Business Topic - know your social responsibility as a business owner or prospective business owner

Focus of the week- Business
Topic - know your social responsibility as a business owner or prospective business owner
Writer- Iyere Joy

Since the early days, the meaning of the word social responsibility has change radicailly. The variegated talk and discussions on social responsibilities of business centre in three areas.

One was the relationship between private and public ethics. If a manager in charge of an organization expected to be guided by the ethics of individuals or does his responsibility to the organization permit him or perhaps even compel him to resort to private unethical behavior for the good of his organization. The second was the social responsibility which the employer bear towards his employeers by virtue of his power and wealth. The third was the use of the term social responsibility. Here, social responsibility is used to assign or assert leadership responsibility to the business man with respect to the culture of the community support of the art, the museums, the opera and the symphony orchestra services as a trustee or boards of educational and religious institutions and also financial support of philanthropic and other communities causes.
Philosophical movement such as social Darwinism scientific management and human relations have exert a lot of influence on business concern before the emergence of social responsibility as a new philosophy. All of the earlier social philosophies of business attempted to rationalize the existence of the business firm, as a profit making organization. The philosophy of social responsibility would, however tend to subordinate the idea of maximum profit to the performance by the business of a worthwhile role in the society, that is social responsibility of business will be the obligation of a businessman to pursue those policies to make those decision or to flow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objective and values of the society.
Thus social responsibility is seen as the intelligent and objective concern for the walfare of society which are strains individuals and corporate behavior from ultimate destructive activities, no matter how immediately profitably and which lead in the direction of positive. One of the reason why the philosophy of social responsibility of business has succeeded is the acceptance of the idea that business, by fighting to correct social iniquities today. For example , by training and educating the poor and hardcore unemployed, business is helping to create a new supply to labour for the future and new purchasers for its output. So social responsibility demand that business takes responsibility for social problem, social issues, social and political goals and that it becomes the keeper of society conscience and the solver of society problems.
The key variable that should be recognized by business in the discharge of social responsibility include the shareholders, employers consumers , government and society.
Responsibility towards share holders
These include a fair return on investment safety of investment, steady appreciation of investment and prudent management of organizational resources.
Responsibility towards employees
Theses include recognition of the workers right to a fair wage, provision of good working condition and welfare facility, provision for education, training and promotion of employees and recognition of workers right of membership of trade union collective bargaining and strike.
Responsibility towards consumers
It is the social obligation of a business enterprise to make available goods and services at the right time in right quantity of the quality and at the right price. It is also the obligations of business, social wise, to guide against alteration, poor quality, lack of services and courtesy misleading and dishonest advertising, hoarding profiteering, monopoly and restrictive trade practices.
Responsibility toward government
Business enterprises owe a lot of social responsibilities to the government and these include

1. To follow fair polity and to refrain from pseudo monopolistic and restrictive trade practices,
2. To refrain from indulging in anti social activities since what is socially desirable is also morally sanctioned
3. To pay taxes and dues honestly and regularly and to exhibit a large measure of sensitivity towards government programmers’
4. To desist from black marketing hoarding and adulteration directly or indirectly.

Focus of the week Business
Topic four Basic ways to generate business ideas
Robert Hisrich, Michael Peter and Deam Shepherd (2008) expressed the following method as the basis in modern times for generating business ideals.
Focus Group
These group of individuals provide information about proposed product or services in structured setting. For instance, a group of 10-14 participant maybe stimulated by comment from other group members in a creative and conceptualized manner of developing a new product to meet a market need.
Also, the focus group may serve as an excellent method of screening ideas and concepts about product and services to meet societal needs.
Brainstorming
This is one of the widely used methods in the ideas- generating process. Brainstorming is a relatively simple method that is typically done with a group of friends, professionals, and people who are exposed to diverse market situations.
Here, problems are stated and in the brainstorming sessions, contributions are made to solving defined problem. Each participant is expected to come up with as many solutions as possible. These would -be solution sorted out to be screen. However, no criticism is allowed in the course of brinstoming.
Analysis of these various ideals are carried out in a separated session. These brainstorming session must not be dominated by any individuals.
Problem Analysis
This involves the use of individuals in a way analogous(similar) to focus group in order to generate new business ideas. Although, it differs in the sense that these individuals do not generate these ideas themselves ,but consumers are provided with a list of problem in a general product category. They are then asked to identify and discuss product/services in this category that have the particular problem. It is an effective method since it is easier to know product to suggested problems and arrive at a new product idea than generate an entirely new product ideas by itself.
Notably, product analysis can be used to test a new product idea. How ever, results from product inventory analysis must be carefully evaluated as they may not eventually reflect a new business opportunity.
Environmental scanning
Coulter (2003) defines environmental scanning as the screening of large amount of information to detect emerging trend. This process involves reading of local papper, national and international magazine and journals to scan the world around up you. Commercial magazines in the locality and other relevant television shows and advertisement are much applicable in this method.
Roles of intuition
Intuition is a significant method of generating business ideas, intuition is a cognitive process whereby we subconsciously make decisions base on our accumulated knowledge and experience. It is an awakeing thought you get when your internal search engine hit its mark. It is usually referred to as the AHA or GOT FEELING. Although structured, methodical approaches to generate ideals are important, intuition can be a powerful source of new ideals if you learn to use it. However, the best approach would be to combine the structured with the intuitive, since both complement each other. Be sensitive to that inner voice and then apply the structured approaches to fine tune your inner ideas.