The publicly traded company I chose to perform a corporate social responsibility audit on is a company that produces PCs, software, and other services – Microsoft, also known as MSFT on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Microsoft started small, with Bill Gates and Paul Allen as the founders. While Microsoft started off in Albuquerque, the men later moved the company; Microsoft’s headquarters is now located in Redmond, Va., on a road named after the company, Microsoft Way. Microsoft is defined as a multinational company, this means that Microsoft carries out business in more than two countries, in fact, Microsoft has offices in over 200 countries. A typical user would immediately think of the word processor, Microsoft Word when they think of this …show more content…
One of the four corporate social responsibilities that Microsoft has to keep in balance with the others is maximizing profits for shareholders. Microsoft does this by constantly improving their products, which in turn raises the price of that stock; a rise in stock price is beneficial to stockholders. Microsoft improves their products often, they typically come out with a new version of Windows office every couple years, as is the same with Microsoft Windows operating system. Another way Microsoft keeps its shareholders happy is by continually paying out more and more money through dividends in November of every year. While Microsoft treats their shareholders very well in terms of dividend payments, their generosity doesn’t end there. Microsoft has a program where they buy back shares from their shareholders. Essentially, they are giving their shareholders cash for a piece of the company that has an outstanding balance. Just how much money has Microsoft paid out to their shareholders for these outstanding shares? A large $73 billion since 2010. This is a great way to keep the company’s shareholders happy, by ensuring the shareholders do not suffer a loss if the price of the stock plummets. When Microsoft is decreasing the number of shares, their shareholders are gaining from this once again; when Microsoft’s income increases, so does the pockets of the shareholders, because they will be getting even more profit. Personally, I think Microsoft is doing an
New Balance is privately owned company, which is the second largest footwear manufacture in the United States and the fourth largest footwear manufacture in the world with annual sales in 2008 of $1.61 billion (Veleva, 2010).
Since 1998, Bank of America has become one of the most successful financial institutions in the industry. With the mission to “make financial lives better, through the power of every connection”, Bank of America has operated its business align with its purpose. While assisting its clients understand their money, the company also put on a lot of effort on helping the communities by executing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It is undeniable that the company has successfully addressed many critical problems in the environmental, social and economics arenas, as it continually receive awards and recognitions for its CSR efforts.
It is the goal to maximize the wealth of shareholders and Microsoft was able to use their excess cash to repurchase stock that led to a large return. The repurchase of stock has taken place over the last few years and has helped to increase the shareholders return. Another impact of costs would be operating expenses. The cost of revenue has been rising over the last few years. (Microsoft Corporation, 2009)
Everyone should step back for a moment and let Microsoft enjoy the fruits of their labor and “allow technological innovation to erode Microsoft's "monopoly" through the market process”(Thoma, 2014). Sometimes when someone is in the game, interfering will only make things worse because of the amount of power they might have in the company. Prices will fluctuate and not stay the same because the company is no longer in control of what happens
Microsoft's stated mission statement is "to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential." Arguably, a statement this vague provides so little sense of mission that it lacks value. That is the point. Microsoft cannot even uphold its own mission internally, given the gap between the company's potential and the company's output. That the company has no coherent, tangible sense of its own mission is a contributing factor to that failure. Consider the company's resources. As Clarke (2010) notes, it is not for lack of ideas that Microsoft has failed to innovate. The company has great people, highly-talented, educated and experienced. It has $66 billion in cash on its balance sheet and another $10 billion in long-term investments (MSN Moneycentral, 2012). Clarke (2010) notes that the company spends $9 billion per year on research and development. The potential for innovation at Microsoft, then, is tremendous, yet its output is minimal.
