Deck 8: Compliance and Accountability

Question 1

According to the textbook, definitions of corporate social responsibility are currently ______.

A)highly idiosyncratic
B)coalescing around the concept of strategic CSR
C)less confusing than they were 10 years ago
D)differ more across countries and cultures than within countries and cultures

Answer 1

A

Question 2

One reason it is difficult to compare one company to another in terms of good and bad is that many companies are resistant to ______.

A)being profitable
B)being regulated
C)being transparent
D)being ethical

Answer 2

C

Question 3

The 18th-century economist, Adam Smith, believed in free markets because he believed in ______.

A)people as rational actors
B)the sovereign state
C)regulation of the market price
D)regulation of the natural price

Answer 3

A

Question 4

According to the textbook, ecolabels are ______.

A)primarily designed as marketing tools
B)designed to measure environmental impact
C)becoming consistent across all industries
D)very useful to help consumers clearly understand the products they buy

Question 5

In general, dichotomous measures of corporate social responsibility are unhelpful to those who advocate for CSR because ______.

A)such measures reflect the biases of the measuring organization
B)CSR is more complicated than a simple yes or no
C)all firms contain good and bad
D)all of these

Question 6

An example of "greenwashing" would be ______.

A)Enron's mark-to-market accounting practices
B)Exxon covering up its knowledge about climate change
C)Poland Spring changing from glass to plastic bottles
D)Nike doubling the pay of its Filipino workers

Question 7

According to the textbook, which of the following seems to be the universal standard in corporate social responsibility audits?

A)Ceres Principles
B)Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS)
C)Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
D)Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)

Question 8

Lifecycle pricing involves the incorporation of ______ in the final price of a product.

A)negative costs
B)indirect costs
C)internalities
D)circular pricing

Question 9

The first stage of CSR reporting that developed in response to external pressure following publicized corporate transgressions was ______.

A)redemptive reporting
B)coerced reporting
C)imitative reporting
D)opportunistic reporting

Question 10

Which of the following attempts to capture all of the impacts of the production process, at each step in the supply chain, and assign a quantitative value to each step?

A)circular pricing
B)environmental impact regulation
C)market optimization
D)lifecycle pricing

Question 11

Nudges incorporate the cognitive biases that shape our decisions into policies that encourage ______ outcomes, while still retaining the ______ of choice.

A)fair; freedom
B)optimal; illusion
C)future; freedom
D)ethical; concept

Question 12

While ______ focuses on resource utilization and waste reduction, ______ is an attempt to incorporate all the costs into the final price that is charged for a product.

A)the circular economy; lifecycle pricing
B)lifecycle pricing; the circular economy
C)the circular economy; externality marketing
D)externality marketing; lifecycle pricing

Question 13

The CSR and sustainability debate tends to model false assumptions about human behavior because it fails to take into account the fact that individuals act in their ______.

A)rational self-interest
B)actual self-interest
C)perceived self-interest
D)actual selfishness

Question 14

According to the textbook, how to measure corporate social responsibility is ______.

A)becoming widely understood with the implementation of ISO 26000
B)becoming widely understood as more business schools teach principles of CSR in required courses
C)one of the most pressing and contentious areas of the CSR debate today
D)a nonissue when taking the perspective of strategic CSR

Question 15

Those who support the mandatory enforcement of society's interests believe that ______ is the only way to ensure firms behave in a way that is broadly acceptable.

A)punishment
B)rewards
C)coercion
D)guilt

Question 16

The field of behavioral economics demonstrates that the best way to get people to engage in responsible behavior is through ______.

A)sanctions
B)incentives
C)bartering
D)nudges

Question 17

Lots of companies appear to embrace "going green," but in order to make sure that companies are actually committed to "green" practices it is important to know if the companies ______.

A)communicate their intentions to do good
B)show how their competitors are not "acting green"
C)match what they say with specific actions
D)are identified as green by the Environmental Protection Agency

Question 18

Because of the difficulties in measuring CSR, our determinations of a socially responsible company are ______.

