a COMPARTIVE ANALYSIS ABOUT THE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSYBILITY:THE BEGINNING PROCESS

The survey on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be made using two different types of exploration. A first perspective is linked to economics actors: this refers on the business world; the Green Paper[1] examines the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as “ a concept whereby companies decided voluntarily to contribute to a better society and environment”. This responsibility is expressed towards employees and more generally towards stakeholders affected by business and which in turn can influence its success”. The above-mentioned determination focuses on the role that economic operators (entrepreneurs) voluntarily decide to keep among the various parties involved directly or indirectly. The second perspective, however, refers to the perception that external actors, future employees, (students) on one hand, universities and training activities, on the other hand, they have the same concept of social responsibility adopted by businesses. It focuses on the role that social responsibility practices may be of use to persons outside the corporations, in the choice of their work activities and their future career (students) and in the planning of educational activities (university). In this paper we want to deepen this second aspect, in two different contexts related to CSR: the first regarding the CSR’s attractiveness towards job seekers or potential workforce, on the other hand, the effort proposed by Education and Training Institution to create a CRS’s awareness in the context. In this approach, special attention must be paid to the workforce, one of the most important stakeholders of the firm. As stated by Millàn & Bereni in 2005 “social responsible practices primarily affect the employees”.In defining CSR policies, literature has pointed out that the key role of human resources is the organization's success (Pfeffer 1994; Snell et al., 1996; Munoz, 2004). In addition, these policies act as a communication tool to other stakeholders. For instance, to retain and attract the best candidates is a priority for the organizations and has to be a permanent practice, giving the companies a strategic competitive advantage (Pfeffer 1994; Wright et al., 1995).In this sense, many researchers suggest that not getting involved in social issues has a negative impact on the firm's reputation (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Gatewood et al., 1993; Freeman, 2006), and minimize their attraction capacity to the workforce (McGuire, et al., 1988; Wright et al. 1995; Turban and Greening, 1997; Albinger and Freeman, 2000). But in order to obtain these results, great role has the ability of the university to institutionalize training processes useful to help younger generations in understanding the issue of CSR, as well as to build a responsible awareness of the positive impact of CSR in the served community and regarding their context (AACSB International, 2008).The goal of the paper is to clarify how potential employees consider attention to CSR policies as a key factor in choosing their work and how Universities have been operating in the context, offering their students courses related to CSR. Our hypothesis is based on the assumption that if the Universities pay more attention to the practices of corporate social responsibility it will generate for learners greater interest and awareness respect the culture of ethics and social responsibility and in the preference for future employees (students) of organizations, working environment attentive ethical values. The analysis is developed through cross-country approach, comparing three different contexts (Italy, Spain, Portugal) and three different Universities (Catanzaro, Jaen, Algarve); The study sample was composed of university students of Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro (Italy), University of Jaen (Spain), and University of Algarve– Superior School of Hotel and Tourism Management (Portugal). The purpose of the paper, in particular, is based on three principles.First, figure out if the Corporate Social Responsibility can rapresent element of attractiveness for the sample of college students surveyed (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese), which play the role of individuals in search of employment, in the evalutation of job offers. Understand, merely, in the firms carrying out socially responsible policies are preferred by these future employees compared to other organizations that do not consider the values on CSR. Second, implement a careful evaluation of training programs in the three different universities, belonging respectively to Italy, Spain and Portugal, to ascertain the presence of modules or courses belonging to the notions of ethics, social responsibility or similar. Studying, finally, the existence of a link between the results emerging in the first part and the provision of training university. The analysis of these two elements allows, in fact, to test empirically whether the answers given by the student has been influenced or not by the university educational background or not. The paper is organized as follows: we present a theoretical framework to understand the links between CSR and its impact regarding potential workers and universities’ systems; we present methodology and results and we conclude with some theoretical remarks.