Graduation Semester and Year

2013

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Shannon Scielzo

Abstract

There is increasing interest in corporate social responsibility among researchers and practitioners. The corporate social responsibility construct has been around for several decades, but recent public corporate scandals have brought corporate social responsibility back to the forefront of many discussions. The most prominent conceptualization of corporate social responsibility suggests that an organization has economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities to fulfill (Carroll, 1979). The problem with current models of corporate social responsibility is that they are skewed towards the financial responsibility of an organization. Although this is one important aspect of an organization's responsibilities, it is not the only or necessarily the most important responsibility. In addition to the financial aspect, corporate social responsibility deals with how organizations treat internal and external stakeholders, and the activities they choose to support and engage in. These activities can range from treating employees with respect and dignity to implementing environmentally-friendly business practices. To better understand the full range of corporate social responsibility activities, and which ones are most common across organizations, I conducted a random sample survey of organizations. The results of the random sample survey indicated that corporate social responsibility actions are most frequently driven by organizational values. As a result, a corporate social responsibility measure that does not account for organizational values is not aligned with current organizational practices and is not practical to use in the field. To address this gap, I am proposing a corporate social responsibility exploratory research plan that eventuates into a scale validation study that uses organizational values as the framework for measuring corporate social responsibility. The roadmap for this research proposal is as follows: 1) review the corporate social responsibility literature; 2) review the prominent model of corporate social responsibility model; 3) examine current corporate social responsibility measures, highlighting the shortcomings; 4) present a more useful framework of corporate social responsibility by leveraging the organizational values literature; 5) provide a plan for exploring the factor structure of corporate social responsibility, and finally 6) provide a plan for validating a measure of corporate social responsibility that is based on organizational values.

Disciplines

Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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