University social responsibility: a student base analysis in Brazil

Corporate Social Responsibility expresses a situation in which companies adopt a broader business view assuming their impact on society. While some firms start to develop their strategies focusing on responsibility, recent discussions in the Higher Education Institutions query the contribution of University Social Responsibility. Nowadays, Universities should not only do some add-on philanthropic things, but should change their strategies and really build a responsible approach into their management activities and also into their education and research programs. In this research paper we propose a modelling framework for student base analysis in order to test whether Higher Education Institutions use a long-term horizon perspective and involve all stakeholders in their strategy, especially students, to be able to optimize their positive impact in society and also to reduce negative impact if needed. Supported by the scarce academic literature in the field, selected indicators are determined to build constructs related to University Social Responsibility and to develop a structural model able to explain their relationship of causality with students’ satisfaction. The conclusion after the statistical analysis procedure applied to a sample of 392 students in courses devoted to Business Management at the university in Brazil is positive, confirming the hypotheses developed in the conceptual model. In addition, the internal social entrepreneur at the University emerges as a driver of change, as a guarantee of endogenous development of responsibility. To finish some suggestions emerge for the future research agenda in the field. © 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.