could be achieved and the environment could also be saved (Delmas, Etzionand Nairn-Birch, 2013).

While introducing the topic, it should be mentioned that as per area and the demand of the society and the employees, the CSR priorities, changes, and hence, several organisations are concerned about the value creation, so that sustainable and increased business model could be

promoted (Hopkins 2012). On the other hand, other companies focus, on risk management under the CSR policy so that compliance with the social responsibility could be achieved through this. The third CSR priority is associated with corporate philanthropy and hence, under this, they provide funding and skills to several social and cultural reasons (Schwartz 2012, Taiand Chuang 2014). Therefore, there are plenty corporate social initiatives that allow the international organisations to divide their duties among themselves and help the society by several means such as    philanthropy   work,    a    reward    for    voluntary   work,    socially   responsible   business

 

 

 

practices(Ioannouand Serafeim 2012). Further, there are several ethical considerations which are considered so that the customers can be attracted and benefits can be conveyed to the society in the long run (Dhaliwal et al. 2012).

The primary aim of the assignment is to provide a critical view of the role of Corporate Social Responsibility of CSR in determining the development of the vision and mission statement of any organisation. In this process the role of the CSR with respect to Alex and Ani, the United States of America based organisation and will provide a critical assessment of the role of the CSR in determining the brand equity of the company. Further, using critical analysis, the method using which the organisation developed the digital marketing to increase the brand value and engaging their target audience.

 

Background of the chosen company

 

This organisation, Alex and Ani was developed in the year 2004 by Carolyn Rafaelian and the name was found by combining the first two names of the daughters of the founder (Alex and Ani 2018). The primary aim of the organisation was associated with producing bangles, necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments so that consumers can adorn those on their body, use them to enlighten their mind and mental peace as well as empower the spirit. The company is unique in several aspects such as all the materials used in the organisation till date is made in America as well as they manufactured their first piece of jewellery in a small store which was developed by the father of the founder of the organisation (Alex and Ani 2018).

The company declares itself as a humanitarian organisation and hence believe in spreading humanity and positivity around the world (Alex and Ani 2018). The three major pillars of its humanitarian work is inspiration, determination and collaboration using which it

 

 

 

determines its corporate social responsibility towards the society and community. If the facts and data are collected from the official website, it mentions that the organisation donates $50 million to the non-profit organisations that help humanity throughout the world. In this course, there are more than 50 charitable organisations associated with it which support the CSR design of the company and helps to spread the help in the society (Alex and Ani 2018). Besides there the organisations employees also provide their helping hand in providing the community with help as the employees have already spent their 8800 hours in providing voluntary care or support to the associated community or society. Therefore, the primary aim of the organisation is to provide and share the ancient wisdom by moulding it into a modern design that helps to empower the community, carries a light of hope, speaks boldly and stands for truth and wisdom (Alex and  Ani 2018).

 

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Role of CSR in developing the vision of any organisation

 

Vision and mission of any organisation comes under the strategic management of the organisation. These are base of any successful organisations, and from ancient times it has been used as a system using which organisations can develop a vision of the final outcome and work in the direction to achieve the goal (Gray, Adams and Owen 2014). This view was developed and shared by the famous mathematician Euclid in 300 BC. Further, another view was shared by Aristotle and Plato who mentions that the vision is the blueprint of the organisation and it depends on the knowledge and the experience of the founder and creators. The experience is the policy using which, the desire of the founders helps the organisations to achieve its target within the specific time. However, as per the recent researcher Campbell (2012), there are no specific

 

 

 

way or strategy using which the vision or mission of the organisation is created but it depends on the value, meaning and significance the organisation stands for and the social responsibility it wants to deliver within the community and the society. While CSR helps to provide ideations and logistics that helps in the development of the social responsibilities of the organisation for the society, it also helps the organisation by contributing to the business strategy, to effectively design the bottom-line of the organisation and contribute the environment and social structure. Therefore, as per Hahn (2013) development of the vision of organisation depends on the CSR activities and then depending on the corporate leaders who develop the vision of the organisation depending on the CSR activities. Hence, the CSR team should posses proper knowledge of the corporate functions and processes, strategic formulations, and social as well as environment issues the community and society facing around the organisation (Ioannouand Serafeim 2012). Using this strategy, the vision team will be able to have a proper intuition about the vision of the organisation towards profit as well as towards society, including a team approach to achieve and create the vision and the approach should have a justified rationale for the development of CSR. Therefore, using the CSR involved in the vision development process helps to understand the fact that including these imparts the vision with motivation, challenging situation, future orientation, attractiveness, inspiration, positive attitude, easy to understand and remember (Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood 2015).

