By Ivan Widjaya, Small Business Trends |

Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz is one of many CEOs around the world that have embraced the idea of corporate social responsibility when it comes to how they run their companies.

You don’t have to be running a Fortune 500 company to be an ethically responsible company that embraces corporate social responsibility and all that it stands for. In fact, if you refuse to embrace it and all that it entails, it’s quite possible a strong majority of the people that work for you are currently unhappy in their jobs.

The definition of corporate social responsibility and the values and practices it embraces is a vast one.  Each company that embraces it has their own mantra that’s used to describe it: community investment, social impact, corporate citizenship, sustainability and many others.

In a nutshell, corporate social responsibility is all about company ethics — how you treat the environment, the communities you serve and work in and your employees. Even your competitors.