Core constructs of corporate social responsibility: a path analysis

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the causal relationships among four components in corporate social responsibility (CSR) domain. This study posits that CSR is mainly influenced by: accountability, responsibility, transparency, and competitiveness.

A path analysis is employed to determine the relationships, while confirmatory factor analysis is applied to assess the construct validity of the model. The data presented in this study were collected from Taiwanese companies in the year 2009 using questionnaires. A total of 170 companies were analyzed.

The results show that both accountability and transparency provide statistically significant contributions to the prediction of competitiveness, which in turn has a significant effect on responsibility.

First, the paper encompasses four core factors influencing the measurement of CSR. Second, the sample size used to analyze the diversity of concepts may appear small and therefore the result may not be considered precise since the total number of companies in Taiwan is over one million. Large sample size may lead to different results and therefore needs to be further explored. Third, while the proposed model was only tested in Taiwan, a country with 97.8 percent SMEs, the outcome of the research may only be applicable to Taiwan rather than to other countries with different national systems of business‐society relations. Finally, this study only investigated the relationships among core components of CSR.

While developing business strategies, companies taking accountability and transparency as priority will strengthen their competitiveness and in turn generate responsibility and lead to CSR, a way to reach corporate sustainability.

The results provide business leaders with practical advice that implementing CSR is not only the smart and right thing to do from a business perspective, but also the right thing to do from a society perspective.

Applying for international standards could be a feasible and optimal way to show commitments to CSR implementation.