Sustainability and corporate social responsibility in the opinion of undergraduate students in management programs: Between the concrete and the abstract

Abstract

This paper analyses the opinion of Management undergraduate students of a Brazilian university regarding their notion of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. As to theory, this research was anchored in the stakeholder theory in order to approach the concepts of sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Two surveys were carried out with data collected through triangulation (questionnaire application and documentary research). A total of 474 valid questionnaires were obtained, and this is the size of the sample. Data analysis was carried out through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software and the use of descriptive statistics as well as non-parametric tests. Results for students' notion of sustainability indicate that its economic dimension predominates over the others, revealing that the equitable treatment of the economic, social-cultural and environmental dimensions exists only in the abstract realm. As to the notion of corporate social responsibility, evidence indicates that the most important dimensions are, in hierarchical order: the philanthropic, the ethical, the legal, and the economic. Thus, in the concrete realm, the notions of sustainability and corporate social responsibility come closer because of the hierarchy of their dimensions.