CSR in India: Critical Review and Exploring Entrepreneurial Opportunities

Abstract

The current discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is dominated by this 'middle path' approach, establishing collaboration and synergy, and attempting to define the balancing roles of business. In the CSR literature, interactions between business and society have been studied less. CSR research is also skewed towards the western and developed countries. We attempt to address these two issues by studying perception gaps among the community residing in a mining region and tourist destination in western India, Goa. The studied dimensions are company's commitment to the community, areas for company's support, company's involvement with stakeholders, community's commitment to the company, and media's role to promote CSR activity and CSR as benefiting the company. In general, the variables such as age, education, place of origin and caste lead to divergence in community attitude towards various CSR dimensions. Later, we review a few unique and successful CSR projects, their design and implementation with a strategic 'entrepreneurial orientation'. Our article points towards a new paradigm for CSR implementation that is beyond pure philanthropy. Innovative models are being discovered and designed with pro-activeness and reasonable experimentation which provide these corporates unique competitive advantage. Lastly, we propose that entrepreneurship has a viable role to play in balancing community and business interest.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): A Survey of Topics and Trends Using Twitter Data and Topic Modeling

“…For example, Wang, Tong, Takeuchi and George [4] identified increasingly non-US-based studies as one of four major trends in CSR studies. A literature review of CSR studies also shows an increasing number of CSR studies focusing on emerging economies such as India [55][56][57] and Saudi Arabia [58,59].…”

Consumers' perception on corporate social responsibility: Evidence from Vietnam

“…Meanwhile, there are too few particularly case studies about consumers' perception in developing countries, for instance, China (Ramasamy & Yeung, ), Indonesia (Arli & Tjiptono, ; Arli & Lasmono, ), India (Shergill, ), and Mexico (Lambarry, Fuentes, Trujillo, & Rivas, ). In the empirical CSR literature in the developing countries, the business aspects of CSR activities have most chosen in numerous studies (Majumdar & Saini, ). Nevertheless, there are only a few studies between consumers and CSR, especially concerning their reactions and perceptions to CSR activities of businesses nowadays.…”

Corporate Social Responsibility in India: with Special focus in North East India

“…Moreover, McWilliams and Siegel (2001) as cited by (Abagail McWilliams, 2016) define CSR as a situation where the firmsgo beyond compliance and engage in activities that seem to promote social good,beyond the purview of the firm's interests which is required by law. Therefore, CSR is a balancing act under which firms demonstrate their commitment to the well-being of society (Majumdar, 2016).CSR motivates firms to be ethically right by contributing to society through initiatives like engaging the members of the local community, using socially responsible investment, develop aharmonious relationship with employees as well as consumers; and involve in activitiesthatwill protect and sustain the environment. Thus CSR makes firms socially, economically and environmentally responsible.…”