Corporate social responsibility orientations and practices in community development

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice in community development (CD) is one of the strategic initiatives for human resource development emphasized in the New Economic Model (NEM) for Malaysia. The available CSR studies in Malaysia mostly focussed on CSR disclosure and little is known about the CSR orientations and types of practices of CSR in CD. Thus, this study is intended to fill in this knowledge gap in terms of exploring the orientations and types of CSR practices undertaken by the business corporations in CD. This study used Carroll’s CSR orientations of namely economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities and UNDP’s CD components of living standards, health, and education. This study adopted descriptive survey research design involving 336 CSR recipients as respondents. The respondents were selected through a simple random sampling technique and the overall response rate was 67.2%. The data were gathered using an adapted questionnaire and were then analyzed using descriptive statistics. This study reveals that the manufacturing sector represents the most prominent contributors of CSR in CD, followed by electrical and electronic, banking, and telecommunication sectors. CSR began in Malaysia in the 70s but most companies started their CSR practices in CD in the first decade of the millennium due to the influence of globalization and national development policy. The findings indicated that the highest ranked CSR orientation expected by respondent is legal, followed by philanthropic, economic, and ethical. The results also revealed that the business corporations contributed most to the community in terms of education for secondary school and university students in the forms of scholarship, internship, schooling aids, and learning tool such as computer. The study concludes that this group of Malaysian communities especially the younger generation are aware about the necessities of corporations to run their business operations in accordance with the local laws. The study also concludes that educationrelated practices are the most prominent types of CSR. It is recommended that the CSR practices particularly on living standards, and health should also be intensified to have a balanced contribution of CSR in CD. Future studies are suggested to delve into the role of CSR in developing community resources by incorporating more subjective components of CD. The extent to which local adaptations of CSR are exercised by multinational corporations in CD is worth to be investigated.

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