How should an organization balance its resources between pursuing its primary mission for existence and striving to meet social responsibility goals?

Mark Brainliest Please

When you talk about a balance, it assumes that the two are mutually exclusive. Social (and ecological) responsibility can drive economical results. However, not when you use the traditional Anglo-Saxon (Anglo-American) business model.

You need a different business model that starts with behavioural science and as a result, respect and dignity for the employees and the environment.

Truly LEAN organisations, like Toyota, but in the past also WireMold (until they were bought by a French company) create spectacular results BECAUSE they take good care of their employees and they reduce the ecological impact BECAUSE they reduce waste and energy consumption on a daily basis. You don’t need to use the LEAN methodology to be successful. Look at Alcoa’s former CEO, the late Paul O’Neil. When he took over, Alcoa was in deep trouble. Instead of focusing on higher profits, he announced a plan to make Alcoa the safest smelting company in the world. The employees felt heard and they started making Alcoa safer, and in the process, better. Fatalities dropped to an all time low and since the employees had changed old and dangerous ways of working with safer and more efficient methods, the company made record profits.

There are many companies that boast about being LEAN, but since the underlying business model (culture) is still traditional, they never achieve their real potential. Some (out of many) reasons that traditional organisations never achieve their real potential is that they:

Use traditional cost accounting, which completely counteracts many LEAN principles and leading to over production, inventory, quality v.s. quantity struggles, etc..
The second one is that Wall Street killed long term thinking. The pressure to meet the quarterly dividend expectations automatically favours short term fixes, often digging an even deeper hole to fill the previous one, instead of long term thinking.
Another is to make each department a cost/profit centre and to give them individual objectives. This leads to “point improvements” which seldom leads to overall better results. To counteract that, you need a systems view, where the interdependencies and hand-over points are studied.
And, as I have written often, the organisational culture often (unconsciously) blocks teamwork, cooperation and improvements.