The recent traits in worldwide firms decided that the vision in compliance to CSR of the business enterprises should think for a majority of the enterprises as it allows them to create a strategic management, the usage of which their mission and vision for the agency could be done (Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood 2015). In this assignment Alex and Ani organisation and their CSR, their brand value and so on should be discussed. In an article published by the

 

 

 

Omnichannel enlightened on the fact by publishing the statement put by the CEO of the company Giovanni Feroce, who said that the vision of the organisation was developed by combining the visions and ideations of the founder Rafaelian and the strategy of the CSR panel to provide the society and the customers with unparalleled customer experience (Ioannou and Serafeim 2012). While developing the vision statement, the organisation was dependent on the three aspects such as think global act local, creating a platform to provide the customers with positive engagement with the organisation, and thirdly, by improving the technology involved in it (Hopkins 2012).

The first aspect provided the organisation with the opportunity to think globally by setting higher aims and targets for the organisation and act locally or by strengthening the infrastructure of the organisation and its process so that while achieving the process, and target, this organisation can focus on the benefit of the company, increases the uniqueness of the brand and increase the brand value, the chance of charity and influence others to use the American based product to boost the economy (Jamali, El Dirani and Harwood 2015). Hence, by acting local the organisation was able to withstand a future and global goal and tried its level best to reach that goal within a specific time period. Whereas, the second aspect focuses on the development of technology using which, the customer can be connected to the organisation completely and their experience of company attachment can be increased (Hopkins 2012). Therefore with the ultimate goal of better future with increased consumer interaction and development of goals the company developed its technology and added digital strategy to reach the target consumers (Fallon 2015). The third and last aspect for company’s vision development was providing a starting pathway using which the patient engagements could be achieved. While discussing this aspect the CEO mentions that it is an important issue to solve the customer

 

 

 

worries and concerns within a specific time as it will help the organisation to add a feather in their cap that they were able to provide their customers with proper solutions so that they can solve their concerns. Hence, it mentions that if not acting, organisations should focus on listening to the concerns and issues of the customers and doing this much is helpful in determining the growth and development as well as increased interaction with the consumer. Therefore, this was the role of CSR in determining the vision and mission of the organisation and determining the benefit of the consumers and the society involved (Campbell 2012).

Role of CSR in an organisation

 

The CSR is very 21st century concept which was adopted by the organisations due to its ability to heightened the ideologies and expectations associated with any organisation to the extend from which, it can take care of the social as well as the environmental standards (Niand Van Wart 2015). This depends on the deep meaning of the business which as per the researcher Aguinis and Glavas (2012) is that business is the process in which a group of people try to accomplish a target or goal which they cannot achieve individually and in the process their primary aim is to provide each of them as well as the society a benefit or prize (Suliman, Al-

Khatiband Thomas, 2016). Hence, nowadays, it is important for each of the organisations to have a social as well as governmental approval which they get after providing the authorities with their CSR goals their responsibilities they will take in the name of CSR (Nordmann 2012). Further, due to the CSR responsibilities, the organisation and their inner and outer stakeholders are able to understand their ability to help community and society which includes the employees, consumers, suppliers, communities.

Due to the evolution of the companies and their mission and vision statements, CSR also has been evolved and in this process, the norms or corporate engagements as well as the CSR

 

 

 

related policies and responsibilities has also been changed (Campbell 2012). The primary concept of the CSR nowadays is to help the public organisations or the governments to share the responsibilities related to the society and the community with them so that challenges and issues could be addressed. While conducting a literature review, it was observed that researchers Suliman, Al-Khatiband Thomas(2016) determined that while development of the organisation, it is important for the organisation to understand the factors using which the business can dominate the pathways of developing CSR goals. On the other hand, while discussing the role of CSR in any organisation it was determined by the researchers that the CSR plays an important role in determining the development of an organisation and boost the economy as well. Therefore, depending on this, the researchers conducted an empirical study including the employees of 100 managers of different organisations and found from their statement that due to the lack of CSR in an organisation, the leadership becomes weaker and started suffering from mismanagement and corruption. In this aspect the researchers focused on the diversification, board composition and complexity of the business they were working for so that while analysing the findings it could be identified. Therefore, from the critical review, it was observed that there are three aspects of CSR and these are social aspect, environmental aspect, and economic aspect (Aguinis and Glavas 2012).

