Management students’ knowledge of corporate social responsibility: a comparative study of ten Latin American countries

Abstract

The lack of a robust, widely accepted theory on corporate social responsibility has meant that business leaders are often unaware, or doubtful, about the presence of social responsibility across a wide spectrum of business practices in which it is manifested. Since undergraduate students on management-related degree programs are future business leaders, it is important to enquire into the knowledge they have on this subject. To this end, a sample was selected of students from universities in ten Spanish-speaking Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. A structured questionnaire was used to measure their knowledge of 18 social responsibility practices representative of three dimensions of the concept: internal responsibility, responsibility towards external stakeholders of the value chain and responsibility towards the environment. It was found that there is a widespread lack of knowledge about the business practices that constitute social responsibility actions, that some practices are better known than others (the best known are those related to the environment while the least known are those related with the external stakeholders of the value chain), and that the extent of this knowledge depends on the country where the universities are located. In addition, it was found that the relationship between knowledge and country is not mediated by gender, age, work experience, degree program studied, or year of study. These results suggest that the teaching of social responsibility in Latin American universities does not place equal emphasis on all dimensions of the concept, and that this teaching differs from one country to another.

Keywords

• Corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• undergraduate management students
• Latin American universities
• knowledge of corporate social responsibility