Corporate Social Responsibility : a case study of Öhrlings PricewaterhouseCoopers

In the late 1880s in the introduction stage of the industrialization it was broadly discussed whether or not companies should take their social responsibility. This discussion has today lead to what is called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The interest for CSR has grown rapidly the recent years and people are starting to demand that companies take their social responsibility. In the same time companies have started to understand that they can use CSR as a strategy in order to gain benefits. An increasing number of companies have started to engage in CSR and it has even become trendy for companies in Sweden to engage in CSR. Many argue that companies can gain enormous benefits by engaging in CSR while others argue that CSR engagement can have a negative effect on the company. This thesis focuses on investigating why companies engage in CSR, how they apply CSR and how CSR can affect financial performance. We have conducted a case study on the company Öhrling PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in order to gain a deeper understanding of CSR. We studied why PwC engage in CSR, how they apply CSR and how it affects their financial performance.Validerat; 20101217 (root