While discussing the role of CSR in the chosen organisation, Alex and Ani it was observed that in the economic aspect of CSR helped in the identification of company’s operations in developing the companies (Hopkins 2012). This was mentioned in the research study of Fallon (2015) that the responsibility of the companies are associated with financial accountability, the economic dimension, as well as the sustainability of the organisations agenda but it involves economic agenda of the organisation that involves the responsibility related

 

 

 

reports so that the direct and indirect agendas could be resolved and the economic impacts of the organisation on the environment and society could be calculated. Hence, the economic aspect of CSR is a major help for the organisation to understand every aspect of it (Fallon 2015). Besides this, the social responsibility of CSR is the newest addition in the of CSR and is achieving the sole importance in organisations as every organisation is proactive in social causes social gathers and attachment of the companies with these social gathers and causes provide them with consumer attention due to which, majority of the customers attach with them due to their noble social cause. Further, using the CSR the company can provide a detail of the company’s responsibility towards its employees, the society, the nation and its primary concerns and also

provides helping hand so that these implications could be removed (Aguinis and Glavas 2012). This was done in case of the Alex and Ani by maintaining trust with stakeholders, responsibility of CSR towards the customers, through taxes and maintaining the CSR responsibilities towards employee and community. The final role CSR plays for any organisation by determining its role for the environmental benefits and helps in identification of three dimensional corporate as well social responsibilities (Campbell 2012). These corporate responsibilities are added in the organisations are added in the business organisation in last thirty years so that the business can help in the identification of the environmental impacts and associated causes. Therefore, using these, it can be stated that CSR plays an important role in determining the three dimensional development  of  organisation  and  benefits  which  is  provided  to  the  community  and society

 

 

How CSR helped the organisation in developing the brand equity

 

Prior to the knowledge of the role of CSR in developing and maintaining brand equity, the definition of brand should be properly understood by the organisation (Hahn 2013). Brand is

 

 

 

the heart of the organisation, going through which, the consumers are able to understand the perception of the company, its products and the service the company provides to its consumers.  It provides a detailed analysis of the brand by creating and developing which, a promised product or service could be delivered to the consumers (Campbell 2012). Alex and Ani is a famous brand in USA and several other countries and the involvement of this organisation in events, causes and programs helps the organisation to spread its responsibilities towards the society and hence, are able to attract a specific group or people who was not a part of this organisation before (Hopkins 2012). Therefore, Brand Equity is the primary issue in the business organisations because brand asset of the company and using this company can provide the organisation an added advantage  so  that  the financial  value  of the brand  products  and its  reach in the society

could increase (Suliman, Al-Khatiband Thomas, 2016). There are several researches associated with it that determines that social responsibility of the organisation helps in determining the

market success of the company (Hahn 2013). Globalisation is the biggest issue using which the organisations are expanding their limits from one continent to another and in the process, they use their values and ideations to be spread and then the organisation makes sure that a majority of the individual can connect to the process and the organisation (Campbell 2012). In this  process the organisations are trying their best to compete with each other so that they can spread their values and ideas through their CSR activities and to attract more consumers in the process. Further, in this process it adds to the sustainability, consumer company ideations and hence, there are five measurements to determine the brand equity of the organisation (Suliman, Al- Khatiband Thomas, 2016). These include loyalty measures, association measures, leadership measurement, awareness measures and understating the market behaviour. In the process of Alex and  Ani,  loyalty  wise,  they  have  the  favour  of  more  than  2  million  happy  customers that

 

 

 

determines that they are able to serve 2 million customers properly and with this ability to solve their concerns and issues within the specific time period. Hence, these are the roles that CSR plays in determining brand equity (Luttrell 2018).

