Abstract
During the first quarter of 2020, COVID-19 spread worldwide, claiming lives of thousands of people every day. This marked the beginning of all emergency and business continuity plans around the world. This study attempts to study people’s awareness of CSR practices among business firms in Dubai and investigate people’s evaluation of these CSR practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employs a quantitative research method and mainly uses questionnaires for data collection. 199 respondents are selected from different business firms in Dubai. Expert interviews are also conducted for triangulation purposes. It involves the Dubai community with various backgrounds and status. This study shows that a large scheme of the Dubai community has a decent level of expertise in sustainability and corporate social responsibility. It also shows that firms that have implemented CSR before the crisis will mostly be better suited to play a supportive role for government and society during the crisis. AcknowledgmentResearch grant provided by the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme [FRGS/1/2017/SS01/UUM/02/23] under Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, and University Utara Malaysia (SO Code: 13806) is gratefully acknowledged.
Highlights
The concept of Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a whole was firstly used in Europe in 1950 and has been used worldwide in many other terms such as corporate citizenship, sustainable responsible business, and social performance
As part of this study, an investigation was undertaken to clarify how Dubai firms operate during the crisis like COVID-19, a disease that was never known before December 2019 till in the eyes of the Dubai community
This study aims to obtain the CSR status by Dubai business firms during the crisis and explore the people’s awareness of CSR practices among business firms in Dubai, people’s expectations towards business firms in Dubai in performing CSR during the crisis, people’s evaluation of CSR practices among business firms in Dubai during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the relationship between CSR adoption levels in Dubai firms and other variables such as firm sales; the government’s response to Dubai firms concerns their CSR performance during COVID-19 and firms’ performance during the crisis
Summary
The concept of CSR (corporate social responsibility) as a whole was firstly used in Europe in 1950 and has been used worldwide in many other terms such as corporate citizenship, sustainable responsible business, and social performance. In the same context of the financial crisis, Kemper mal times such as crises come, people seem to and Martin (2010) negotiate the relationship be- evaluate firms on their CSR level of commitment, tween companies and society deteriorated, espe- even the ones having a positive experiment before cially with the collapse of stock markets, as the (Li et al, 2019) Klein and Dawar (2004), who found CSR may res- In this part of the world in Dubai, this study tries to cue firms from loss during crisis time, wherein the spot this case of CSR during the pandemic among crisis time the community mostly evaluates firms Dubai business firms This will enrich the literaagainst their CSR performance and adoption level; ture on the impact of this COVID-19 pandemic evaluate and help.
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