Introduction to Marketing Strategy Corporate Social Responsibility Book Analysis

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MKTG:3000 Introduction to Marketing Strategy
Corporate Social Responsibility Book Analysis Guidelines
Fall 2014
(Updated 8/23/2014)
Overview and Objectives

Companies are becoming more concerned with the outcomes of their marketing and business decisions
beyond just profits. Some companies are embracing calls by consumers to be more socially responsible.
But even if other companies think they should have no goal besides shareholder value, the repercussions
and consequences of business actions that are perceived poorly by consumers can hurt a business over the
long-term, sometimes fatally. Nearly every marketing and business decision opens a door to questions
that develop from conflicting interests between business managers and their employees, shareholders,
stakeholders, customers, communities, and society. 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 a) critically analyze diverse corporate social
responsibility (CSR) issues in business practices, b) present and defend their own ideas, and discuss those
of others, and c) offer critical suggestions about the implications of various CSR issues in business.
CSR Book Analysis (50 points) due Sunday, September 14th at 11:59 PM via dropbox on ICON
Read “The Responsible Company” by Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley. At the end of the book is a
set of checklists to help guide a company to be more responsible. Your TA will select a company to be
analyzed in this assignment.
In your analysis, you will need to select two items from the “Customers” checklist and two items from the
“Community” checklist. You will then need to analyze your selected items in comparison to the
company’s CSR reports, and at least three separate news articles.
Your analysis should be broken into four parts:
1) Summarize the checklist items you selected.
2) Explain whether or not the company is pursuing policies or goals in agreement with the checklist
items you selected, based on its CSR reports.
3) Based on the information you find in at least three different news articles, explain whether or not the
company is acting against the checklist items you selected. The articles must be less than two years
old, and not press releases.
4) Analyze the differences and similarities between the company’s policies and goals you found in its
CSR reports and the company’s actions in the news articles within the context of the checklist items.
What are the implications of any similarities and/or differences that you found?
Limit your analysis to three pages. Links to various article databases, as well as example search terms,
can be found in the business library’s class guide at

http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/content.php?pid=20334&sid=143097

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Assessment

Your grade for this assignment will be based on the following written and presentation parts:
1. Written Part
a. Checklist Item Summary
• Summarizes accurately and thoroughly.
• Demonstrates full understanding.
b. CSR Reports
• Makes insightful connections between the book and the CSR reports.
• Demonstrates complete understanding of the topics and concepts discussed.
• Provides supporting details and/or examples.
c. News Articles
• Makes insightful connections between the book and the news articles.
• Offers relevant evidence/examples.
• No use of press releases, and articles are less than two years old.
• Selects more than three articles if needed to find examples for all checklist items
d. Analysis
• Provides clear and logical statements.
• Provides relevant evidence/examples and persuasive support for arguments.
e. Logic & Organization
• Displays a clear and consistent overall organization of interrelated ideas.
• Develops logically well-constructed paragraphs and subheadings.
f. Completion
• Follows all guidelines including submission.
g. Mechanics
• Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• Citations (APA style: http://www.vanguard.edu/psychology/wpcontent/
uploads/2014/07/apastyleessentials.pdf)
2. Presentation Part
Five names will be drawn from a hat (or some other random selection process) during discussion
session. If your name is called, you must give a 5-minute oral presentation of your analysis. If
you are not prepared, 10 points will be deducted from your grade for this assignment.