Part II

 For this portion of your course project, you will be adding information about the corporate governance that is present in your chosen firm. This section should meet the criteria below. Explain the governance structure of the organization. Analyze the connection between businesses and society. Detail how this connection affects the corporate governance of the organization. Examine the future of corporate governance globally. How does your chosen firm compare with global trends? This section of your project must be at least two pages in length. You must use at least one academic source, and any information from outside sources should be cited in APA format. Information about accessing the grading rubric for this assignment is provided below 

Running Head: SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 2

DBA7035 Business Government and Society

Social Responsibility

26 January 2018

Background of the selected company

The chosen company for this project is Google Company, a global technology based company located in United States of America, with its headquarters being in Googleplex Mountain View, California. The corporation was founded back in 1998 and it simply began as a student project belonging to the current Chief Executive Officers, Larry Page. Together with Sergey Brin, the two were able to come up with a search engine currently used all over the world. Google has become global due to its wide use in different regions of the world (Jarvis, 2011).

Other than just the search engine, Google Company has several products and services it offers to its customers. Some of these commodities and services include advertising, enterprise services, web-based services, software, and hardware and internet services among others. In terms of vastness Google serves the global community with its presence being in all countries globally as long as internet searches are usually conducted. Corporate Social Responsibility has become common among organizations performing well within the 21st century. Google company has not been left behind as well; the company has done exemplary well in relating well with the society by benefiting the society and also the environment at large. The following report will conduct an overview of Google’s CSR policy which has made it become ranked among the best organizations with an excellent CSR policy.

Concept and Application of social responsibility

As stated previously, social responsibility efforts in Google Company have aimed at helping the society in general and also taking care of the environment. There are various nonmarket environments in which Google Company has effectively shown its social responsibility. The first area has been through donations. Google is a big company globally that gains lots of revenues from its business operations. In 2013, for instance, Google’s revenue was 59.825 billion US dollars. One way of thus giving back to the community has been through donations in charitable organizations. Google Company does this through the Google Grants, a program that was begun in order to help the charitable organizations. Through this program, the company has been able to donate funds to more than one hundred charitable organizations. Google Company has also been involved in other types of giving. For instance, the company has provided funds for youth empowerment in different occasions. In the occurrence of disaster, the company has also been at the fore front in providing aid to the people. This was seen when earthquake of a magnitude of 8.0 hit Sichuan, a province in the western region of China. The different departments within Google Company were mobilized to provide rescue as well as relief efforts to the region. After the disaster, Google constructed a total of 15 schools as a way of helping the province towards recovery after the disaster (Arendt & Brettel, 2010).

Energy consumption is the second area in which Google has been able to effectively show its social responsibility. As it is generally known, energy is a crucial factor in the entire world. Most activities not only within organizations but also in homes require a certain amount of energy. As a way of conserving energy, different strategies have been established with companies encouraged to adapt the approaches. Google has been able to effectively use energy sources in a sustainable manner. The data centers of this company use 50% less amount of energy that they would be required to use in a normal situation. The company has also invested into renewable energy rather than using non-renewable type whose regeneration is close to impossible. Most Google buildings have also achieved the green certification status. All these clearly show how much the company has done towards ensuring their energy use does not affect the environment negatively.

Water consumption is the third area of social responsibility in which Google Company has done exemplary well. Just like energy, water is also a scarce resource globally. Even through the earth is mostly water, 97% of it is not safe for different uses by human beings. This leaves on 3% percent for the entire globe. The amount of water used by the Google data centers was at alarming rates with 4 million gallons of water used per day. The company, however, came up with an initiative in 2013 to reduce the amounts of water used. This saw a 30% reduction of the amounts of water used daily. More targets have still been set with the company working tirelessly to ensure it uses such crucial resources in a sustainable manner.

The last key area in which Google has shown its social responsibility is on waste reduction and recycling. With increased population globally amounts of wastes have also increased with landfills and other dumping places becoming full. Google has thus taken an initiative in diverting wastes; by 2015, 84% of the wastes had been diverted from its various worldwide data centers. Recycling has played an important role in this, with the company preferring recycling of products rather than producing more and ending up into landfills.

The company has thus played a central role in carrying out its social responsibility. One main influence of these nonmarket actions has been customer loyalty, increase in new customers and also formation of a good reputation concerning the company. This is thus the reason as to why Google Company has remained to be successful ever since it came into existence in 1998 (Vlachos & Avramidis, 2009).

References

Arendt, S., & Brettel, M. (2010). Understanding the influence of corporate social responsibility on corporate identity, image, and firm performance. Management Decision, 48(10), 1469-1492.

Jarvis, J. (2011). What would Google do? Reverse-engineering the fastest growing company in the history of the world. Harper Business.

Vlachos, P. A., & Avramidis, P. K. (2009). Corporate social responsibility: attributions, loyalty, and the mediating role of trust. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 37(2), 170-180.