Business Students' Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a key element of today's Business school curricula. Proponents of CSR have argued that a business has an obligation to balance the interests of its many stakeholders. Critics of CSR, however, have argued that a business has an obligation only to its owners--its shareholders. In this paper I examined the perceptions of CSR among a sample of today's Business students and investigated the relationship between gender, work experience, and spirituality and CSR perceptions. The results generally support the hypothesis that women exhibit greater sensitivity to CSR than men. Some results are consistent with the hypothesis that work experience is important in shaping perceptions of CSR. Finally, several results are consistent with the hypothesis that spirituality positively affects perceptions of CSR. Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; Business ethics Introduction Traditional finance theory argues that the only responsibility of managers "is to conduct the business in accordance with their (the owners') desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom" (Friedman, 1970, p. 1). Others, however, advocate a "stakeholder" approach whereby firms have distinct responsibilities beyond shareholder wealth maximization. Indeed, there appears to be a recent shift in public opinion toward stakeholder theory. Stakeholder theory is the foundation of Corporate Social Responsibility (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). While definitions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) vary, its key argument is that business has an obligation "to use its resources in ways to benefit society, through committed participation as a member of society, taking into account the society at large . independent of direct gains to the company" (Kok et al., 2001, p. 288). An increasing number of investors appear to share this view; the number of CSR-related shareholder proposals has significantly increased in recent years along with the number and dollar volume of socially responsible investment funds. According to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, approximately 11 percent of assets under professional management in the United States are now involved in socially responsible investing. Mirroring these trends, CSR and business ethics are key elements of today's Business curricula. The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) requires the inclusion of ethics in business curricula. Christensen et al. (2007) found that 42% of the top MBA programs worldwide now specifically require CSR in core curricula. Given these recent trends in the general public, the investing community, and academia, it is important to examine the perceptions of CSR and ethics among tomorrow's business leaders--today's Business students. Do students agree with the stakeholder view that business has social responsibility beyond making a profit? And, are gender, work experience, and spirituality related to student perceptions of CSR and ethics? Literature Review CSR Theory There are two primary theories of CSR. According to Friedman (1970), since a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business, he has direct responsibility to them. And, that responsibility is to make as much money as possible, subject to legal and ethical constraints. According to Friedman, only individuals (and not corporations) can have responsibilities and resources devoted to CSR are better spent on increasing firm efficiency. On the other hand, Freeman's (1984) "stakeholder theory" posits that managers should balance the interests of various stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, customers, the community, etc. More recently, Orlitzky and Benjamin (2001) and others have argued that corporations have a responsibility to various stakeholder groups beyond stock price maximization. …