Corporate Social Responsibility

Developing a Conceptual Framework of Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives in Community Involvement: Content Analysis of Company Websites Denni I. Arli, Pamela D. Morrison, Australian School of Business, The University of New South Wales Abstract The rising importance and attention of socially responsible investment, increasing consumer and environmental concern and a growing political/ legislative environment have all contributed considerably to the pressure on business to be socially responsible. Businesses today face challenges to recognise the roots of social problems and identify ways to do business effectively in the community. To do so they need to adopt a variety of strategies, however insufficient attention has been devoted to studying the links between antecedents, strategies and consequences of CSR initiatives in the community. We aim to develop a conceptual framework for corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to assist further research on community involvement. To do this we start by content analysing the CSR component of company websites. Introduction The Centre for Corporate Public Affairs (2007) conducted a survey on corporate community involvement and suggested that 90 per cent of CEOs and Boards regard corporate community involvement as an “obligation of good corporate citizenship and worth doing for the company’s external reputation and other benefits; 75 per cent consider it is an integral part of their business model” (p. 12); and only 10 per cent consider community involvement as peripheral to their business activity. More and more companies are recognising the importance and value of combining commerce and social development (Rohregger, 2006). Despite the increased attention on CSR initiatives in community involvement from both companies and researchers, a research gap is identified within the CSR literature. The relationship between CSR antecedents, strategies and consequences has not been explored adequately and many...