University Engagement for Enlightening CSR: Serving Hegemony or Seeking Constructive Change

Abstract

This exploratory essay argues that of all organizations least analyzed for the quality, social impact, of their public relations engagement, universities probably head that list. Such impact, idiosyncratic to universities’ unique and complex sociopolitical role, justifies their corporate social responsibility (CSR) as organizational legitimacy, license to operate. Judged against strategic issues management’s (SIM) rationale for using stakeholder expectations to define legitimacy gaps (between organizational impact and stakeholder expectations), the engagement role unique to universities tests their functional and moral ability to enact themselves constructively in communities where they operate and in society at large. Stakeholder voices of all kinds engage to set CSR standards as means for improving the qualitative functioning of society; no society can be better than the organizations that engage to draw conclusions and create norms by which to enact it. Unique CSR engagement roles of universities include (1) elevating the functional and moral standards which guide them, (2) engaging in internal and external public arenas to foster constructive social impact, and (3) fostering research, teaching, and community service as engagement that produces social change by raising standards of moral and functional impact. This aspirational principle focuses attention as to whether universities’ CSR/legitimacy efforts reinforce hegemony or seek constructive social change.