Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a term has existed for only a couple of decades but in practice CSR has existed for more than 100 years. Through the 90's, CSR became common among businesses while evolving from a philanthropic to a pragmatic dimension4. Recent research suggests a transformation of CSR, which combines CSR with the core business of the company2,3 in order to increase and maintain societal legitimacy.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are organization tools of a company's resources. The most basic parts concern finance and payments. Today, these ERPs are widely customized and integrated with respect to human resources such as time-accounting, map of competencies, and other events related to employee-care1.

We propose a new concept on ERP called an environmental ERP-module, which combines the climate aspect of CSR with the ERP-system. The purpose of this is to integrate climate friendly events into the business processes, particularly for large-scale companies.

Examples of a service that can be provided through such a module is, with several extensions over time, green employee-services as a sms-based commuter service similar to that from e.g. www.gomore.dk, climate friendly food to bring home, help managing heat and air-condition.

The value of such a module has many dimensions. It creates a green CSR-profile within the core business of the ERP-producer, who has a potential marketing focus. An environmental ERP-module will additionally create financial and social value to the company that utilizes ERP which will retain for example optimization of logistics and a decrease of CO2 emission.  Finally, a legal regulation in 2009 requires the 1000 largest companies in Denmark to inform about their CSR-activities (www.samfundsansvar.dk and www.climatecup.dk), which could be managed through this ERP-module.

References

1.B. Bond, Y. Genovese, D. Miklovic, N. Wood, B Zrimsek & N Rayner, 2000, ERP Is Dead - Long Live ERP II, Gartner Group Research Note, SPA-12-0420.

2.S. Holmstrøm, 2002, Public Relations Reconstructed as Part of Society's Evolutionary Learning Processes. In: Vercic. D. et al (eds.) The status of Public Relations Knowledge in Europe and Around the World, Slovenia, Pristop Communications3.P. Neergaard & H. Tølbøll Djursø, 2006, Social ansvarlighed: fra idealisme til forretningsprincip, Academica

4.Roepstorff, 2010, CSR - virksomheders sociale ansvar som begreb og praksis, Hans Reitzel.