A COMPARITIVE STUDY ON THE MANAGEMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND

INTEGRATION OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY-WITH SPECIAL

REFERENCE TO BRAND REPUTATION

SMT. DIVYASHREE D V,
Asst Professor,
MES Institute of Management,
Rajajinagar.

Abstract

Brand strategy is market oriented and value oriented and it takes into account
Competition. Companies should become brands, that is to say champions with a vision.
One such strategy is CSR. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is not a static
concept—it is a moving, evolving target. It is a replacement for the governmental role
and responsibility in meeting challenges of sustainable developments is a matter
intrinsically ingrained in the Constitution of India which envisages an economic
development that does not result in the concentration of wealth. It is also means of
production to the common detriment and that material resources of the community are
also distributed as best to sub- serve the common good.
Sustainability is increasingly viewed as a desired goal of development and environmental
management. Sustainable development within business promotion is expanding rapidly
in several directions. The interpretation of corporate responsibility by the companies
should be the call of law on the environmental factors.

This paper concentrates on the management, development and integration of sustainable

requirements into product and services by rationalising and harmonising the dimensions
of corporate responsibility and sustainable requirements by the companies to retain their
brand reputation.

Key Words

CSR, Corporate Sustainability, Ecological strategy, Competitiveness, Economy.

Objectives

1. Rationalising and harmonising the economic, compliance, ethical, and sustainability

dimensions of corporate responsibility and requirements.
2. Management of non-financial risk, particularly to brand reputation and to
performance stability as an integral part of corporate sustainability management.
3. Integration of eco-design and sustainable requirements into product and service
offerings.
Scope

Brand reputation management has become a bigger priority for companies in positioning
company leading resource and the solution for the customers in the competitive
environment like corporate social responsibility which varies from country to country,
region to region, interest group to interest group.

 Brand reputation management builds loyalty and increases customer confidence in the
company brand and bottom-line growth.
 Sustainable patterns of consumption and production that enhance corporate
environmental and social responsibility and accountability through actions such as
voluntary initiatives, standards, reporting, dialogue, financial institutions cleaner
production initiatives.
 Sustainable development in a globalizing world that actively promotes full
development and effective implementation of intergovernmental agreements,
initiatives, partnerships, regulations, and continuous improvement in corporate
practices in all countries.
 Health and sustainable development, a linkage between health and environmental
protection, reduction of environmental health threats, access to health care services,
safer technologies for drinking water and waste management, reduction of
occupational injuries and illnesses.
 Strengthening of institutional frameworks that promote corporate responsibility, brand
reputation, accountability and exchanging of best practices.

Literature review:

Similar studies have been conducted at National and International level. Some
important works are as follows:
 Anderer, J., W. Hafele, A. McDonald, and N. Naki. 1981. Ballinger, Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Energy in a finite world: Shows the paths to a sustainable future.
 Boulding, K. 1966. The economics of the coming spaceship earth. In H. Jarrett (ed.),
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland. Environmental quality in a
growing economy.It focus on the firms which are equally well off in the economies
and the deterioration of the natural environment or a deterioration of the social
structure.
 Balmer and Gray, 2003 published papers on “The importance and value of
corporate branding” for a considerable time. Practitioners (Macrae, 1996; Mitchell,
1997; Ind, 1997) as well as academics have weighed in on the topic (Hatch and
Schultz, 1997; Keller, 1998; Keller and Aaker, 1998; De Chernatony, 1999;
Bickerton, 2000; Balmer, 2001; Harris and De Chernatony, 2001; Newman, 2001;
Kitchen and Laurence, 2003)
 Brown, L. R. 1981. W. W. Norton, New York Building a sustainable society. It
helps in determining the kind and quantity of resources available and the energy re-
quired to build a sustainable society that has a high standard of living.
 Caldwell, L. K. 1984. Political aspects of ecologically sustainable development
Environmental Conservation.It gives the Circles of Sustainability approach
distinguishing between economic, ecological, political and cultural sustainability.
Introduction

Brand reputation management generate a strong, positive foundation for a company or

individual. It seeks to increase visibility, improve positive sentiment, diminish negative
opinion, remove unflattering content, and increase affirmative content. It comprises a set
of specific methods used to positively influence consumers' perception about a person,
company, brand or other entity in present mass media.
The concept of CSR originated in the 1950’s in the USA and the concept came into
prominence in public debate during the 1960’s and 1970’s. At that time, US had lots of
pressurizing social problems like poverty, unemployment, racism, urban- blight and
pollution. Corporate Social Responsibility became a matter of utmost importance for
diverse groups demanding change in the business.
Indian business has traditionally been socially responsible and some of the business
houses have demonstrated their efforts on this front in laudable manner. CSR taken up by
various range of companies primarily focuses on poverty alleviation, environmental
protection and sustained development.
CSR and corporate sustainability represent the way companies achieve enhanced ethical
standards and a balance of economic, environmental and social imperatives addressing
the concerns and expectations of their stakeholders. Corporate governance reflects the
way companies address legal responsibilities and therefore provides the foundations
upon which CSR and corporate sustainability practices can be built to enhance
responsible business operations.
Corporate responsibility and sustainability as a global business management approach
that should provide in the long run better value for shareholders as well as for other
stakeholders in maintaining the brand reputation.

