management attitude survey on how it determines corporate social

8/3/2019 Management Attitude Survey on How It Determines Corporate Social

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Management Attitude Survey on How It Determines Corporate Social

Responsibility

SHEN Hongtao1

，

YANG Yi2

1Accounting Department, JiNan University, P.R. China, 510000

2Xiamen National Accounting Institute P.R. China, 361005

Abstract: This study examined the management’s attitude to CSR. Data from a questionnaire completed by 147 above-middle tire management from medium- and large- size companies in all industries were

employed. Results indicate that (1) CSR as a concept and as activities are both generally accepted bymanagement; (2) Management take primary stakeholders of the corporation as the object of CSR,;(3)Management are confused with the essential purpose of CSR; (4) Management’s personal backgroundshave significant effects on their attitude to CSR and young people are more positive to CSR.Key words: Corporate Social Responsibility, Management’s Attitude, Questionnaire Survey

1 Introduction

“To build a harmonious society” is a new idea developed in China under “Scientific Concept of Development”. The first and foremost task to build a harmonious society is to maintain sustainable andrapid economic development. The companies in a harmonious society must be socially responsible, and

to be socially responsible is also a proper way for business to establish harmonious relationship with thesociety.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR hereafter) is voluntary to business. Whether the company

should be socially responsible is substantially left to management’s discretion. Understanding themanagement’s attitude toward CSR will contribute to the investigation of the current situation and to the prediction of future development. The paper is to explore these based on a questionnaire study.

2 Methods and Participants

The questionnaire survey was conducted from April, 2006 to July, 2006 in Guangdong and FujianProvinces. Before the formal survey, we prepared a pre-survey, after which we revised and improved the

questionnaire. The participants of the formal survey include: (1) attendants of “Financial Analysis andManagement Seminar for Listed Companies” organized by Shenzhen Stock Exchange; (2) students of “Training Program for Chief Accounts of State Owned Enterprises”; and (3) MPAcc Students of Ximen

University (Xiamen) and Jinan University (Guangzhou). The questionnaires were filled by the participants independently. Totally 471 questionnaires were distributed, 314 questionnaires werereturned, within which 151 questionnaires were valid. The effective response rate was therefore 32.1%.

In those valid questionnaires, 4 were filled by participants from non-business organization and excludedfrom the sample. Finally the sample consists of 147 valid questionnaires, which were from businessrespondents.

According to the analysis of the respondents of 147 valid questionnaires in the sample, we foundthe following features of the respondents: (1) most of them were middle and senior level management,25.5% were in senior position and 66.2% were in middle tire; (2) most of them were working for many

years, 53.1% had been working for more than 10 years, 21.8% for more than 5 years; (3) most of themwere from large and medium-size enterprises, 54.1% were from enterprises with more than 2000employees, 28.8% were from enterprises with 300-2000 employees. The respondents were from all 13

categories of industries according to the classification of industry set up by China Securities RegulatoryCommittee. In the sample, 51 respondents were from listed company, and 75 were from state-ownedenterprises.

In summary, the sample represents the middle and senior level management of large andmedium-size enterprises from all industries. These respondents understand the current situation of CSR



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practices and have significant impacts on CSR of their own enterprises.

3 Management’s Attitude to Corporate Social Responsibility

The survey of management’s attitude to CSR consisted of four parts, which were related to

management’s recognition of CSR and their perspectives of the purposes, objectives and contents of CSR.

3.1 Management’s recognition of CSR The questionnaire used the 5-point Likert Scale to measure management’s recognition of CSR. The

results are shown in table 1.

Table 1 Management’s recognition of CSR

Strongly agree Agree Neither agree or disagree

Disagree StronglyDisagree

Score1

Likert Scale 1 2 3 4 5

No of respondents 25 105 2 13 2% of respondents 17.0% 71.4% 1.4% 8.8% 1.4%

2.06

From table 1, we found that 88.4% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with CSR, andonly 10.2% disagreed with CSR. The score was near 2, which meant that CSR was highly recognized by

management.3.2 Purposes of CSR

In order to identify management’s perspective of the purposes of CSR, the questionnaire designedtwo contradictory questions: whether the company is “to do well to do good” or “to do good to dowell”?

