The social responsibility and competitiveness of the Romanian firm

Our study aims to answer some important questions about the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the present-day Romanian enterprise competitiveness (EC): 1. to what extent do the managers of Romanian enterprises understand and implement CSR actions?; 2. what are the factors that motivate enterprise management for proceeding with CSR actions and implementing them?; 3. what is the relationship between CSR actions and enterprise competitiveness? A number of other few questions act as support for searching the answers to the three above-formulated questions. Finally, the purpose of the research is to formulate at least a consistent and viable hypothesis about the relationship between CSR and EC actions in terms of existence, meaning and intensity. The research support is the status of the CSR actions of three Romanian enterprises located in the North-Eastern area of the country. The original, exploratory component of the research was set by the choice of a heuristic approach through which we can identify the CSR principles, the enterprise management position towards them and a few basic elements to assess the competitiveness of the three enterprises. The survey was approached by appealing to direct meetings based on a semi-structured interview, whose coordinates were set by an appropriate interview guide containing five groups of questions. Processing, analysis and interpretation of results were achieved by recourse to comparative analysis, using as a basis of comparison the standard situation of the GRI report available in 2015 for European companies as a result of previous research in the field. The findings of this research have a double benefit: first, to serve as support for further testing and validation of two hypotheses derived through the abductive approach; then to identify available directions in terms of action for the Romanian enterprise in order to enhance the incentive potential of CSR actions in relation to competitiveness. The adaptations and methodological developments made in this research stage will also be followed in order to be validated and to identify possible extensions for further research. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.