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