1. Rationalising and harmonising the economic, compliance, ethical, and

sustainability dimensions of corporate responsibility and requirements:

Corporate responsibility issues including the social obligations of corporations have

attained prominence in political and business debate. This is mainly in response to
corporate scandals but also due to the realisation that development centred only on
economic growth paradigms is unsustainable and therefore there is a need for a more
pro-active role by states, companies and communities in a development process aimed at
balancing economic growth with environmental sustainability and social cohesion.

The corporate responsibility movement is backed by UN initiatives such as the Global

Compact and the Millennium Goals which have defined the goal and principles for
responsible corporate behaviour in the following areas:
 Human Rights
 Labour Standards
 Environment
 Health
 Anti-Corruption
 Economic responsibility
The 4CR multi-dimensional corporate responsibility perspective is aimed at establishing a
coherent approach to addressing the various concepts of corporate responsibility and their
integration with strategic management in every company in acceptance of local license
has mandatory issues described in the following areas:
 Corporate Competitiveness (CC): addressed by strategic management their impact
is likely to remain well below required levels to achieve the Millennium targets and
goals.
 Corporate Governance (CG): sets the legal framework to protect a company’s
reputation and brand; the relative emphasis being dependent on national approaches.
 CSR: is aimed at extending the legal requirements promoting ethics, philanthropy and
social reporting to satisfy stakeholder concerns.
 Corporate sustainability focuses on long term economic and social stakeholder
expectations both by optimising their sustainability performance and by participating
in networks with governments, NGOs and other stakeholders that can provide the
capacity for the world’s sustainable development.

2. Management of non-financial risk, particularly to brand reputation and to

performance stability as an integral part of corporate sustainability
management.

The key to brand reputation management is the development of strategic capabilities that
will deliver optimised financial social and environmental performance.

The tool to help organisations define and implement a staged reputation development
plan includes

Building workMotivating &

Developing Shaping the
Levels group & managing
competency workforce
culture performance
Compensation
Training and Communication
Managed Performance Staffing
Development & Coordination
Management
Competency Workgroup Competency
Development Development Based practices Workforce
Defined
Competency Participatory Career planning
analysis Culture development
Competency
Monitoring Quantitative Organisational
Integration
Predictable performance Capability
Competency Empowered
Management Management
Based assets workgroup
Organising Continuous
Continuous capability
optimizing performance Workforce
improvement
Alignment innovations
3. Integration of eco-design and sustainable requirements into product and service
offerings.
 Lower materials and energy consumption during production and use;
 Extension of the manufacturer’s responsibility for the product in the use and end-of-
life phases
 Development of more durable and use-intensive product
 Higher quality end-stock and less down-cycling
 Optimization of products to their primary function(s), with far better knowledge about
the product requirements
 Collection of end-of-life products, with increased re-use
 Easier upgrading to more eco-efficient technologies.

Interpretation
The data analysis and interpretation for the given objectives is done considering the
financial performance and Sustainability report 2015-16 of TCS and Infosys. These
companies considered to be the back bone of the information technology sector in India.
There is a great deal of competition between them in terms of manpower, revenue,
profitable deals and the profit gains
a. Strategic Plans.
The various strategic approaches to CSR emphasize on the Risk management through
Brand reputation management. Apart from the company’s contribution to society through
job creation, taxation and generating economic spill-over effects, the company can
develop products, services production methods and business practices that promote
development of the economy and its existence through the reputation audit.
Reputation audit provides what customer thinks about the business and brand, reflecting
on the company growth. It involves in recognising:
 Identifying all business or brand comments, both negative and positive issues for
the past years.
 Identifying the common themes, comments and conversations and highlighting
the key sites.
 Examining the consistency and accuracy of the online presence across the
internet.
 Search engine optimisation.
 Competitor review.
 Monitoring for brand mentions and sentiment online.
 Key executive review.
 Corporate social responsibility
 b. Brand sustainability management:
i. TCS:
To reinforce TCS brand attribute of commitment to fitness and excellence, we sponsor
various marathon across the world. This helps in providing the opportunity to engage with
runners, their friends and family and the borders communities to drive home the
importance of fitness and health.Someof the major marathons sponsored by TCS
wereTCS New York marathon, Boston marathon, TCS Amsterdam marathon and many
others.
ii. Infosys:
It is a global company and intend to globalize its workforce more. To gain an advantage
in global talent markets, they are creating awareness about their brand. This helps in
marketing the services and products in the geographies they operate in, and in turn attract
the brightest talent. It is worked through close interaction with educational institutions,
industry associations and local talent market in different geographies. The company run
an extremely successful Campus Connect program, to collaborate with educational
institutions and help scale their curricula to meet industry demands. To date, this program
has reached out to over 600 educational institutions in India, China, Mexico and
Malaysia.

