Balancing Corporate Governance with Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Governance can be defined as a set of rules and regulations which are required for effective governance of any corporate organization. The effective and transparent corporate governance is becoming increasingly important now. As per the provisions of Companies Act, 2013, corporate are required to spend a stipulated amount of their profits on social activities as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In order to adapt to the prevailing business practices, a path driven by the ethical norms and sound accountability needs to be taken in the form of good Corporate Governance and CSR. It can be said that today, both Corporate Governance and CSR focus on ethical practices in business and the responsiveness of an organization to its stakeholders and the environment in which it operates. This paper is an attempt to strike a balance between good corporate governance and CSR thereby having a tradeoff between social welfare and profit maximization. Further, the research does not take into account the CSR practices of private organizations and is limited to the public organizations only. This adds to the gap in research and hence a suitable scope for further research.