CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY BOOK ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT

OVERVIEW & OBJECTIVES
Companies are becoming more concerned with the outcomes of their marketing decisions beyond just sales.  Some companies are embracing calls by consumers to be more

socially responsible.

Nearly every marketing decision opens a door to questions that develop from conflicting interests between business managers and their employees, shareholders,

stakeholders, customers, communities, and society.  But, even if other companies think they should have no goal besides shareholder value, the repercussions and

consequences of business actions that are perceived negatively by consumers can hurt, sometimes fatally, a business over the long-term.  Thus, many companies are

broadening what stakeholders they include to encompass the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits in order to proactively address these interests.

To this end, the goal of this assignment is to help students:
•    Critically analyze diverse corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues in business practices
•    Present and defend their own ideas, and discuss those of others, and
•    Offer critical suggestions about future directions for various CSR issues in business

ASSIGNMENT
Read “the Responsible Company” (attached) by Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley.  At the end of the book is a set of checklists (attached as attachment document) to

help guide a company to be more responsible.

Analyze company – Procter & Gamble – Analyze specific product of “Tide Pods”. ( whose CSR practices you will analyze.  Use the library database resources available at

http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/6M100 as well as the company’s website and press releases to identify the company’s CSR practices and their impact.  For your analysis,

select two (2) items from the “Customers” checklist #3 and two (2) items from the “Community” checklist #4 through which to analyze your company’s CSR practices.  If

the company is not pursuing anything CSR-related that you can identify, be sure to document what impact having no policy has had for the company.

This is an individual assignment, but within each team each student must select a different company for this assignment.

Your analysis should consist of five (5) sections – LIMITED TO 3 PAGES in TOTAL:
1.    A summary of your company’s CSR practices;
2.    A summary of the four (4) checklist items that you selected for your analysis;
3.    An explanation of how the items are relevant to the topics discussed in class;
4.    An analysis of the short-term and long-term implications and consequences of the items you selected, based on how those items have impacted the company and its

relationship to its customers and community;
5.    Based on your short- and long-term analysis, discuss how important it is for the viable future of the company to pay attention to the checklist items you

selected.

ASSESSMENT
Your score on this assignment will be based on the following criteria for the written portion.  The maximum possible score is 50 points.

1.    Company CSR Summary – summarizes accurately and thoroughly
2.    Checklist Item Summary
a.    Summarizes accurately and thoroughly
b.    Demonstrates full understanding
3.    Relevance to Class
a.    Makes insightful connections between the book and topics discussed in class
b.    Demonstrates complete understanding of the topics and concepts discussed
c.    Provides supporting details and/or examples
4.    Implications and Consequences of Issues
a.    Provides clear and logical statements
b.    Offers relevant evidence/examples beyond what is available from the company’s website and press releases
5.    Future Directions
a.    Provides clear and logical statements
b.    Provides relevant evidence/examples
6.    Logic & Organization
a.    Displays a clear and consistent organization of interrelated ideas
b.    Develops logically well-constructed paragraphs and subheadings
7.    Completion – follows all guidelines, including submission
8.    Mechanics
a.    Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation
b.    Citations (APA style http://psychology.vanguard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/apastyleessentials.pdf