These two statements were raised by the master of management, Peter F. Drucker, in the 1980s. He pointed out that there were two totally different ways in balancing profit-seeking and socialresponsibility: the one was “to do well to do good”, which meant the company earns sufficient money to

support social responsible activities; the other was “to do good to do well”, which meant the companytakes social responsible activities as a kind of social advertisement for high return in the future.

2

For the first question, “doing well to do good”, 43.5% of the respondents agreed with the statement,while 50.3% disagreed with the statement. Two schools were nip and tuck, quite different with thesituation in management’s recognition of CSR, in which almost every respondent agreed with CSR. For

the second question, “doing good to do well”, two groups were almost matched. 42.9% of therespondents agreed with the statement, while 51.7% disagreed with the statement. This interesting resultreflected management’s confusion on the intrinsic purpose of CSR. Management seemed impossible toidentify the profit-oriented CSR activities with the responsibility-oriented CSR activities.

3.3 Objects of CSR To whom should business be responsible has been a controversy question since the occurrence of

CSR in the 1950s. Carroll (1991) pointed out that,” The word ‘social’ in CSR has always been vogue

and lacking in specific direction as to whom the corporation is responsible.”3

Until the 1980s, when

stakeholder theory emerged and was introduced into CSR, the concept of stakeholder personalizedsocial or social responsibilities by delineating the specific groups or persons business should consider inits CSR orientation. In Freeman's (1984) ground breaking discussion, he originally defined stakeholder as “is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s

1 The score is the weighted average of Likert Scores.2 Drucker, Peter F.. 1984. The new meaning of corporate social responsibility. California Management, vol. 26(2),53-63.3 Carroll, Archie, B.,1991, The Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility: Toward the Moral Management of

Organizational Stakeholders, Business Horizons, 7-8, 39-48.



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objectives.”4

Freeman (1984) also distinguished between primary stakeholders, those groups whose

continuing participation is necessary for the survival of the corporation, and secondary stakeholders,

who are not essential to eh survival of the corporation. The primary stakeholders include shareholder,creditor, employee, client, supplier, government and community.Based on the above theory, the questionnaire listed seven primary stakeholders and asked the

participants to select the objectives of CSR from the list. The results are in table 2.

Table 2 Objects of CSR

Shareholder Creditor Supplier Client Employee Community Government

No. Of selection

135 101 79 117 127 80 95

% 91.8% 68.7% 53.7% 79.6% 86.4% 54.4% 64.6%

The table shows that all seven kinds of primary stakeholders were accepted by respondents as thegroups that the corporation should be responsible to, but with different importance. The most importantgroup was shareholder, followed by employee, client, creditor, government, community and supplier in

sequence.

3.4 Contents of CSR The last question in part one is about the contents of CSR. In Carroll’s famous “ three dimensional

conceptual model of corporate performance”, which is called “Carroll Structure” in literature, the entirerange of obligations business has to society was addressed to embody four parts: economicresponsibilities, legal responsibilities, ethical responsibilities, and discretionary responsibilities. The four

abstract expectations were specified into seven kinds of activities. The selection of these activities ascontents of CSR by participants resulted in table 3.

Table 3 Contents of CSR

Sustaina-bility Environment

protection

Product

safety

Career safety

and

development

Fair

trade

Equal

employment

Charity

No. Of selection

130 138 121 116 96 94 87

% 88.4% 93.9% 82.3% 78.9% 65.3% 63.9% 59.2%

In table 3, all seven kinds of social responsible activities were selected by more than 50% of respondents. More than 90% respondents selected ‘environment protection’ as the content of CSR. This

reflected that environment protection is the most significant issue in the relationship between businessand society at present. More than 80% respondents selected ‘sustainability’ and ‘product safety’,followed by the remaining four activities. These gave us a picture of the contents of CSR and relevant

importance of social issues considered by managements.

4 Factors Affecting Management’s Attitude

The management’s attitude to CSR and the background of respondents were put together for anon-parameter correlation analysis to discover the factors affecting management’s CSR attitude.

The background of respondents was described from five aspects, which were position, years of employment, the natures (listed/unlisted and stated owned/non stated-owned) of employer and the size

of employer. The positions of respondents were classified into three groups: senior, middle and lower level, taking the value of 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The years of employment of the respondents wereclassified into four groups: very long (more than 10 years), long (5 -10 years), short ( 2-5 years), and

very short (less than 2 years), taking the value of 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively. The natures of respondents’employer were measured by dummy variables, where listed company and state-owned company took the

4 Freeman, R. E., 1984, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, Pitman Publishing Inc., p46.



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value of 1, otherwise took the value of 0. The size of respondents’ employer was classified into large,

medium and small, taking the value of 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The analysis used the 5-point LikertScale to measure management’s attitude to CSR, where 1 for strong agreement and 5 for strongdisagreement. The results of non-parameter correlation analysis were reported in table 4.

Table 4 Correlation between management’s background and their attitudes to CSR

Position Years of

employment

Listed State-owned Size

Attitude to

CSR

-0.113*

(0.054)

-0.184**

(0.026)

-0.025

(0.767)

-0.061

(0.461)

0.049

(0.556)

Significant levels are shown in parameters.

* significant at 10% level (2-tail test)** significant at 5% level (2-tail test)

The figures in table 4 illustrated that the position and years of employment significantly affectedmanagement’s attitude to CSR. Those with lower position and shorter period of employment were more

intended to support the idea of CSR. Though the questionnaire did not ask for the respondents’ age, itcould be reasonably concluded that those with lower position and shorter working experience wereyounger than others and young people were more open to the new idea of CSR. In addition,management from listed companies, state-owned companies and large companies showed more support

for CSR. But these effects were not as significant as those of position and years of employment. That isto say the personal background was more important that business background in determiningmanagement’s attitude to CSR.

5 Conclusion and limitation

The questionnaire was completed mainly by above-middle tire management from medium- andlarge- size companies in all industries, listed companies and state-owned companies included. Based on

the representative participants, the survey discovered the overall existing situation of management’s

attitude to CSR in our country and avoided the limitation of generalization in previous case studies andempirical researches. Furthermore the questionnaire survey allowed us to understand the subjectiveattitude and perspectives of management to CSR, to analyze the relationship of management’s background and their attitudes to CSR.

The statistical results suggest: (1) CSR as a concept and as activities are both generally accepted by

management; (2) Management take primary stakeholders of the corporation as the object of CSR, whichcoincides with stakeholder theory;(3) Management are confused with the essential purpose of CSR andthe relationship between CSR and profit-making; (4) Management’s personal backgrounds have

significant effects on their attitude to CSR and young people are more positive to CSR.There are two limitations in the study. The one is from the methodology of questionnaire. The

sample of questionnaire is not randomly selected, thus it lacks of representation in statistics. Moreover

the respondents intend to be more optimistic in completing the questionnaire, especially for questionswith ethical judgment, such as the recognition of CSR. This may result in high scores. The other

limitation is from the research design. The questionnaire was delivered on class and the survey did notidentify the respondents from the same company.

The study provides a picture of management’s subjective attitude to CSR. Further research shouldexplore the actual CSR performance of companies in order to identify the problems in CSR practice and

thus improve CSR in China.

References

[1] Peter F. Drucker. The New Meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility. California Management, 1984. vol.

26(2), p53～

63.



519

[2] Archie, B. Carroll. The Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility: Toward the Moral Management of

Organizational Stakeholders. Business Horizons, 1991, 7-8, p 39～

48.

[3] R. E. Freeman. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Pitman Publishing Inc, 1984.

[4] National Bureau of Statistics of China. Division standard of large/medium/small sized enterprises (INTERIMPROVISIONS). 2003.

[5] Li Jingming. On Information Disclosure of Social Responsibility Accounting of Enterprises. Journal of

Wuhan University of Science and Technology. 2004, 3, p8 ～ 13.

[6] Shen Hongtao, Jin Tingting. An Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures of Listed Companies

in China. Audit & Economy Research, 2006, 6, p84 ～ 87.

[7] Shen Hongtao. The Relationship between Company Characteristics and Its Publication on CSR. Accounting

Research. 2007, 3, p9～

16.

[8] Yang Qiulin. Imperative to Build Accounting for Social Responsibility with Chinese Characteristic --aresearch on carrying out Accounting for Social Responsibility in Chinese enterprises. Journal of Nanhua

University. 2002, 3 (4) , p16 ～ 20.

The author can be contacted from e-mail: [email protected]

management attitude survey on how it determines corporate social

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