Problem Statement for Economics and Finance- myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theProblem Statement for Economics and Finance. Answer: Problem Statement Corporate Social Responsibility holds immense importance in an overall economic framework of a country and particularly in the construction sector. This is because most of the labor engaged in this sector has low levels of education, skill and income, which makes it important on part of the companies to look after their overall welfare. There has been a consistent increase in the environmental awareness and a demand for better equality and societal welfare is felt among the community as a whole. Despite of promotions and awareness generation on part of the government of the country and introduction of encouraging strategies on their part, there still remains a lack of implementation of the CSR in the construction sector of Malaysia as a whole (Tai Chuang, 2014). As can be seen from the empirical evidences, the budget allocation of the country in 2011-2015 has emphasized categorically to incorporate and encourage investments and initiatives on part of the supply side players in the c onstruction industry by inclining towards investment in green construction technologies, construction and also heavily on sustainable innovations in this sector of the country (Hopkins, 2012). Empirical evidences show that there is in general a lack of awareness about the concept of CSR in the construction sector of Malaysia. However, in many of the companies there are presence of training program and other facilities for the employees, these are not termed under the CSR aspects. The main problem in the Malaysian construction sector is that the top management of the construction firms are mostly reluctant to modify according to the environmental and sustainability requirements as long as they are earning profits from their business. There are also problems of monetary expenses in implementation of Corporate Social Responsible Framework, especially in the small firms, which shows the presence of bias in the industry between the big and the small construction companies (Ahmed Haji, 2013). If the impact of the CSR on the Malaysian companies is compared with that of their global counterparts, it can be observed that the Malaysian companies lag significantly behind those in the overall global scenario, in nearly all the aspects of the Corporate Social Responsibility. There are extensive literary evidences in this aspect, which shows that among the four aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility, which includes environmental aspects, workplace changes, marketplace aspects and the community responsibilities of the corporations, the Malaysian construction companies specifically lag behind in the environmental and the workplace aspects (Esa Anum Mohd Ghazali, 2012). This in other words, imply that there remains a lack of awareness among the companies in the country regarding the necessity of emphasizing on the overall environmental and sustainability aspects of their operations and their responsibilities in this domain. The findings of the literature also suggests that in s pite of several measures taken on part of the companies to improve the welfare of their workers, there are a lot of scopes still left in this aspect (Zhao et al., 2012). There are considerable amount of literatures, which show the overall performance of the construction industry of the country in terms of CSR and compares the same with their global counterparts. However, there still remains a gap in studying the impact of the implementation of the CSR techniques on part of the construction companies, on their overall performance as well as on the society in general. To be more specific, there remains a huge gap in studying the factors in the CSR itself, which affects the overall performances of the Public Listed Companies in the construction sector of the country, and how these cause and effect relationships work. To measure the performance of the companies in the construction sector of Malaysia, the most feasible option is to look into the sales and the profit figures of the PLCs existing in the construction sector of the country and how these figures are affected when these firms implement various CSR techniques in their operational framework. Ther efore, with the growing demand for implementation of CSR in every aspects of corporate world, it is of immense importance to investigate the implications of these activities on the profitability and cost effectiveness of the construction companies in the country as well as the overall welfare (economic and social) of the people who are directly or indirectly associated to this. This essentially becomes more crucial especially when there is not sufficient literary works present in this aspect (Ahamed, Almsafir Al-Smadi, 2014). Research Questions It is evident from the above discussion that CSR has been increasingly gaining importance in the contemporary period and there still remains a gap regarding the implementation of the Corporate Social Responsibilities in the construction companies in Malaysia. The paper tries to seek answers to the following questions which are of immense importance to study the impact of CSR on the performance of the Public Listed Companies of Malaysia: What is the relationship between the implementation of the Corporate Social Responsibility in the construction firms in Malaysia and their performance over the years? In which aspects of implementation of the CSR does the construction sector of the country lag behind compared to the overall global scenario? What is the cost effectiveness of implementation of CSR in the construction companies of the country? What are the limitations and hurdles in implementation of the CSR in Malaysian construction sector and what are the existing government policies and strategic framework which positively and negatively affects the same? What are the scopes of improvement? Research Objective The objectives of the paper are to: Investigate the relationship between the extent of CSR activities in the PLCs in the construction sector of Malaysia and their dynamics in sales. Analyze the cost and benefit of the PLCs in implementing CSR. Investigate the positive and negative externalities caused due to the implementations of the CSR by the construction companies on the overall society as a whole as well as on the companies in particular. References Ahamed, W. S. W., Almsafir, M. K., Al-Smadi, A. W. (2014). Does corporate social responsibility lead to improve in firm financial performance? Evidence from Malaysia.International journal of Economics and finance,6(3), 126. Ahmed Haji, A. (2013). Corporate social responsibility disclosures over time: evidence from Malaysia.Managerial auditing journal,28(7), 647-676. Esa, E., Anum Mohd Ghazali, N. (2012). Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Malaysian government-linked companies.Corporate Governance: The international journal of business in society,12(3), 292-305. Hopkins, M. (2012).The planetary bargain: Corporate social responsibility matters. Routledge. Tai, F. M., Chuang, S. H. (2014). Corporate social responsibility.Ibusiness,6(03), 117. Zhao, Z. Y., Zhao, X. J., Davidson, K., Zuo, J. (2012). A corporate social responsibility indicator system for construction enterprises.Journal of cleaner production,29, 277-289.