A Classification of Factors Affecting Students’ Orientation Towards Corporate Social Responsibility in Higher Education Institutes

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility has become one of core function in modern business organizations to attain competitive advantage. Voluminous research has been conducted on predictors of CSR from organizational, societal, marketing and stakeholders’ perspectives. However, one key stakeholder are those potential business graduates who likely to become a custodian of CSR in organizations. Scholars are unpacking those factors that develop students’ orientation towards CSR dimensions. The empirical research on classification of personnel, societal and religious factors linked with CSR dimensions (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic) is limited. The purpose of this research is to classify the factors about personnel values, religious orientation and political ideology with CSR dimensions (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic). Quantitative research with descriptive and relational design was opted. 370 selfadministered questionnaires were distributed among business students belong to four higher education institutes of Quetta-Pakistan through convenience sampling design. Ordinal least regression analysis was used to test hypotheses. Findings show that personnel values (sense of belongingness, excitement, warm-relationships and self-fulfillment), religious orientation (low vs high) are linked with CSRO dimensions. Political ideologies did not have significant relationship with CSRO dimension. The personnel values towards society are classified with economic and ethical aspects while factors towards personnel inclination are linked with legal and philanthropic aspects. The low religious orientation is classified with economic and legal aspects while high religious orientation is linked with legal, ethical and philanthropic dimensions. Organizations based on their approach for CSR can design recruitment and selection strategy through classification of personnel, social, religious factors.