Acceptance of the Importance of CSR to Organizational Effectiveness: Impact of Cognitive Processes

Abstract

“Doing well by doing good” is of increasing interest in the world of business and to the researchers who study that world. Attention has turned to the role of business schools in producing socially responsible business people. Critics argue that business schools produce amoral and unethical business people, and accreditors and schools are responding by incorporating greater levels of ethics and social responsibility training. This study investigates the moderating effects of students’ cognitive moral development and personal moral philosophies on the change in attitudes to corporate social responsibility (CSR) students experience after taking a required, standalone CSR course. In a pre/post survey of graduate and undergraduate students taking a required CSR course, this study found that students at the Conventional level of cognitive moral development experienced a more positive change in attitudes to CSR than students at other levels. This relationship is further moderated by idealism (high idealism makes the relationship more positive) and unaffected by relativism. In post hoc analyses, we found that the CSR course also has the effect of increasing students’ idealism and reducing their relativism.