Carolls’ Model And Ghandi’s Four Forces Model: The Choice Of Going Green

Economic responsibility

Traditionally, business organizations were formed as economic bodies established to offer goods and services to the public. The profit objective was recognized as the main motivation for private enterprise. Previously, business organization was the elementary economic entity in our culture. As such, its primary purpose was to provide goods and services that consumers required and to create satisfactory revenue in the practice. The idea of the profit objective got converted into a belief of maximum earnings, and this has been continuing assessment from time to time. All other business accountabilities are grounded upon the economic obligation of the business organization, for the reason that without it the others become debatable considerations.

Legal responsibility

As a partial fulfillment of the "social contract" between business and society firms are expected to pursue their economic missions within the framework of the law. Legal responsibilities reflect a view of "codified ethics" in the sense that they embody basic notions of fair operations as established by our lawmakers. They are depicted as the next layer on the pyramid to portray their historical development, but they are appropriately seen as coexisting with economic responsibilities as fundamental principles of the free enterprise system.

Ethical responsibility

Although economic and legal responsibilities embody ethical norms about fairness and justice, ethical responsibilities embrace those activities and practices that are expected or prohibited by societal members even though they are not codified into law. Ethical responsibilities embody those standards, norms, or expectations that reflect a concern. The business ethics engagement of the previous era has decisively recognized an ethical obligation as a valid CSR element. Although it is portrayed as the following level of the CSR pyramid, it must be continuously accepted that it is in vigorous relationship with the legal responsibility category. That is, it is persistently force the legal duty to expand whereas at the equal time employing higher perceptions on corporate people to work at levels beyond that required by law.

Philanthropic/ Discretionary responsibility

Philanthropy incorporates those commercial activities that are in reaction to the public’s belief that companies be morally corporate citizens. This consist of outstanding activities to support social wellbeing programs. For instance, contributions or decision making of businesses to financial resources such as donations to the arts, education, and participation in the community services.

The pyramid of corporate social responsibility is depicted in figure 1 . It portrays the four components of CSR, beginning with the basic building block notion that economic performance undergirds all else. At the same time, business is expected to obey the law because the law is society's codification of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Next is business's responsibility to be ethical. At its most fundamental level, this is the obligation to do what is right, just, and fair, and to avoid or minimize harm to stakeholders (employees, consumers, the environment, and others). Finally, business is expected to be a good corporate citizen. This is captured in the philanthropic responsibility, wherein business is expected to contribute economic and human resources to the community and to improve the quality of life.

Nevertheless, Carroll’s model have been criticized in many ways. Some pointed out that;

• the model is a direction of dependency (Carroll, 1991) on the contrary, it was simply observed to mark that the attention is more on financial and moral responsibilities (Nalband and Al Kelabi, 2014) which is lacking in terms of environment protection as one of the most vital objective to be monitored among private companies nowadays;

• the model oversees the newest growth in CSR that integrates the societal, financial and ecological sides of a corporation’s obligation towards its multiple stakeholders (Elkington, 2001);

• the model has insufficient contribution as it is not in line with the recent development that businesses are expected to participate in ‘sustainability’ or ‘the triple-bottom-line’ tactic to defining their latest CSR accomplishments (Visser, 2006) and;

• the model’s legitimacy in clarifying CSR outside the USA is questionable since it was established in a Western setting; this establishment (CSR model in USA context) have been broadly debated for issues concerning different cultures and sub-cultures, theoretical clarity and potential conflict, and there is a gap to offer adequate ethical support to the corporations and likewise distribute distinct qualified meaning of CSR(Woermann, 2013; and Burton et al., 2000).

In observing the criticisms on debatable issues against Carroll’s CSR model and in discovering an appropriate model for environmental protection, the latest green CSR models later was deliberate in order to recognize the gaps and answer the research questions (see table 1 ):

In sum, although majority of the newest models suggest a wider standpoint of CSR essentials, they do so without completely focusing on how to counter to the present issue (i.e. environmental protection), which is the most problem faced by many business organizations.