Discussing The Importance Of Social Welfare In Modern Businesses: A Case Study

The Importance of Social Welfare in Modern Businesses

Discuss About The European Journal International Management.

One of the most important things that the modern business houses must consider is social welfare. Though it is as true fact that profit maximization is one of the major goals for any business organization, they must never overlook the social welfare (Forbes.com  2018).  I will narrate one of the incidents that I have come across in my work organization that helped me to understand how to strengthen my contribution towards social entrepreneurship.  I will be using Gibb's reflective cycle to narrate the incident and my feelings towards it (Carraher et al. 2016).

The description of the incident goes like this that there were different social initiatives for the well being of the society. I was working as the HR manager of the organization and I was really very much active towards this initiative. This is because I always have a very strong affinity towards making some contributions to the welfare of the community. I was assigned to the work of taking this initiative as part of our CSR and also as a revision of the mistakes that had been done in the CSR activities in the previous year. This company undertakes some of the other social activities every year, the HR managers are in charge of this whole thing right from organization to implementation. However this year I was given this charge and it was really a very challenging and a very good opportunity for me to prove my potential. The initiative that I had selected is the corporate philanthropy, as this could directly help in donating something towards the society. In the previous year, the initiative was to make donations to a charity cause (Dees 2017). So, this company had arranged for distributing food and clothes to the nearby orphanage. However, the Orphanage authorities were not happy with the donations that they had received because the quality of the food and the clothes were very poor.  Many of the children had even fallen sick after eating those foods. I was having the feelings of sadness and anger as well. This is really very shameful on part of a corporate organization to be this neglectful towards the social services that they are delivering. Moreover, I was really sad for those poor children. If we are really trying to help them then we must do it wholeheartedly. Our aim is to promote the well-being of the society and not worsen it further. In order to add to the mistakes that were done last year from our end, I also said that we will be giving some cash donations to the orphanage trust as well. This cash will help the children to carry on their further education. I asked the employees to do overtime for a week and give half portions of their incentives towards this charity foundation (Ghalwash et al. 2017).

The Case Study of Implementing a Corporate Philanthropy Initiative

So, I called for a meeting and discussed this whole affair with all the employees. I explained to them that social entrepreneurship is one of the most important parts of our job. We will not look at it only as a professional obligation but also as a social obligation. We will have to give joint efforts to built the society in a strong way and contribute towards their well being. We will have to support the weak and help the poor and the needy. One of the major problems that these orphan children suffer from is lack of good food, clothes, and schooling facility. So we could not really manage to solve their problem just by raising funds. We had to enter into some partnership with some other NGOs who would be helping this cause. I contacted the local NGOs and they instantly agreed to help us. So, we agreed to a partnership. As I was a part of a big advertising company, I would help in advertising the NGO and its initiative so that it gets more support from all the people in and around the country. In exchange for this, they would be teaching the orphanage children different handicrafts. They will collect these handicrafts and sell them in the market and will utilize this money for the education of those children. Moreover, the Ngo will also collect the money that we will give from our company for the education of those children and see that it is being utilized for the good cause. They will take up the responsibility for sending these children to school and also train them in different extracurricular activities like sewing, art, and crafts, jewelry making, handicrafts making so that they can be self-dependent and earn their living in a proper way. So, somehow I could manage to get the support of all the employees and we collected a good amount of cash. So, we brought very good quality clothes and good, fresh food packets for all the children at the orphanage. We visited the orphanage along with the NGO and announced that all the children from now on will be going to school and getting a proper education. The children were really very happy and the orphanage authorities thanked us for our service towards them. I was delighted after the successful implementation of this effort.

Our company is also advertising the NGO and it works through all the advertising platforms like social media, television, hoardings, leaflets, blogs so that they can get more supporters and young active entrepreneurs, who would be eager in contributing towards this social, cause.