c. Comparative Growth rate

GROWTH RATE
7
6
Q4FY16 TCS INFOSYS
5 (in crores)
4 Revenue 28448.61 16550
3
2 EBIT 7380.07 4220
1
0 PAT 6413.12 3597
TCS INFOSYS
Revenue EBIT PAT
 d. Comparative sequential growth rate

SEQUENTIAL GROWTH RATE

8
Q4FY16 (in TCS INFOSYS
6 %)
Revenue 3.96 4.07
4
EBIT 2.07 6.59
2

0 PAT 5.42 5.42

TCS INFOSYS
Revenue EBIT PAT

e. Sustainable Dimensions according to 2015-16:

Sl.No Dimensions TCS INFOSYS

1 Meeting analysts 6341cr/6300cr 3597cr/3520cr
2 Volume growth 2.4% 3.2%
3 Digitisation and $2.3 billion $2.8 billion
Automation
4 Expected Margins 26.1%/26.9% 25.5%/25.1%
5 Employee 14.7% 18.1%
parameters

4. Integration of eco-design and sustainable requirements into product and service

offerings

American weekly news magazine Newsweekhas come out with its annual rankings of
the world’s largest companies on corporate sustainability and environmental impact,
called the Newsweek Green Rankings.

The 2016 rankings are based on eight key performance indicators that are used to
assess and measure the environmental performance of the world’s largest publicly-
traded companies. These indicators include combined energy productivity, combined
greenhouse gas productivity, combined water productivity and combined waste
productivity.

Company name 2016 world Company GREEN News week Green score
Ranking
TCS 151 56.1%
INFOSYS 185 52%
 Sl.No Concept TCS INFOSYS
1 Waste management Segregation of E-waste Segregation of E-waste
2 Water recycle and reuse 1512503kl 2701600kl
3 Reduced electricity
57.3% to 43.6% 68% to 49.69
consumption

Findings
1. FY16 annual comparative analysis for Infosys and TCS observed that
 Infosys leads in YoY Revenue growth at 9.1%, TCS trailing at 7.1%
 TCS leads in terms of YoY Operating Profits growth at 17.7% with Infosys at
5.2%.
 TCS leads in terms of Operating Profits as a % of revenues at 26.5% with
Infosys closely following at 25.0%.
 TCS leads in terms of SG&A expenses as a % of revenues following at 17.4%
and Infosys trailing at 12.4%
2. It is observed that CSR created goodwill’s for the company’s; which believes in going
beyond the bottom line and impacting people on the ground positively.
3. Most of the company’s perceived widely as a socially sensitive and responsible
organisation, promoting inclusiveness and benefiting all itsstakeholders - internal and
external.
4. In a market oriented economic structure, corporate sector isthe prime mover of
economic growth. It is, therefore, imperative that it comes forward and shares the
responsibilities forredistributive and inclusive growth.
5. Global sustainability is riding the wave of economic boom and commercialsuccess,
CSR is presenting itselfboth as an opportunity and an important requirement for
corporates to be engaged in. This will help corporate in theirbrand building and also
contribute towards faster and morebalanced growth of our society.

Conclusion

Brand reputation management strategies incorporate the effective key initiatives by

Public Relations through the mass media and search engine optimisation with complete
content marketing of their Brand as part of a comprehensive brand reputation
management program. The advantages of intensive communication include increased
level of brand awareness that is likely to positively contribute to the level of revenues for
the company. Companies used to be able to shape their brand reputation with ease using
traditional advertising and public relations; it is much harder to keep others from
damaging your brand without online reputation management in today’s world.

Corporate Social Responsibility has become a worldwide concept whereby organisations

consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities
on customers, employees, shareholders, and communities’ and the environment in all
aspects of their operations. It is one ofthe most important global issues with serious
challenges and implications on almost all sectors. Surging economies, including India,
are coping with issues related to poverty, child rights, community welfare etc and are a
hotbed for an innovative CSR Scenario which is still shaping up.Section 135 of the
companies Act, giving legal backing to Corporate Social responsibility is a welcomed
step towards holistic development. Corporate social responsibility plays an important
role in attaining the goal of sustainable development.

Effective corporate social responsibility can improve operations, boost the morale of the
people, and even help to cut costs and stay competitive with your corporate peers. A
company that operates with genuine corporate social responsibility helps Company to
reach its full potential ensuring business has a positive impact on the world.

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