Social Responsibility: Reality and Illusion?

• Autor(a) principal: David, Fátima
• Data de Publicação: 2004
• Outros Autores: Abreu, Rute
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10314/504
• topic: Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Governance; Wealth; Portugal

Constant concern of organizations for the business excellence has the main objective of quality relationships and economic, social and environmental sustainability. In this context the social responsibility concept appears as form of the activity of the organization in such way that turns it partner driving and co-responsible for the local, national and multinational development. In this sense, business should help to resolve social problems generated or not from its activity. The objective of profit maximization and organization survival passes. More and more, in the perspective of the society, the organization should have well behaviour and sustainable development that increase the corporate social responsibility (CSR). Being socially responsible is a condition, jointly with being productive, profitable and competitive, so that the business contributes to the society development. It is evident that the organizations are forced to adapt to a new business concept in that stop being mere manufacturing for become small communities evaluated by whole society, in that the people's attention saw each other so much for the products quality as for the social attitudes and behaviours. Thus, social responsibility it is a reality or an illusion? Because human life is the beginning and the ending of everything, the authors answer to this question through the analysis of the healthcare sector in that the social responsibility presents its maximum exponent. This sector may have a significant role to play in the development of CSR and in the study of the relationship between business and government. To support this point of view, the authors analyzed social responsibility based in the Portuguese Government of the Health Operational Programme, also called SAVDE XXI as an instrument of development of the healthcare sector. This research presents dual theoretical frameworks for the analysis of social responsibility in the case of SAVDE XXI. The first is based in the organisational and the sociological theory and the second in social accounting and disclosure information to provide explanations for social responsibility decisions. The research on the external report of the Portuguese Health Operational Programme allows to explain that the decreasing importance of the social welfare State in the Portuguese healthcare system should give place to the increase of the social responsibility and cooperation among the private sector, improving quality and welfare competitiveness between civil societies.