Comparison Of CSR And Sustainability Approach: CSL And Macquarie Group Essay.

Organizational background: CSL

Discuss about the CSL and Macquarie Group.

In the current business environment, CSR and sustainability has emerged as an important pillar of business. There was a time when the organizations used to operate only with a single focus of profitability. With time, this focus has changed and today, organizations have started to give importance to the support factors like values, CSR and sustainability (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). This change or transformation could be attributed to the change in the perception of consumers also. Today, the end consumers wants to get associated with the businesses that values society and social attributes like corporate social responsibility and sustainability. This paper discusses the comparison between CSL and Macquarie Group in terms of strategic values, corporate social responsibility approach and sustainable development. A brief organizational background for both the organizations can be discussed as:

CSL Limited is the global company in the field of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. The company has a revenue of $5billion, more than 16000 employees and presence in 16 countries (Cheng & Ioannou, 2014). The company is a global specialty biotherapeutics company that develops and delivers innovative biotherapies that save lives, and help people with life-threatening medical conditions live full lives.

MACQUARIE Group Limited is a global investment banking and diversified financial services group, providing banking, financial advisory and investment and funds management services to institutional, corporate and retail clients and counterparties around the world. The company was established in the year 1970 and today it has a revenue of AUD 8.1 billion.

Both the companies realizes the importance of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Both the companies are large companies and they have their own agenda of CSR and sustainability. The comparison between these two companies can be discussed as:

The mission of CSL is to be the market leaders in the pharmaceutical industry and the vision of CSL is to provide continuous value to its internal and external stakeholders through high quality product and services.

The mission of Macquarie is to create a platform where all of its stakeholders can get benefited. The vision statement of the company states that, ‘to realize opportunity for the benefit of our clients, our shareholders and our people. We are in business to be profitable, but it is the way we do business that defines us’.

It can be said that both of these companies have strong mission and vision statement. However, it appears that the mission statement of CSL is better than the mission statement of Macquarie group. The mission statement of Macquarie group does not qualify well as the SMART goal (Dempsey & Power, 2011). The mission is specific in nature; however, it is difficult to measure. The mission statement is attainable and realistic in nature but it does not have a timeline attached to it. On the other hand, the mission statement of CSL is specific and measurable as it says ‘market leader’. However, the mission statement of CSL also lacks the timeline. The vision statement of Macquarie group appears better than the vision statement of CSL Limited. The vision statement of Macquarie group shows a balance between different objectives of profitability and sustainability. It is specific, attainable and realistic. Since, it is a vision statement, therefore any specific timeline is not attached to it. The vision statement of CSL is good. However, the vision statement of Macquarie group would score high in terms of any comparison.

Organizational background: Macquarie Group

According to Kujala, Heikkinen, and Lehtimäki (2012), organizations that only serve shareholders will not achieve their full potential for value creation.  Kujala et al. (2012) also noted that firms that focus solely on shareholders may suffer from a false sense of security. Instead of a single-minded focus on shareholders, Kujala et al. (2012) argued that organizations should strive to understand the ethical and strategic interests of all stakeholders, and that they should enlist the cooperation of those stakeholders in the process of joint value creation.

CSL established five core values across the organization in 2002. These five values are, Customer Focus, Innovation, Integrity, Collaboration, and Superior Performance. All these five values are the basic philosophy of CSL. These values are believable and it actually adds value to the society. Therefore, it can be said that CSL scores high in this area. Macquarie Group has three key values that drives the organization. These three values are Opportunity, Accountability and Integrity (Hwang, 2010). Macquarie Group also has good and impressing values. These values are believable. In terms of absolute comparison between the organizational values of CSL and Macquarie group, it can be said that CSL has slightly better values as compared to the defined values of Macquarie group.