A)relative
B)absolute
C)objective
D)futile

Question 19

In the same way that classical economic theory models false assumptions about rational man, the CSR and sustainability debate, for the most part, models equally false assumptions about ______ man.

A)irrational
B)ethical
C)altruistic
D)responsible

Question 20

Compliance with ______ goes to the heart of the CSR debate because it largely dictates the degree to which a firm is accepted by society.

A)government regulations
B)stakeholder expectations
C)voluntary codes
D)UN standards

Question 21

Why is it important to think of firm performance with respect to corporate social responsibility on a continuum rather than a dichotomy?

Question 22

The real cost of a gallon of gasoline, after accounting for all costs and removing all existing subsidies, is estimated to be less than $1.

Question 23

The ______ focuses primarily on resource utilization and waste reduction.

A)lifecycle economy
B)green economy
C)circular economy
D)sustainable economy

Question 24

Is a major retailer that employs thousands of people, but pays women less than men for the same job a better or worse firm (in terms of corporate social responsibility) than a major sporting goods manufacturer which outsources many of its jobs to other countries.

Question 25

Whole Foods Supermarkets' use of a color-coded stoplight scale to assess and support sustainable seafood products is an example of which of the three interlinked steps in measuring CSR?

A)standardizing
B)reconciling
C)certifying
D)labelling

Question 26

Which company has introduced the idea of an environmental profit and loss (EP&L) account?

A)Nike
B)Wilson Sporting Goods
C)Under Armour
D)PUMA

Question 27

At present, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has developed to where "many countries now require [it], either by law or as a condition of stock exchange listing" largely because its model of reporting is relatively simple.

Question 28

An example of a lifecycle analysis conducted during the design stages of a product would be a ______.

A)carbon tax
B)value-added tax
C)soda tax
D)cigarette tax

Question 29

A CSR measure that captures performance on financial, environmental, and social metrics is known as ______.

A)integrated reporting
B)performance auditing
C)triple bottom line
D)scope entirety

Question 30

Enron is a good example of how good things had become in terms of corporate responsibility at the end of the 20th century.

Question 31

In terms of strategic CSR, it is essential to think of firm performance as a dichotomy rather than a continuum.

Question 32

One industry that is particularly problematic to use such ratings as ecolabels is ______.

A)the energy industry
B)the automobile industry
C)the drug industry
D)the food industry

Question 33

An important concept in corporate social responsibility is that the responsibility ______.

A)lies with the corporation
B)lies with the government
C)is voluntary
D)is bidirectional

Question 34

Instead of valuing natural capital, current financial and accounting models treat essential natural components such as water and air quality as ______ when accounting for profits and losses.

A)free
B)long-term depreciation
C)short-term depreciation
D)contingent valuation

Question 35

Although we have some intuitive sense of which firms are good and which are bad, we are presently unable to compare one firm to another reliably across all aspects of operations, because ______.

A)there is universal acceptance among firms to the idea of greater transparency
B)there is inherent difficulty of defining societal expectations
C)there are legal prohibitions to rating companies as good or bad in terms of CSR
D)there is inherent difficulty in finding firms willing to rate companies as good or bad

Question 36

Is a tobacco firm that employs tens of thousands of people and pays significant taxes a better or worse firm (in terms of corporate social responsibility performance) than a supermarket that sells food but pays its employees low wages?

Question 37

Since the late 1990s, the measurement of corporate social responsibility has become increasingly uniform and widely accepted across all industries.

Question 38

Which of the following companies has been cited as a leader in CSR, while not also engaging in unethical conduct?

A)Patagonia
B)Kellogg's
C)PepsiCo
D)Volkswagen

Question 39

Corporate social responsibility reporting suffers from the potential for greenwash.

Question 40

If you wanted to institute a wellness program at your company, based on behavioral economics, what would be the types of nudges would you use to get workers to participate?

Question 41

Why is the measurement of corporate social responsibility such a pressing and contentious area within the overall CSR debate?