The relevancy of employees’ awareness of Corporate Social Responsibility

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The relevancy of employees’ awareness of

Corporate Social Responsibility

by

Alexander van Hasselt

Master of Science Business Administration Organizational & Management Control

University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business

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Abstract:

Literature tells us to integrate CSR throughout the whole organisation. Practice struggles with integration and shows situations where CSR is stored somewhere. What if a part of a company is engaged in CSR and that only designated people or units engage in CSR? Does such a situation lead to lower CSR output/performance? It does not have to be so. The literature urges to engage the entire organisation with all its employees to be involved in CSR while we believe that this may become unproductive. We do not want everybody to be dealing with the same activities such as customer relations or R&D. This is neither feasible nor efficient, thus maybe task division is an answer for CSR. We suggest it is important that there is task specialisation and division of responsibilities and avoiding that everyone is leading in the same direction, Otherwise this may eventually ground companies in unsustainable operations. Therefore the aim of this study is to investigate the awareness of employees regarding the corporate social responsibility goals of their organisation. This study further looks into the level of corporate social performance and identifies the level of awareness and determines whether the awareness is relevant in achieving a high corporate social performance. The awareness of the employees was measured through employees motivation, evaluation, job description, communication and organisational identity regarding corporate social responsibilities.

Key Words: Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Social Performance, Employees Awareness.

Abbreviation:

CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility CSP: Corporate Social Performance

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Acknowledgments

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the individuals that have helped me realise this report.

First, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. J. Gusc who inspired me with the topic of sustainable accounting in one of the early courses of my Master, Management Accounting and Techniques. Luckily enough I was able to deepen myself within this subject for my thesis with her supervision. Dr. J. Gusc made the process of writing this report highly productive as she provided a structured planning and arranged several meetings wherein she offered essential feedback. She was a key ingredient to this study as she provided the connection with the Rabobank in order to gather data there.

Secondly, I would like to thank Mr. Rutgers who works at the Rabobank and e-‐ mailed my survey to his colleagues from the Rabobank. In addition he provided me with the necessary information and documents to accomplish this report.

Alexander van Hasselt

June 2013

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1. Introduction

1.1 Background

Today, in the twenty first century the sustainability of our planet has become a hot topic. Also organisations feel the need to contribute and therefore Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become the norm in business operations. Society has become more aware of the negative environmental consequences of business operations, which puts organisations under pressure to act in a more sustainable way. The famous term CSR is now widely used but has at the same time triggered the debate among authors of its true meaning. Van Marrewijk (2003) defines it as the means by which companies try to take up responsibilities towards society as a whole. In addition to overcome traditional bias that it was mainly concerned with environmental policies, authors such as Garriga and Melé, (2004) have argued that organisations need to contribute to the tipple bottom line. This means that in general organisations need to incorporate the three P’s: People, Planet and Profit. In other words that organisations besides achieving their financial goals also focus on their social and environmental ambitions (Garriga and Melé, 2004).

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addition human assets are the most important as they are the ones that can help control costs, protect the business and create a sustainable company because they influence other resources and make decisions. Therefore Cameron (2012), believes it is also important to involve employees as he states, “we are all in it together”.

1.2 Problem Statement

The literature explains that CSR needs to be integrated throughout the whole organisation, which results in an optimal level of CSR activities (Cameron 2012). Does this really mean that all employees need to be aware and involved in the CSR activities that have been implemented by the organisation? One could think it is just a separate department within a firm that coordinates such activities without the rest of the organisation being conscious of it. In addition there have not been many studies that have looked at the perspective of employees (Chong 2009). Therefore it is interesting to investigate what position employees have with regard to CSR; are they really aware of the situation and do they care about it?

1.3 Purpose

The aim and objective of this paper is to investigate employee’s awareness concerning CSR or sustainability goals and practices within an organisation. Furthermore the goal of this study is to be able to determine whether the awareness of employees is relevant or not, to achieve successful CSR objectives. This research will contribute to the existing literature and develop theoretical knowledge concerning CSR and employees. The main goal of this paper will be to identify whether employees can recognise in what way their organisation is being socially responsible. And even more interesting whether employees actually even need to be aware of the organisation’s CSR goals in order to fulfil them. This leads to the following research question:

“Are employees aware of the sustainability actions pursued in an organization and does this awareness contribute to the fulfilling of the CSR

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This paper investigates the role employee’s play in realising CSR goals. Emphasising the issue on whether CSR needs to be integrated throughout the whole organisation and exercised within all managerial levels. Perhaps a business can achieve CSR performance without including the whole organisation and may avoid “disturbing” different employees with concerns they do not have to deal with. This research is relevant because when looking at a ‘highly’ performing organization on the sustainability ratio we wonder if this is thanks to the department which focuses on CSR and the real sustainable activities, or if the entire organizations awareness contributes to a higher rating in the sustainability ratio?

