The purpose of Corporate social responsibility

The purpose of Corporate social responsibility Corporate social responsibility (CSR) covers the responsibilities corporations have to the societies within which they are based and operate. More specifically, CSR involves a business identifying its stakeholder groups and incorporating their needs and values within the strategic and day-to-day decision-making process. Therefore, a business society within which it operates, which defines the number of stakeholders to which the organization has a responsibility, may be broad or narrow depending on the industry in which the firm operates and its perspective. There is still having other definitions for CSR. Such as, based on South China Morning Post, 2002, the notion of companies looking beyond profits to their role in society is generally termed corporate social responsibility (CSR). It refers to a company linking itself with ethical values, transparency, employee relations, compliance with legal requirements and overall respect for the communities in which they operate. It goes beyond the occasional community service action, however, as CSR is a corporate philosophy that drives strategic decision-making, partner selection, hiring practices and, ultimately, brand development. Beside, according to Archie B. Carroll, 1979, the social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time. On the other hand, the Institute of Directors, UK, 2002, stated that CSR is about businesses and other organizations going beyond the legal obligations to manage the impact they have on the environment and society. In particular, this could include how organizations interact with their employees, suppliers, customers and the communities in which they operate, as well as the extent they attempt to protect the environment. CSR is a means of analyzing the inter-dependent relationships that exist between businesses and economic systems, and the communities within which they are based. CSR is a means of discussing the extent of any obligations a business has to its immediate society and also a way of proposing policy ideas on how those obligations can be met as well as a tool by which the benefits to a business for meeting those obligations can be identified. Today, companies permanently need to implement solutions aimed at generating competitive advantage that allow them to survive and be successful in ever changing and demanding markets. Therefore, to focus on customers is a common denominator for organizations, aiming to meet their needs and satisfy their expectations. Society has become one of the players as one of the actors that highly influence corporate behavior. Communities have expressed more mistrust of corporations because of various scandals. This has put business ethics in the spot light influencing companies to be good corporate citizens, respecting the law but also to create good social values and principles. Today, the level of demand goes beyond the direct impact of the organizations business to also incorporate how corporations can contribute to societal and environmental causes. For corporations, these activities are manifested through the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, from a corporate perspective, it is difficult to measure if these changes can have a positive impact on a firm. To analyse the companies financial performance, the profitability ratios such as profit margin, asset turnover, return on assets, return on common stockholders equity, earnings per share and price-earnings ratio had been used. Net profit margin is a widely used ratio in the assessment of company performance and in comparisons with other companies. A higher margin generally suggests good performance. For the AirAsia Berhad, in year 2007, net profit margin is 20.02% but it decreased to -13.35% in year 2008 and increased to 29.13% in year 2009. ChangHuat Corporation Berhad is having net profit margin 1.81%, -11.09% in year 2008 and -3.63% in year 2009. On the other hand, the return on capital employed is a fundamental measure of the profitability of a company. It is a popular indicator of management efficiency because it contrasts the net profit generated by the company with the total value of fixed and current assets which are presumed to be under management control. Therefore, the ROCE demonstrates how well the management has utilized total assets. The ratio for the year 2007 is 10.44% but decreased to -21.90% in year 2008 and increased to 34.82%. For the ChangHuat Corporation Berhad, the ratio for the year 2007 is 2.15%, -16.39% in year 2008 and -3.38% in year 2009. Besides, the return on equity is a measure of how well a company used reinvested earnings to generate additional earnings, equal to a fiscal years after-tax income divided by book value, expressed as a percentage. It is used as a general indication of the companys efficiency. In other words, how much profit it is able to generate given the resources provided by its stockholders. Investors usually look for companies with returns on equity that are high and growing. The ratio for the year 2007 is 20.28%, -30.93% in year 2008 and 19.32% in year 2009. But for the ChangHuat Corporation Berhad, it is having 1.16% in year 2007, -18.13% in year 2008, and -6.30% in year 2009. The inventory turnover is a measure of how much sales are generated by the capital asset base of a company. Although the ratio can act as a good guide to company performance, it can also be misleading. If the inventory turnover increases, either the total value of sales is increasing, or the capital asset base is decreasing, or both. If it is because sales are increasing, this might signify improved performance. The ratio of inventory turnover period for the AirAsia Berhad is -57.41days for the year 2007, -31.88days for the year 2008 and -24.88days for the year 2009. On the other hand, ChangHuat Corporation Berhad is -76.33days in year 2007, -66.59days in year 2008 and -29.76days in year 2009. Furthermore, earnings per share (EPS) indicates the amount of profit after tax, interest and dividends to preference shares has been earned for each ordinary share. AirAsia Berhad is earned RM 0.181 per share in year 2007, RM -0.211 per share in year 2008 and RM 0.206 in year 2009; ChangHuat Corporation Berhad is earned RM 0.0212 per share in year 2007, RM -0.2812 in year 2008 and RM -0.1183 in year 2009. Price earnings ratio is calculated using the current share price and current earnings. It is a measure of market confidence in the shares of a company. However, the market price also takes into account anticipated changes in the earnings arising from their assessment of a marco events such as political factors, economic factors and the market conditions. It is also influenced by company-related events. The ratio for the AirAsia Berhad is 8.84 in year 2007 and 6.70 in year 2009 but for the ChangHuat Corporation Berhad, it is only have 3.07 in 2007. Comparing these two companies, the financial performance of AirAsia Berhad is much better than ChangHuat Corporation Berhad. The net profit margin for AirAsia Berhad is more than 20% (but the year 2008 is having negative) but ChangHuat Corporation Berhad only have less than 10% and also having negative percentage in year 2008 and 2009. In conclusion, having more corporate social responsibility will lead company to have better performance.

