University social responsibility: perceptions and advances

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perception of professors, students, administrative staff and academic directors about social responsibility in four universities of Rio Grande do Norte (RN) – Brazil. Design/methodology/approach The research was carried out in four universities in RN, Brazil. A survey was conducted with 1,318 students, 118 members of the administrative team, 104 professors and 29 academic directors, to whom a Likert-type questionnaire was applied, with 65 items allocated in seven dimensions as follows: organizational governance, human rights, work practices, environment, legal practices, consumer issues and community involvement and development. Exploratory factorial analysis and Cronbach’s alpha were the statistics used to analyze the data. Findings The research showed difficulties in assessing social responsibility aspects because of the lack of discussion and little socialization and debate of the data. Concerning everyday issues such as student service, environment issues, working conditions and local development is an exception because they have explicit opinions and often negative perceptions. Research limitations/implications The data used were self-reported they were subjected to bias, such as self-attribution and selective perception by community members. The lack of a theoretical model of social responsibility to study a non-profit organization. This study offers a theoretical contribution to analyzing six variables in non-profit organizations. Practical implications The data collection instrument also contribute to Brazilian universities can meet the evaluation criteria of higher education institutions in Brazil by Law 10.861/04, which established the national higher education evaluation system. Social implications This contribution allowed the authors to understand, which of them find the most consensus among stakeholders and which are the most contradictory, as well as to promote improvements in the implementation of social responsibility policies. The proposal of the instrument results in concrete actions for the adoption of the university, to accelerate the implementation of ISO 26000 in its statutes. Originality/value The study on social responsibility at universities of RN, Brazil, under dimensions of organizational governance, human rights, work practices, environment, legal practices, consumer issues, and community involvement and development is innovative and supports other universities to think their processes and better contribute in training new generations of citizens and professionals.

Classroom Learning and the Perception of Social Responsibility Amongst Graduate Students of Management Accounting

“…Based on the conviction that university business students should be familiar with the SR concept and apply it to their future professional projects, we questioned their perceptions of this concept. To date, studies have shown a generalized lack of knowledge about SR [10][11][12], which is why Lämsä et al [13] demanded more empirical research on this subject. For Alonso-Almeida et al [14] little progress has been made since then (referring to the previous work), and research on attitudes to SR within the field of education is still in its infancy.…”

¿Son las universidades socialmente responsables?

“…Una institución se define por su misión (Drucker, 2012). Cuando la RSU se incorpora a la misión, visión y valores, se materializa en su plan estratégico (Dowsett, 2020;Filho et al, 2019;Larrán Jorge et al, 2015) y en la forma en el que se implementa, ejecuta y controla, asegurando canales de retroalimentación que permiten la mejora continua (de Sousa et al, 2020;Karwowska, 2019).…”

“…La Responsabilidad Social Universitaria (RSU) se define como el compromiso que asume la universidad frente a sus grupos de interés (de Sousa et al, 2020;Ferrero-Ferrero et al, 2018) y que genera el cambio para lograr la transformación social (Păunescu et al, 2017), política (Chile & Black, 2015) y económica (Chan et al, 2021) que demanda la sociedad hacia un desarrollo humano más sostenible (Aleixo et al, 2018;Filho et al, 2019).…”

“…La RSU no es un concepto nuevo, viniéndose gestando desde hace años. A fecha de hoy, la RSU se entiende como una política de mejora continua dentro de la institución (de Sousa et al, 2020;Dowsett, 2020), y es vista como el camino necesario para el efectivo cumplimiento de la inherente misión social de la universidad (Păunescu et al, 2017;Vasilescu et al, 2010), con una visión amplia e integradora que alcanza todos los ámbitos universitarios.…”

“…En efecto, las universidades han ido integrando la RSU en sus planes estratégicos (Dowsett, 2020;Larrán Jorge et al, 2015), siendo posible observar distintos niveles de compromiso según los diferentes ámbitos de impacto (de Sousa et al, 2020;Karwowska, 2019). Por nivel de compromiso nos referimos a cómo la universidad comunica sus acciones de RSU, es decir, si la RSU está muy interiorizada en el seno de la universidad y por lo tanto es posible encontrar evidencias explícitas de que las actuaciones de la universidad han sido diseñadas de acuerdo con los principios que persigue la RSU.…”