Academic Conference on Good Business

360° CSR: Responsibility Is in the Eye of the Beholder

We all know that people can have wildly different opinions about companies‟ CSR activities. The question this research set out to answer was: Why? We conducted a quasi-experimental study to test if there were systematic difference between stakeholder groups with respect to their opinions about companies‟ CSR activities. We randomly assigned over 400 subjects to 4 different stakeholder groups and asked them a series of questions about their assessments of specific CSR activities. In addition to demographic characteristics we also asked subjects about their underlying expectations for all businesses. These more general, role-of-business (RoB) expectations were hypothesized to cut across stakeholder groups and be important in shaping respondents‟ baseline expectations, by which they would evaluate any particular company‟s behavior. Using Factor Analysis we collapsed the list of CSR activities into 5 scales, which we used as the dependent variables to test our hypotheses. Similarly, we uncovered 5 underlying dimensions to the respondents‟ RoB expectations which we used as independent variables along with stakeholder group status and selected demographic traits. Together these independent variables explained a significant amount of the variance observed in people‟s perceptions of CSR activities. Moreover, the underlying structure of the RoB construct provided a useful framework upon which to compare individual profiles. This study provides significant insight into the sources of variation in people‟s opinions about CSR.