AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.3.1 Corporate Social Responsibility
Sort a business's decisions into Carroll's four levels of corporate social responsibility, then judge whether good deeds can paper over broken basics.
Carroll's CSR pyramid says a business carries four kinds of responsibility, stacked from the ground up: Economic (be profitable), Legal (obey the law), Ethical (do what is right), and Philanthropic (be a good corporate citizen). The lower levels are the foundation. Your job is to read a real business through that lens.
You have just joined Bruise Active as its new Responsibility Analyst. Tom hands you a stack of the firm's recent decisions and a half-built pyramid. First, file each decision at the right level. Then help Tom make the hard calls where doing good at one level clashes with the basics at another.
This briefing will self-destruct in five seconds. (Figuratively. Please keep reading.)
The four levels used here are Carroll's pyramid of corporate social responsibility (A. B. Carroll, 1991), the model named in the AQA A-level Business specification (3.3.1).
Tom Bruise, Bruise Active and the journalist Vee Lane are fictional and used purely to illustrate the model. All scenarios are invented examples. No real company is portrayed, and no endorsement is implied. Framing of any real-world ideas is neutral.
AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.3.1 Corporate Social Responsibility
Which level of responsibility is this?
AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.3.1 Corporate Social Responsibility
The pyramid is sorted, but the real test is what happens when the levels pull against each other. In each call below, Tom is tempted by something good at one level while a lower level is wobbling. Decide which way the balance falls, then live with what happens.
What do you advise Tom?
AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.3.1 Corporate Social Responsibility