A PARALLEL STUDY OF THE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ENGAGEMENTS FOR THE HOTEL AND GAMING ENTERPRISES IN AN EMERGING ECONOMY – HONG KONG AND MACAO PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

This study explored the evolving controversial subject of Corporate Social Responsibility engagements effect in an emerging economy based on the Hong Kong & Macao perspectives. The research proposed to examine and review the rationale and experiences of the CSR engagements by two hotel-gaming enterprises in Hong Kong and Macao. The research methodology adopted a mixed-qualitative approach. The qualitative content analysis drew on data from interviews, live forum presentation reporting and desktop studies embedded the non-participation observation approaches.The study findings identified the direct and indirect motives and outcomes of the management views and general public perceived relevance in the CSR engagements. The results implied that the hotel enterprise's management took an outside-in approach to weight the CSR programs from one?s own internal intent. The hotel enterprise's CSR engagement levels reflected that the top management linked the enterprise's direction and business performance versus the long term CSR objectives for the local community. The initial good intent can be misaligned from the CSR outcomes. The management board values and norms played a key role in endorsing the voluntary CSR engagements and practices in order to comply with the imposed government policy or regulation. In addition, the CSR awareness among employees were relatively lower while the marketing unit inserted inadequate effort to advocate CSR, versus the management board proactively announced details in the annual management reporting to nurture positive public perception. The research findings provide thoughts of the latent evolving reality to the contextual CSR engagements in the emerging economies inputted to the business management implications.