Perception of the Content of Corporate Social Responsibility by Hungarian Business Students

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) became a key strategic issue in the recent years. However, the concept of CSR is not novel, the models and frameworks continuously improved. Incorporating social responsiveness into the business is a complex challenge that requires the consideration of individual factors as well. Former studies dealing with the personal aspects of social responsibility point out that related attitudes depend on local characteristics, gender or depth of education. Local answers need local investigation of the topic. In addition, changes of attitudes must be considered in time. The paper investigates whether the changes of attitudes towards CSR show a pattern between 2014 and 2016. The statistical analysis uses ANOVA; the sample consists business students in Hungarian Higher education (various universities, n=100 from each year, random sampling). The results show a scattered pattern. There are significant differences between the years by gender. Fewer respondents believe that CSR can help to solve the global problems; however, the ratio of students who think that CSR implementation is expensive or it can only be successful in the case of large companies is reduced. The differences of responsiveness between females and males raises the question whether education requires two different strategies for them or a common solution is available. We believe that common way is viable.