Regardless of the design, the concept of efficiency is at the root of contemporary organizational design because of the complexities of the global economy and the need to maintain sustainability and economic growth. Both the companies have a deep focus on CSR and sustainability. CSL has defined six key areas of corporate social responsibility. The first area is the research and development in the field of medicine for the unmet needs. The second area is to ensure that all the therapies are safe, secure and pertains to high quality standards. The third area for CSL is to operate responsibly in the market place (Deng & Kang, 2013). The fourth area is to provide a high quality working environment to its employees. The fifth area is to support the patients and the local communities. The sixth area is to minimize the impact on the environment. The management of the company believes that it has a responsibility towards the future generation. Therefore, the efforts should be taken for sustainable development. The CSR policy of Macquarie Group focuses to have high accountability among its stakeholders through training and development around CSR and sustainability. The organization has strong sustainable policies in place that are based on the discussion with key stakeholders (Lankester, 2013). In terms of absolute comparison, it can be said that both of these companies scores good in this dimension of CSR and sustainability.

Vision and Mission

It can be said that like non-profit organizations, for-profit corporations must be mindful of stakeholder interests.  Both the organizations realizes that to ignore stakeholder interests can have catastrophic effects to an organization including the demise of the organizations.  This is especially true when an organization must deal with conflicting stakeholder interests (Yu & Wu, 2009). The management of CSL believes that the management of conflicting stakeholder interests in the for-profit arena may be best aided by recent innovations in technological data mining.  Macquarie Group manage stakeholder interests, particularly those interests of external stakeholders that may conflict with internal stakeholder interests such as stockholders, by understanding the state of public opinion.  However, the management believes that is not just important to the organization to understand the current status of public opinion regarding corporate issues relevant to stakeholder interests.  The key lies in predicting the future trend of public opinion regarding key issues which allows corporations to more fully maximize traditional stakeholder management tools (Gauvin, 2009).  Gauvin (2009) reviewed particular data mining programs and argued corporations should employ modern technology to map projected opinions regarding trends key to the organization.  An organization equipped with fairly accurate projections of external stakeholder beliefs may adjust corporate communication to better address stakeholder conflicts. In terms of absolute comparison, it can be said that both of these companies scores good in this dimension of stakeholders’ interest.

Conclusion

The above paper discusses the comparison between CSL and Macquarie Group in terms of strategic values, corporate social responsibility approach and sustainable development. With the above discussion it can be said that both organizations are doing good and the organizations have attractive mission and vision. However, the above comparison reveals, that CSL is better placed that Macquarie group in terms of communicating the organizational values, or stakeholders interest or the basic philosophy around CSR and sustainability.

References

Carroll, A. B., & Shabana, K. M. (2010). The business case for corporate social responsibility: a review of concepts, research and practice. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12(1), 85-105.

Cheng, B., Ioannou, I., & Serafeim, G. (2014). Corporate social responsibility and access to finance. Strategic Management Journal, 35(1), 1-23.

Dempsey, N., Bramley, G., Power, S., & Brown, C. (2011). The social dimension of sustainable development: Defining urban social sustainability.Sustainable Development, 19(5), 289-   300.

Deng, X., Kang, J. K., & Low, B. S. (2013). Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder value maximization: Evidence from mergers. Journal of financial Economics, 110(1), 87-            109.

Gauvin, S. (2009). Modelling trends in the digital sphere - a comparison of two methods. Gestion 2000, 26(1), 67-84. Retrieved from https://lopes.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com.lopes.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=37276562&site=eds-live&scope=site

Kujala, J., Heikkinen, A., & Lehtimäki, H. (2012). Understanding the nature of stakeholder relationships: An empirical examination of a conflict situation. Journal of Business Ethics, 109(1), 53-65. doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1379-2

Lankester, A. J. (2013). Conceptual and operational understanding of learning for sustainability: A case study of the beef industry in north-eastern Australia.Journal of environmental management, 119, 182-193.

Young, W., Hwang, K., McDonald, S., & Oates, C. J. (2010). Sustainable consumption: green consumer behaviour when purchasing products.Sustainable Development, 18(1), 20-31.

Yu, T., & Wu, N. (2009). A review of study on the competing values framework.International journal of business and management, 4(7), p37.