Corporate Responsibility – Essential!

Everybody in business is bearing responsibility, and indeed in a dual if not even multiple role. On the one hand there is responsibility for the business. But at the same time, there is of course responsibility for the own family, the own children. So, in a wider scale, this turns kind of automatically into responsibility for society. Society, though, today cannot any longer be perceived as national or regional only. We are facing society in a global way today. Even though it can be considered as a good start, mere adherence to laws and regulations only, e. g. by observing constraints from labour laws or by avoiding illegal tax evasion, in a way that might be called legalistic, appears not to be enough. Additionally required there is an adequate, decent, well - as said above - responsible behaviour; in German I would probably use the term “anständig”. Let me try to exemplify this with the company I am working for (and bearing responsibility in), Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart. The company’s founder, Robert Bosch, started early on with the effort to establish harmony between the strive for entrepreneurial success and social orientation. In his own words: “It was not always easy to keep the right balance between the entrepreneur who has to survive and the socially oriented businessman, i. e. employer who wanted to leave to its associates a decent salary.” (1936).