BUSINESS SUCCESS BEYOND ECONOMIC RESPONSIBILITY: SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY BEYOND NUMBERS

Abstract

It is evident that in the globalize world, customer orientation is an outdated concept in marketing. For organizational survival and its growth, it is necessary to have core competencies to amaze customer through their innovative products or services. Sustainable competitive advantage could be maintained with continuous improvement and innovation through flexible organizational form/s. When it comes to services this will become more vital for service organizations, because services are intangible and customer feels them differently than products. In this context, human resources are key to make this a reality in service marketing. Therefore, enthusiastic and energetic work force is critical to satisfy and amaze customers in services. In this study, we explore two main social responsibility factors, which are internal: Employees; and external: Customer to the organization, and their impact on organizational success. This study attempts to explore the factors that affect employee job satisfaction and their caring nature which influence to amaze their customers. This research employed interviews, friendly discussions and observations as data generation techniques. Analysis is done to identify themes and concepts that tell the story about social responsibility of the organizations on employees and consumers. Therefore, analysis was based on the concept of “beyond numbers”. As a result, study found that attracting, and retaining customers are depending on caring nature of employees of an organization, which also generates social cost. This nature of employees is a core asset as well as a core competency of such organization. This study critique on notion of social responsibility and its practice leaves a cost for the society at large.

Keywords: Amaze Customer, Economic Responsibility, Social and Political Context, Genuine Commitment

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk