A Cross-Country Comparison of the Corporate Social Responsibility Orientation in Germany and Qatar

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a phenomenon of increasing interest. Today, it is practiced in most countries around the globe and studied in various fields of academia. However, the focus still lies on Western developed countries, their understanding, and implementation of CSR. This paper focuses on the comparison of the orientation towards CSR in Germany and Qatar, thereby closing a research gap by providing insights from a Middle Eastern country. Based on a survey among 265 business students in both countries, the research examines their perception of the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of a firm. Findings suggest that, next to economic obligations, Qataris appear more willing to support philanthropic activities of a business while Germans highly value ethical standards. Moreover, females in both countries value economic responsibilities less important than males do.

Carroll’s CSR Pyramid: An Empirical Investigation of SME CSR Orientation

“…These findings are consistent with previous sociocultural studies that have found that culturally different regions of the world attach different importance to ethical norms and the law. These meanings shared by members of society are reflected in a variety of CSRO prioritizations and corresponding CSR pyramid hierarchies (N. Ibrahim & Parsa, 2005;Pinkston & Carroll, 1996;Ramasamy & Yeung, 2009;Schmidt & Cracau, 2018;van den Heuvel et al, 2014). That the hierarchy of the CSR pyramid may be culturally determined, and in particular that in the Spanish context social norms and responsibility considerations take precedence over national laws as is also cited by the INSHT director in one of the interviews:…”

“…A comprehensive review of 35 years of CSRO research (1984CSRO research ( -2019 has shown that CSRO is context-dependent and that the original hierarchy only holds true for 30% of the studies, while the rest of the studies yielded mixed CSR pyramids (Kusyk et al, 2021). Despite scholarly attention, pieces of knowledge are still missing to complete the CSR pyramid puzzle, including the extent to which different environmental (Paul et al, 2019;Schmidt & Cracau, 2018;Visser, 2006) and organizational contexts (Klassen, 2001;Spence, 2016) influence CSR orientation. This paper makes a significant contribution in two important areas: First, in light of the growing evidence challenging the CSR pyramid hierarchy (see Kusyk et al, 2021 for a full review), it fills an important empirical context gap by further investigating whether the CSR hierarchy is applicable in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).…”

Do firm characteristics and ownership structure affect corporate philanthropic contributions in Jordan?

“…Companies' perception of CSR is different between the West and the East (Pratten & Abdulhamid Mashat, 2009;Schmidt & Cracau, 2017). Moreover, the perception of CSR is not homogeneous among Jordanian companies (Abdelrahim, 2014).…”

“…In addition, it is evident that there are multiple barriers to philanthropic practices. Overall, prior research suggests that obtaining a collective understanding of what hinders or supports corporate philanthropic contributions is essential when developing a philanthropic strategy (Pratten & Abdulhamid Mashat, 2009;Schmidt & Cracau, 2017). Thus, it is the time for this study to focus principally on identifying the key factors that are probably influencing the corporate philanthropic contributions.…”

Ceo Characteristics, Ownership Concentration and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure

“…The companies in Indonesia still take side on the shareholders rather than the stakeholders and the CSR is still perceived as a less formal and a philanthropic aspect with less attention (Jain, Aguilera, & Jamali, 2014;Jamali & Karam, 2016;Jamali & Neville, 2011). Similarly, the perception of the students in the faculty of Economics and Business within the developing countries imply that the CSR is still perceived as a philanthropic aspect and therefore these students tend to prioritize the company (Schmidt & Cracau, 2015). Based on these findings, the researcher would like to argue that the CEOs who are from the Economics and Business-related educational background in Indonesia tend to not disclose the CSR.…”