Use of digital media by Alex and Ani in developing their brand and engage with consumers

 

In this modern world, use of internet and social media is very common and hence, it is  the main source of the organisations around the world so that they can connect to more users and provide the information  about their products, the vision and CSR of their organisation to the

world population (Niand Van Wart 2015, Silverblatt et al. 2014). Social media is an important aspect using which organisations are trying to make meaningful connections with their internet users in the complete world as it has been observed that organisations that connect with their consumers, are able to receive positive reviews of the consumers in a sincere level and use the social media to connect with their consumers in real time which provides the organisation with

numerous consumer support (Silverblatt et al. 2014). The branding strategy of the Alex and Ani is associated with social media marketing strategy and starting from face book, twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms to discuss their brand and its views (Augustini 2014). However, to develop a brand,tt is important for the organisation to have a string and attractive digital media campaign so that the people watching those commercials can connect to the organisation and its views. In an article by VanBoskirk, Elliott and Colbum(2014), it was mentioned that the organisations need to have a specific digital media campaign so that they can create a revolution in the industry and helps to open doors for employee an consumer engagement to the organisation (Chen et al. 2015).

In the year 2012, the organisation Alex and Ani as named as 500 fastest growing organisation in the world and in the course the statement of the VP of Alex and Ani Ryan

 

 

 

Bonifacino should be clearly understood who mentioned that the company started revolving its digital media campaigns in the year 2010 and from then they started producing merchandise in conjunction with the MLB of NFL sports leagues (Parise, Guinan and Kafka 2016). Further, the VP mentioned that they were showcasing their digital campaigns in a way which can target the core audience mainly and then the others. If the digital media campaign is unable to determine the 100% core target audience, they used to cancel the digital media campaign and hence, they were able to showcase important and real commercials that attracted the target audience properly. Further, they also took part in several activities that added feathers in their company’s CSR such as partnership with global citizen where people are empowered to take part in the change take actions and realize their power and ability to affect the world positively (Silverblatt et al. 2014). Therefore, the company further used the rules of Sailthru’s technology as per which, it is up to the organization to portray their big data concept to the society and then use their management style to attract the consumers who gone through this and are eagerly waiting for this

pursuit (Silverblatt et al. 2014. Hence, these were the way using which Alex and Ani were able to take part in the process and determine their digital media campaign to be successful (Chen et al. 2015).

 

Conclusion

 

The revolution in CSR and its associated effects throughout the world has indicated towards the fact that it is important for the organisations to modify their cultural norms, they ideations about their responsibility towards the society and the CSR related objectives, so that they can compete with other organisations in the world. The primary aim of CSR in organisations to determine their responsibility towards the society and to the environment despite the fact that they are associated with the responsibility of the corporate in determining the benefit

 

 

 

of it can be provided to the consumers too. This assignment discussed about the organization Alex and Ani and determine their strategies and CSR policies that helped them to for, their  vision and mission statement. Further, the relationship of the organization in determining the company benefit with respect to the CSR policies were discussed. Besides, this, the role of CSR in determining the reach of its to the world population and the benefit it received through its digital media campaign was also discussed in the assignment. Finally, the brand equity concept, its value for any organisation and the role of the corporate social responsibility in determining the benefits and enhancement of the brand equity was also discussed in this analysis.

 

Recommendations

 

In this section, recommendations will be provided to the weakest section of the CSR of Alex and Ani determined through its report and case study and it was mentioned that besides social and environmental responsibilities, the organisation was unable to focus on its cultural responsibility due to which, a specific section of the society are still unable to connect to them and determine their inability to include the entire society in the process. Hence, it is the responsibility of the organisation to include the society as a unit and help them to empower their society with theories of globalisation, technological development and environmental changes. The second recommendation should be meant for the usage of organisation in determining its different forces in determining specific works so that in an organised way, they are able to deliver their responsibilities towards the society, as the organisation is determined to develop a CSR team and make it a complete new department for the organisations development, it should be provided with specific abilities so that they can take part in the development organisation’s development.

 

Corporate social responsibility, the means using which, the organizations are able to understand their responsibilities towards the organization, the community, the society and most importantly, to the employees. In this assignment the CSR of Alex and Ani will be chosen for the discussion about the role of social responsibility in determining development and improvement of the organization and the extent to which it can affect the society. The primary aim will be determining the role of CSR in developing the values and vision of Alex and Ani, after tat discussion about its responsibility in maintain the organizations brand equity will also be discussed. Finally, discussion about the organizations and its association with its CSR development will also be discussed in the assignment.

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