Sulphey M. M.

With multiple scandals and a host of disingenuous actions creating ripples across the corporate world, it is high time that Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) is accorded the due importance, at par with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), by academia and the industry. CSI refers to situations wherein firms fail to meet a “minimum behavioral standard with respect to the corporation’s relationship with its stakeholders”. There have been many instances wherein CSI and corporate wrongdoings have been covered up with CSR. Many scholars consider CSR and CSI as opposite forces that are interconnected and interdependent, and take turns in giving rise to each other. CSI, being an emergent and a topical subject area, is yet to develop in terms of theory, and is still evolving. The present work attempts to motivate further investigation in the emerging area by presenting theoretical views and available accumulated empirical works. The study has puts across a fair view of the topic. It is expected that the present work will stimulate scholars to take up further investigation in the emerging area.

Organizations place great value on corporate social responsibility (CSR), as it has been found to influence customer attitudes and intentions. This study analyzed the impact of CSR on consumers’ purchase intentions. The significance of this study arises from the fact that all progressive companies are increasing their expenditure on CSR activities. In this study, purchase intention was considered as a dependent variable, while trust, ethical, and legal CSR activities were the independent variables. Data for the study was collected from 210 randomly chosen respondents from amongst consumers of Delhi and National Capital Region of India. The data, analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling, found that trust, ethics, and legal CSR activities directly impacted consumer purchase intentions. These results indicate that legal factors do not significantly influence the corporate decision on spending on CSR activities. On the other hand, ethical factors and trust factors significantly influence the corporate decision on expenditure on CSR activities. The findings highlight companies’ requirements to be conscious of their social image. Probable limitations of the study could include sample size and the number of variables chosen.