University Social Responsibility: An Analysis from the Carroll’s Model

Abstract

The university social responsibility contributes to neutralize the factors that lead to social, economic and cultural inequalities and to achieve the development. Aiming to analyze the stakeholders' perception about the University Social Responsibility (USR) actions, according the Carroll's Model, an exploratory and descriptive research was performed at two Universities in South Brazil. Semi-structured interviews and documents analysis were part of the qualitative stage. On the other hand, a survey with 1,117 answers was part of the quantitative stage. The results revealed the universities fully meet all the model dimensions. However, during the interviews it was possible to notice there are matters that need to be improved according the USR principles, in both universities. The quantitative research results revealed that the stakeholders' perception shows significant differences, especially when it comes about the ethical and economic dimensions. As a theoretical contribution, this research provided the use of an academic model of CSR applied to Brazilian universities context. As an empirical contribution, the research provided enough information to improve the universities social responsibility management, plus to the addition of institutional programs. .

Universities’ Social Responsibility through the Lens of Strategic Planning: A Content Analysis

“…A variation of CSR, adapted to universities, is the concept of University Social Responsibility (USR) (Bastos et al 2019). USR derives from and is directly connected with the concepts of SR, CSR, sustainable development and education for sustainability (Meseguer-Sánchez et al 2020;Terán-Bustamante and Torres-Vargas 2020;Wided 2020).…”

“…Therefore, orienting university management toward the achieving of USR is not an easy task. Scholars argued that to reach this objective, universities need to transversally integrate this concept into planning processes (Bastos et al 2019), through which strategic decisions are taken and characterized by their long-term focus and global scope, mainly through the strategic plan (Larrán Jorge et al 2015;Llinàs-Audet et al 2011;Ramos-Monge et al 2019b), and allowing for its implementation in practice (Kie żel et al 2021).…”