Implementation of Cross-Cultural Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategies (Term Paper Sample)

Cross-cultural Marketing
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Cross-cultural Marketing
Introduction
The current world is a clear representation of a multicultural and multimedia society. Therefore, marketers must consider the type of media with many customers and why the platform is being preferred by many. Multicultural populations are speedily becoming large and are also considered the fastest advancing segment of consumers. Cross-cultural marketing incorporates marketing programs intended to reach the global market and easily understand the global audience. For instance, a marketing campaign in the United States must target many audiences like Non-Hispanic Whites, African-Americans, and other existing cultures. The most suitable way of reaching a massive audience while marketing is to focus on cross cultures. Instead of making wrong suppositions, it is essential to understand people's cultural choices both locally and internationally. Both mass and customized marketing are becoming more popular and necessary in the 21st century. Moreover, marketers in this era are presently experiencing many more challenges than before regarding electronic, international, and cross-cultural marketing, respectively. On the other hand, these three marketing aspects create a viable opportunity for marketers. The current business environment has become more global than ever. Therefore, organizations operating locally and internationally have to deal with customers from different cultures with different anticipations concerning what responsibility organizations bring to society. With this development, cross-cultural adaptation has become more popular and highly essential for companies operating both locally and internationally.
The Practice and Principles of Social Responsibility in an Intercultural Environment
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has advanced and become an international pattern where associated issues have increasingly become a topic of debate, especially in the media. With the constant media coverage, organizations and management experts' handling of CSR issues is more prominent. The functions of CSR and companies in society have changed into a noticeable concept. However, the concept of CSR does not exhibit a globally accepted definition. Even though efforts to incorporate it into business practices have become more intense, CSR still has different meanings globally (Remišová et al., 2013). While CSR applies to all corporations, concentration is mainly directed towards large organizations since they are considered powerful and more noticeable. The current business environment has become more global, as marketers also go international. Therefore, many companies currently operate in a global market with different cultures and needs for being responsible in society. With the current advancements, cross-cultural adaptation issues have become common and essential for organizations and people doing business locally and internationally.
Adaptation and Standardization
Organizations and experts have identified management approaches, including adaptation and standardization, when entering the international market. However, there is an increasing debate concerning the best management strategy to adapt. Globalization and localization are cross-cultural methods applied by multinational companies in their business activities to meet the local preferences. According to Arthaud-Day (2005), CSR is important for businesses and can be a significant source of competitive advantage. Apart from the business environment extensively becoming global and companies being faced with more global cultures, including the increasing necessity of CSR, it is also necessary to understand the cultural adaptation of CSR. As discussed before, many organizations are currently involved in international operations. Therefore, they will focus on the local markets and the global markets. With the current globalization process, it is becoming more essential for corporations to effectively meet the international CSR standards to compete with other international organizations in the global market.
Organizations that adhere to the international CSR standard approach tend to create common Codes of Conduct and use them in different cultural contexts in their markets. Cross-cultural CSR focuses on a corporation's values and social beliefs that will affect its operations and the associated CSR policies. For instance, it concentrates on how an organization would incorporate its CSR activities into the diverse cultures and environments it operates in. When encountered with different cultural backgrounds, companies tend to find themselves in a position where their corporate social responsibility policies are separate and, in most cases, differ from the prevailing needs or patterns of the host market (Arthaud-Day, 2005). Based on the increased concentration on organizations' social impact and the increase in the number of multinational businesses in developing nations, there is an increased demand for these corporations to incorporate their CSR activities in the local environment's issues. In this context, the opportunities and challenges experienced in underdeveloped and industrialized nations are quite different due to their exceptional domestic settings. Therefore, CSR in the developing markets is not taken similarly with that in the developed markets.
As demonstrated in figure 1, the global strategy transnational enterprises apply is assessed using worldwide integration and local responsiveness strategies. The measurement of global integration and local responsiveness is low to high. In this case, a heightened global integration means that organizations are likely to apply a global strategy based on the level of local responsiveness (Arthaud-Day, 2005). On the other hand, a low global integration implies that an organization will adopt an international strategy. The same principle applies to when there is low or high local responsiveness.
Multinational organizations tend to consider the expectations and needs of both domestic and international stakeholders. However, these corporations experience the challenges of harmonizing the expectations and needs while remaining consistent in both local and international markets (Husted & Allen, 2006). Therefore, as corporations make viable decisions concerning an organizational strategy to implement depending on the domestic and international demands of the product market, they also at the same time implement their CSR strategies based on the projections and needs of the local and international shareholders.
Multinational organizations implement most of their international CSR activities to conform to the rules of the host nation while at the same time being in a position of satisfying the needs of the local community and meeting the cultural beliefs of the local environments. International stakeholders and contradictory value systems demand that multinational companies handle global and regional issues, which needs a more complicated strategy towards CSR. Husted and Allen (2006) asserted that international firms implement a CSR approach to the local environment when the companies and the country they are operating in have different laws and when shareholders have specific preferences created from the local values and culture.
Strategic Orientation
The strategic orientation approach recognizes that an organization's global business plan impacts the type of CSR strategy adapted. Moreover, it also underlines the central pressure experienced when implementing local cultural values and creating global/common ethical standards. International corporations' strategy plan to CSR adapts global Codes of Conduct in all cultural environments when operating globally. Multinational organizations' approach to CSR concentrates on the necessity of being mindful and flexible to different cultures and their principles when making the right choice of standards to adopt when operating in the global market (Arthaud-Day, 2005). This clearly explains why multinational corporations tend to consider cultural diversity when venturing into new markets globally. They tend to perform a concrete evaluation of associated issues like the level of discrimination experienced in a particular culture before adapting a discrimination policy instead of employing a standard policy against the problem.
The international approach integrates standard practices and handles issues associated with cultural differences by adjusting to local conditions. For instance, a multinational corporation operating in India may be forced to conform to the local Indian values of promising to employ an employee's child despite the Western values that do not support child labour (Arthaud-Day, 2005). Husted and Allen (2006) asserted that multinational corporations tend to adopt a local CSR strategy, and the universal approach is common in their operations. Therefore, this indicates that all global organizations focus on international CSR issues equally while the transnational organizations concentrate on local CSR issues specific to particular countries they operate in. This, in turn, shows that multinational organizations' CSR strategies are always in line with the