There are 2 great mysteries about Romania - first of all: do the vampires really exist? and the other one: what is CSR?
About the vampires it is simple - there is no such thing as monsters.
Vlad III Dracula (Romanian name Vlad Ţepeş, meaning Vlad the Impaler) was the prince of Wallachia. Small Wallachia had to avoid war with powerful neighbours like Turkey and Hungary, so Vlad Dracul, father of Dracula, sent two of his sons hostage to Turkish sultan to assure union with Turkey. After Hungarians murdered Vlad Dracula's brother and father, he returned to Wallachia and was crowned to prince with the name Vlad III. Hungarians forced him to give up the throne for Vladislav II. In 1456 Dracula killed hand in hand combat Vladislav II and took the throne again and started war against Turkey. From this time there are many legends regarding his very cruel reign, when punisment burglars was impaling. Still, in spite of cruel tortures he was kind of hero for his people, because these methods scared enemies and it helped to protect the land. In 1462 Turks conquered Transilvania anyway and Dracula escaped to Hungary. He died in battle with Turks near Bucharest in December 1476. His body was buried to Snagov monastery, his head was brought as a trophy to Turkish sultan.
But Corporate Social Responsibility has been redefined throughout the years. According to Wikipedia CSR is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. How is CSR connected to voluntary service?
In spite of my activity's title "Powered by CSR" I had never heard about CSR. Of course now I've done a bit research, but it still seems to be only the playground of huge companies in West. East is too busy with struggling in financial sector; they don't have spare money to use for non-profit projects. Simply to say CSR is about companies giving back to society – it's called CSR if they finance or support something that's not related to firm's producting and commerce. CSR is supposed to be a voluntary choice for companies, but things are moving to way where it is intensively suggested. Since CSR doesn't include any specific requirements, it is not rertifiable. Still, in Denmark there is a law since december 2008 which makes including CSR mandatory for largest Danish companies, investors and state owned companies in their annual financial reports.
Companies are made to gain profit. Saying CSR to be non-profit for companies is, I think, just an excrements of bull. Practice of CSR is subject to much debate and criticism; many people say it's nothing more than superficial window-dressing, the others say it's an attempt to pre-empt the role of governments as a watchdog over powerful multinational corporations.
Is CSR about being a government's watchdog, keeping an eye on how money moves, or just a way for us to use big companies' money when we don't have it ourselves, manipulating each other for win-win situations?
d "Odini koeraks" ja Fenrir-hunt neelab surnute hingi.[5]
CSR is also about moral responsibility, about ethics. Is it ethical if big tobacco company supports financially lung cancer studies? Are factorie's sins redeemed if they plant trees to reduce so-called "carbon footprint" on Earth? Carbon neutrality is one of the most popular ways of CSR practice – factories support planting trees in equal amounts of how much they produce CO2. Environmental issues are very popular topic and some countries try to reach somewhere similar, like Iceland for example, which is moving towards climate neutrality – almost 100% of their electricity and almost 80% of total energy production comes from hydropower and geothermal. In July Vatican City announced a plan to become the first carbon neutral state in the world. The goal would be reached through the donation of the Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary. The forest is to be sized to offset the year's carbon dioxide emissions. However, no trees have actually been planted as of 2008.
There are also banks, that are considered ethical, mostly because their actions connected to CSR – they do much more than just banking, and in Wikipedia there are listed 17 of them. There are also jobs considered ethical, which are usually not with the highest salary, but so-to-say they offer you something much deeper.
Approach for CSR is widely accepted in community-based development projects, such as the Shell Foundation's involvement in the Flower Valley in South Africa. They have set up and Early Learning Centre to help educate the community's children, as well as develop new skills for the adults. The majority of CSR projects are established in Africa.
To motivate companies to do CSR there are several arguments, like it is a way for risk management; and that potential recruits often ask about a firm's CSR policy during an interview, having it might give and advantage. Critics believe that some companies, like British American Tobacco or petroleum giand BP and McDonald's are doing CSR to distract the public from ethical questions posed by their core operations. CSR didn't prevend Shell company's scandal in 2004 concerning its misreporting of oil reserves, and it seriously damaged their reputation. Since then, the Shell Foundation has become involved in many projects across the world, including a partnership with Marks and Spencer (UK) in three flower and fruit growing communities across Africa.
If CSR is about benefitting society, then there's a term CMR – corpporate moral responsibility, that's closely related to CSR. It includes General Electric's failed cleanup of Hudson river after contaminating it with organic pollutants; Magellan Metals in West Australian town was responsible for lead contamination, that killed thousands of birds in the area. The company had to cease business immediately and work with independent regulatory bodies to execute a cleanup. Examples include also the lead poisoning paint used by toy giant Mattel, which required a recall of millions of toys globally and caused the company to initiate new risk management and quality control processes.
But these are examples of wide world and huge companies that have not much connection with Arad city in Romania. I'm still in research phase, trying to undertand what is responsibility in business before I go to find it in its practical means. There's a lot of search for me still to do to find CSR projects implemented in Arad, they don't seem to have enough visibility. If I'm searching for them and they're hard to find, then it's no news that other people have also heard nothing about them. Yes, here are big companies like Orange and McDonald's, where CSR is part of company's policy, and here might be some activities that can be said as CSR, but it's a difficult hunt. To gain all these goals that CSR for companies should be about, companies have to try a lot, lot more.
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