Proceedings of 3rd Asia-Pacific Business Research Conference
25 - 26 February 2013, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ISBN: 978-1-922069-19-1
Title: Is CSR Important to Malaysian Managers?
Michael Segon and Chris Booth
Corporate Social Responsibility is a term that scholars and
practitioners seem to have great difficulty in agreeing a definition.
Ferns, Emelianova and Prakash Sethi (2008) and Jones, Bowd,
and Tench (2009) suggest that the CSR is used to describe a
myriad of different yet related concepts including: corporate
philanthropy, corporate citizenship, business ethics, stakeholder
theory, community involvement, corporate responsibility, socially
responsible investment, sustainability, triple-bottom line, corporate
accountability and corporate social performance. Prakash Sethi
(2003) defines CSR as raising corporate behaviour up to a level so
that it is congruent with the prevailing social norms, values, and
expectations of performance. Johnson and Scholes (1988)
describe the concept as obligations to various groups, both internal
and external to the firm, which go beyond minimum requirements
imposed by legislation. Kissida (2007) suggests that employees
need to be engaged with the CSR Agenda within organisation and
that managers and leaders have a critical role in demonstrating
and maintaining commitment so as to empower employees to
embrace the CSR agenda.
Yet what do practicing Malaysian managers actually think of
corporate social responsibility and its influence on decision making
in their organisations? This paper provides a literature review that
canvasses the most frequent interpretations of corporate social
responsibility and how organisational strategies approach CSR
implementation. It reviews studies of perceptions of CSR and
whether managers are cognizant of social responsibility when
making decisions. This will be compared to the results of a survey
of over 60 practicing managers in Malaysian organisations in which
they were asked to identify whether their organisations have a
clear commitment to CSR and whether it influences their decision
making within the organisation. Lastly it will address their views as
to how the CSR agenda can be promoted both at an organisational
and government level.
Field of Research: Corporate Social Responsibility, Applied Business Ethics,
Corporate Strategy.
_______________________
Dr. Michael Segon, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University, Australia.
E-mail: Michael.segon@rmit.edu.au
Dr Chris Booth: Lecturer, Graduate School of Business, RMIT, Australia
E mail: chris.booth@rmit.edu.au
Proceedings of 3rd Asia-Pacific Business Research Conference
25 - 26 February 2013, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, ISBN: 978-1-922069-19-1