Let me first provide the landscape of this case study by highlighting that the evolution of the partnership between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the software giant Microsoft Corporation facilitated a strategic and mutually beneficial partnership, as well as shaping the definition today of good corporate social responsibility. The corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative was created back in 1999 as an endeavor at a point in time when Microsoft employees engaged to assist to aid the victims of the Kosovo crisis. The emotional undertaking is referred to as the spark created
Invesco (NYSE: IVZ) is one of the world's leading global investment companies with a diversified portfolio of institutional, retail and high net-work clients that form the foundation of their business model. As of the close of their latest fiscal financial reporting period of March 31, 2013, Invesco has $729.3B in assets under management (AUM), earning an adjusted operating income of $314M in their 4th fiscal quarter of the year, which results in an adjusted gross operating margin of 38.4% (Invesco Investor Relations, 2013). Invesco concentrates on generating a consistently positive increase in AUM across all three major business units, while also seeking to minimize risk to investor's capital. Invesco is also known for a series of scandals in the 1994, 1995 and most notably in the 2002 - 2003 timeframe. The Invesco scandal, combined with those of Enron, Tyco and many others, led to the creation and passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that requires greater financial disclosure on the part of publically-held American corporations (Zimmermann, 2005). Invesco was later singled out to pay damages to shareholders based on their involvement in several scandals, the most notable involved their Invesco Dynamics fund where fund managers provided information to friends and key stakeholders on market timing considerations, allowing them to earn a 110% return while
All Microsoft employees are trained and undergo a course, which is available in 16 different languages and has a completion rate of more than 99%. This course involves training their employees in ethical business making which helps ensure that the business has high standards of conduct. Microsoft is a transparent business and we can see that because their standards of business conduct are easily available online and we can see fiscal report results. These can help other business’s improve on working towards being more ethical. Microsoft is a large company that has an influence over billions of people over a large scale so they have a lot of responsibility when it comes to being ethical from providing human rights to being
Attached is an Income Statement from 2005 to 2007 (Microsoft Corporation Annual Report, 2008). As you can see, revenues and net income have continued to increase over the years. Earnings per share have increased as well. This shows that Microsoft is in a good financial standing. This means they are able to pay their shareholders and increase what they
Written by the website Seeking Alpha, an educational website with a focus on stock market analysis, the article predicts a dividend increase based off of new product being released and based off of past unusual dividend growth. According to the article, prior a year ago, Microsoft “was widely considered to be a ‘dead money’ stock” (1). However, after Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, has helped change the product focus to cloud computing, Seeking Alpha predicts that Microsoft will most likely “announce its dividend increase over the next week” and “investors can reasonably expect at least a 10% hike” (1). With all this being said, the article Microsoft: Dividend Increase Coming Soon, What Should Investors Expect is recommended for investors to read due to the article’s analysis of current Microsoft stock and how the stock will pay off for investors.
Organizational Background- Bank of America is a multinational banking and financial services firm that has become a mega-giant the second largest holding company in the U.S. and the 3-4th largest bank in terms of overall capitalization. The headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the bank servicing clients in over 150 countries and some type of business relationship with over 99 per cent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies and 85 per cent of the Global Fortune 400. Forbes lists BofA as the 3rd largest company in the world, holding about 13 per cent of all U.S. deposits and 57 million customers (Bank of American, 2011; The Global 2000; Fortune 500).
Microsoft is working to apply the power of technology to ensure the corporate responsibility, the safeguard human rights and also to protect the planet. The importance of CSR for Microsoft can be seen as for Microsoft, CSR is reflecting the company’s commitment to principled business practices and respect for people and the planet. In order to continuously improve the strategy of CSR of Microsoft, the company tries to address the interests of stakeholders, which the interests can impact the business of Microsoft significantly, and how Microsoft satisfies the interests of stakeholders, the company tries to implement appropriate corporate citizenship
The immediate effect of ECSR environmental corporate social responsibility on CFP Corporate Financial Performance is as yet negative; the cooperation of ECSR and R&D research and development has a positive and noteworthy effect on it. ECSR qualities and concerns hurt CFP since they are seen as a potential cost. Be that as it may, this CSR action encourages R& D endeavors of firms which produce extra esteem indirectly. (Lioui & Sharma, 2012). Authors contend that CSR and competitiveness relate through a learning and advancement cycle, where corporate qualities, approaches and practices are permanently characterized and re-characterized. In this way, the author suggest that learning happens as CSR is installed in business processes, and that once it has been coordinated, thusly, it produces creative practices, lastly, competitiveness. (Vilanova, Lozano, & Arenas, 2009).
This is essay will focus on analyzing how corporate social responsibility (CSR) influences the investor relations of a corporation and whether it is good for the society, using Gasland and FrackNation as examples. In the contemporary society, CSR sounds like a commendatory term for the society. Over decades, it seems like that both the public and the media are trying to encourage corporations to behave more responsibly, and corporations are gradually becoming more socially aware in the contemporary society because they know they cannot afford the consequence of ignoring it. (Bernstein, 2009:606) However, CSR is not always beneficial. One of the major practices of public relations is investor relations, because the concerns of a corporation’s investors can directly relate to its welfare. When the corporations paid more attention on CSR, their investors will inevitably somehow feel ignored. As a public which has real material input to the corporations, investors are seeking for future returns, they want to be treated specially by the corporations that they invest. Also, value too much about CSR can make corporations become the victim of being morally hijacked, which may harm both a corporation’s financial success and the whole society’s harmony.
There are a number of definitions of “idealism” and “realism”. Idealism is referred to behaviour or consideration based on an idea of things as they would be, or as we would like them to be, with an inclination to be unreal or imaginative. Realism on the other hand is referred to behaviour or consideration based on a formation of things as they actually are, in spite of how we want them to be, with an inclination to be practical and realistic. Corporate social responsibility has been defined in many ways; one way to define CSR is that CSR takes into consideration how companies manage their business processes to generate on the whole a positive impact on society. Stakeholders are people who are affected by a business.