Sister Maude

Sister Maude In this essay I am going to write about called sister maude. Sister maude is about two sisters who don’t really get along very well, also this poet is ambigious becase the poem is unclear the reader does not now how the my dear died or the parents and the my shame, also this poem is written in (1830 – 1894) by christina Rossetti. The propse of the poem is to describe how jelousy sisters cuased a death of another. Christina Rossetti uses a range of techniques to show the feelings of the sisters. In Sister Maude the sister's crime becomes a matter of good and evil.Christina Rossetti uses a range of techniques such as oxymoron a qoute to prove this is â€Å"comeliest corpse† the poet has used two opposite feelings together,the letter â€Å"c† is a plosive and echoes her anger to her sister Muade, also â€Å"comeliest corspe† and suggest that even as a corpse, he is still handsome enough and worthy to embrace the queen,in the second stanza it shows the narrators passion for her dead lover. His once beautiful hair is now â€Å"clotted†, also the writer uses letters â€Å"c† to show alliterations to show to her sister, sister Maude.Another technique used by Christina Rossetti is alliteration, the poet has used alliteration such as â€Å"cold he lies, as cold as a stone with clotted curls about her face† the letter â€Å"c† is a plosive and echoes her anger, also the quote says â€Å"cold he lies as cold as stone†this is the first thing you notice that the my dear died because it say cold he lies as cold as stone, alliteration’s used in the last two lines â€Å"sister Maude oh sister Maude, bide you with death and sin† also the quote used by the poet is angry with sister Maude that is why he used repetition

Investment Options Essay

Mutual funds remain the central instruments investors use to achieve their financial goals. Whether for retirement or in the search for additional profits, individual and corporate investors choose mutual funds as a relatively reliable and non-volatile method of making investments. It appears, however, that apart from satisfying the needs of individual investors, mutual funds can successfully work to secure corporate market players from changes and shifts in external markets. In this context, J.  P. Morgan is the bright example of the way mutual funds are used to reduce the negative impact of financial crisis and to overcome the difficulties faced in tough bond markets. J. P. Morgan has probably been the first to use mutual funds as the instrument of protection against the negative impacts of financial crisis. In his article, Michael Pollock (2009) sheds the light on the way J. P. Morgan Strategic Income Opportunities fund helps the company deal with tough bond markets. It appears, that the fund â€Å"has few restrictions typical of bond funds that are marketed to general public† (Pollock, 2009); as a result, it is better equipped to help investors survive through the difficult financial times. The fund functions according to a predetermined set of principles, of which putting money only into places where potential profits overweigh potential risks is probably the most important. The mutual fund at J. P. Morgan does not avoid keeping a portion of assets in cash, so that investors can materialize their investment opportunities when the right moment comes. Short selling is just another instrument the fund uses to generate additional profits; Pollock (2009) also notes that short selling is becoming a widely spread investment tool among bond funds. The list of investment instruments J. P. Morgan uses to manage its mutual fund is not limited to short selling and cash operations. Here, investors are also given a chance to make short borrowings and then to sell these borrowed shares; â€Å"investors can also make similarly bearish bets by buying credit-derivative instruments whose value increases if the price of an underlying corporate bond declines† (Pollock, 2009). To a large extent, the fund relies on the whole set of quantitative techniques that work to identify significant investment opportunities. The fund is actively involved into managing long-term high-yield corporate securities and nonagency mortgage-backed bonds. As a result, the fund has been able to achieve the total return rate of 4. 3% this year (Pollock, 2009). Does that mean that beyond using mutual funds as investment targets and the sources of additional profits, companies can also utilize the benefits of portfolio investment to protect themselves from external crisis threats? There is no definite answer to that question, but J.  P. Morgan obviously tries to change traditional opinions about investment options available to consumers. The truth is that everything we currently know about mutual funds does not make them look as an ideal investment solution. Given that mutual funds are not usually guaranteed by the FDIC and are not insured by any government agency; that mutual funds’ past performance is not always indicative of its future positive prospects; and that to be a member of a mutual fund also means to bear certain costs associated with investments, the whole picture of a mutual fund does not look as much attractive. However, where J. P. Morgan was able to reach the point of total return rate of 4. 3%, investors may have some sort of confidence that the company will pursue the same set of investment principles, being extremely cautious in its investment options and using the mutual fund as an effective means of anti-crisis protection. Conclusion Mutual funds are included into the list of the most widely used investment options. It appears, however, that mutual funds can also be successfully used to protect companies and investors from the negative impact of the financial crisis. Despite the costs investors have to carry as well as unpredictability of external environments, which mutual funds cannot control, the latter remain relatively stable and non-volatile means of dealing with tough bond markets.

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