Social Responsibility | Grade 12 | Business Studies | Term 3

Social Responsibility Overview
📌 Grade 12 curriculum expands on social responsibility, covering the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and Corporate Social Investment (CSI).
🌍 Businesses must balance operations between economic development, community well-being, and environmental protection, adhering to all legal requirements, such as those regarding harmful emissions.
🌳 Social responsibility includes avoiding actions that harm the environment (e.g., exploiting natural resources) and implementing initiatives that benefit society (e.g., planting more trees than harvested).

Triple Bottom Line (TBL)
⚖️ TBL suggests businesses measure social and environmental impact alongside financial performance, breaking down into People (social), Profit (economic), and Planet (environmental).
🤝 People/Social: Businesses must not exploit stakeholders (employees, customers, community) and should invest in sustainable community programs.
💰 Profit/Economic: Focus should not be solely on high prices; businesses must invest in CSI projects and avoid making profit at the community's expense.
♻️ Planet/Environmental: Companies should avoid exhausting resources or harming the environment, supporting eco-friendly products and production methods (e.g., Unilever aiming to reuse 100% of plastic packaging by 2025).

Strategies for Socio-Economic Issues
🏥 HIV/AIDS: Strategies include participating in prevention programs, providing counseling, conducting workshops, and implementing anti-viral treatment programs for infected employees.
💼 Unemployment: Actions involve providing skills development training through learnerships, offering bursaries, creating local jobs, and supporting entrepreneurial programs.
💵 Poverty: Businesses can donate resources, invest in local infrastructure/housing, support government poverty alleviation programs, and invest in young, starting businesses.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Components
🌱 Environmental: Businesses must actively participate in programs like recycling, waste reduction, and lowering carbon emissions.
🔗 Ethical/Human Rights: This involves ensuring respect for all stakeholders, safe products for consumers, and fair trade with suppliers.
🏢 Corporate Governance: Businesses must be accountable, transparent, and comply with laws, such as King IV's code, integrating values like honesty and fairness into policies.

CSR vs. CSI: Key Differences
🔄 Originally used as synonyms, CSR and CSI are now distinct concepts; CSR focuses on changing business practices to include stakeholder interests and environmental concerns.
🌱 CSI focuses on actively committing money and resources for the upliftment of the community without an immediate return on investment, viewing projects as external and developmental.
📊 CSR often links projects internally (e.g., a manufacturer training the unemployed), whereas CSI projects are external and developmental, aimed at improving the standard of living.

Impact of CSR/CSI
📈 Positive Business Impact: CSI can attract experienced employees, increase productivity, foster a competitive advantage leading to good publicity, and attract investors (especially for JSE SRI listing).
📉 Negative Business Impact: CSR can be taken for granted, distract focus from core functions, and is difficult for small or medium enterprises (SMEs) to implement due to costs and reporting requirements.
🏘️ Positive Community Impact: The welfare of the community improves through attended issues, increased employment from skills development, and better education/recreational facilities.

Key Points & Insights
🌟 Businesses must maintain a balance between economy, environment, and community well-being in their operations.
📘 Use specific company examples like Unilever (100% plastic reuse by 2025) or DHL (zero emission by 2050) when discussing TBL strategies for originality in responses.
🗣️ For effective CSI, businesses must maintain close contact with the community to understand their real needs, risks, and issues before developing strategies.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Jan 25, 2026, 07:32 UTC