Joint Efforts and Partnerships for Promoting the Well-being of Society

I evaluated and analyzed the situation later, I saw that there are some achievements and some drawbacks of this incident as well. Some of the employees agreed to it and some were really very reluctant. They did not really like the idea of working for extra shifts and then giving away half of their salary for this cause. I felt happy on the initiatives were taken by most of the employees but I was really offended by those employees who did not want to be a part of this. I really scolded them as I could not control my anger. I could never expect that some of the employees will be hesitant in contributing towards such a good cause. I said that I will deduct half of their pay if they are not taking part in this activity. Though I would not have taken that step I have to make them realize that taking part in these social activities are important. However, there are certainly good and also certain bad experiences that I had during this incident. The good part was that I could really accomplish the task in a good way and I could somehow reach the goal of helping those poor children of the orphanage. This helped me and also the NGO owner to develop our experiences in the field of business. Not only did we try our hands at entrepreneurship but it was also aimed towards a very good and social cause. So, we could successfully implement this social entrepreneurship. We could implement a positive change but at the same time, I also faced many challenges as well. Firstly, people are often not ready to take initiative for any social cause at a first go. Many of the employees at my office did not really want to work overtime and donate half of their incentives for this social cause. I was very angry at this and could not keep my calm and I scolded those employees who did not want to be a part of this. However, my approach in this must have been different. I must have kept this thing in mind that many of the employees are fresher and are not really very well accustomed to the concept of social entrepreneurship. This is indeed a very new and upcoming approach. I must have conducted for a meeting and explained the concept and the benefits of social entrepreneurship in details so that the concept was very clear to all and they could easily be ready to make an effort. Apart from this many of the colleagues were not really very eager to enter into a partnership with such an NGO which is not very experienced and which has just started its work one or two years back. However, this was a really very wrong conception because we have to keep this fact in mind that in order to work for something good have to take some of the other kinds of risks. Particularly when we are social entrepreneurs and we are working for a better cause or for a change in the society we will surely have to take some risks. Entering into this partnership would be essential because this would help the NGO and also our organization to gain experience and also to raise more funds for this collaborative effort for helping for this good cause. As the NGO is a new one it is also very active towards taking up new challenges and faces risks. After contacting with the NGO I was really pleased with their goals and views. They were of this opinion that risks are very much a part of the business and they are not afraid to face them. Their main motive is to help the weak and the unprivileged ones who are often isolated and avoided by the society.  They need advertising for gaining more popularity and also for getting support from many others living in different parts of the country. Our company will help them in advertising about their agency and about their services. This is a joint effort that has to be implemented properly so that a change can come up in the society. As I am very creative in nature I wanted to create such a plan that would help me in creating a positive change for these children at the orphanage (Phillips et al. 2015). However the difference in the opinion of many of the colleagues and their ignorance towards this social entrepreneurship issue. The two areas of creativity that has really helped me a lot are

Define a problem to work on- I have encouraged all the employees of the organization to ask me about any and every issues that they face. I have made myself very approachable to all the employees.  I am always very open and available to enter into any kind of discussions. This has helped me a lot in making this issue of social entrepreneurship understandable to all the employees.

Warm Up A Group- I will also follow this example of warming up my team every time so that they can be energized with energy and with strength. This will enable them to give a new start to the endeavours that we are about to take.

I have thus concluded from this situation that from the next time I will be explaining the entire group of employees of the organization the concept of social entrepreneurship. So, that the entire matter is clear to them and they are ready to face any challenges

My action for these kinds of situations in the future will be to arrange a meeting where I will be explaining the concept of social entrepreneurship to all the employees. If we are to help any social cause like helping an orphanage, I will take the employees to the orphanage to see the issue for themselves and then take the necessary measures for helping fix this cause.

References

Carraher, S.M., Welsh, D.H. and Svilokos, A., 2016. Validation of a measure of social entrepreneurship. European Journal of International Management, 10(4), pp.386-402.

Dees, J.G., 2017. 1 The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. In Case Studies in Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability(pp. 34-42). Routledge.

Ghalwash, S., Tolba, A. and Ismail, A., 2017. What motivates social entrepreneurs to start social ventures? An exploratory study in the context of a developing economy. Social Enterprise Journal, 13(3), pp.268-298.

Phillips, W., Lee, H., Ghobadian, A., O’Regan, N. and James, P., 2015. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship: A systematic review. Group & Organization Management, 40(3), pp.428-461.

Stephan, U., Uhlaner, L.M. and Stride, C., 2015. Institutions and social entrepreneurship: The role of institutional voids, institutional support, and institutional configurations. Journal of International Business Studies, 46(3), pp.308-331.

Forbes.com. 2018. Forbes Welcome. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/#214ab9c30356 [Accessed 25 Mar. 2018].