1.4 Structure

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2. Theoretical Background

2.1 Introduction

The starting point of this chapter will be Durden’s (2008) Social Responsibity Framework, which will give some of the bases of this study. In addition, this section will provide a literature review concerning the relevant topics of Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Social Performance and Employee’s Awareness of CSR. I will start by explaining Durden’s (2008) model and how it is related to this study. Furthermore I will define the terms CSR and CSP followed by an explanation about the internal organisational awareness of employees.

2.2 Framework

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In this paper we will discuss the level of awareness of employees concerning CSR activities. The awareness of employees is part of an indirect control mechanism as it identifies their identification towards their organisation. One would believe that though indirect forms of control that the employees are aware of what its organisation does in order to pursue CSR goals. Or is CSR simply an independent area of an organisation that does not need to be integrated throughout the whole organisation.

2.3 Corporate Social Performance

CSR is a term that was born in the 1920’s and after the 1930’s it started to gain some attention in the business and academic world (Carroll, 1979). Until now there is still much confusion about the term as many authors give adapted meaning to it (Van Dijken 2007). As a result there is no universally accepted definition for it. Van Dijken (2007) mentions various definitions of the term, such as the following: “Firms that initiate voluntary commitment for a better society

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and environment”; “Firms need to focus beyond financial performance”; “CSR is part of all corporate action and behaviour”.

In addition Garriga and Melé (2004) explain that for some people CSR refers to the legal responsibilities while others give meaning to it in the way that firms need to enact social and ethical responsibilities. Due to the different perspectives in defining CSR, confusion is created among organisations to act upon them (Campbell, 2007).

In this paper we will refer to the term CSR as activities that insinuate specific and broad topics from an individual matter to a larger audience, environmental issues and the related stakeholders. Therefore we will use the definition of CSR as formulated by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which is the following:

“CSR is continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.”

Just like CSR, for Corporate Social Performance (CSP) there is no universal definition because it has multiple dimensions (Wood, 1991). Some authors have attempted to define the concept just like Carrol (1979) who developed a conceptual model regarding CSP that looks into three interrelated dimensions. Elkington (1997) refers to it as the ‘triple bottom line’ or the three P’s: ‘People, Planet, Profit’. Which means that organisations need to be economical, socially and environmentally responsible. CSP looks beyond the financial performance of organisation but tries to identify how they can have a positive impact on society. The problem is that these social and environmental impacts are hard to quantify and therefore it is harder to determine the CSP of an organisation. In short, CSP is the outcome of the CSR goals performed by a firm.

2.4 Internal Organisational Awareness

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awareness will be referred as the ‘Internal Organisational Awareness’. To define what awareness really means we look into the field of marketing that often uses the term ‘brand awareness’. Marketing literature defines this concept as the consciousness of customers to recognise the existence and availability of a company’s product (Hoyer and Brown 1990). The reason why this has been adapted from the marketing idea is because CSR shows a close relationship with this field. Hemingway and Maclagan (2004) state that CSR can be used as a term for corporate image management and is a strategic marketing activity. This all comes down to some of the reasons why CSR is used by a firm. To gain and maintain a good reputation it is important that stakeholders become aware of the CSR activities performed by the organisation. In this sense it can be coupled to the famous concept of ‘brand awareness’. For this reason we will define the new concept of ‘Internal Organisational Awareness’ (IOA) as the following:

“The consciousness of employees to recognise the existence of sustainable goals performed by the organisation”.

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organisation regarding CSR activities increases the level of IOA. But the question is if that in turns lead to an increase of CSP.

Van Marrewijk (2003) discusses the fact that CSR needs to be more transparent in doing business. He believes that it is a concept that needs to be incorporated across the whole organisation. He states that different management disciplines have acknowledged that CSR also fits within their respective fields such as quality management, marketing, finance and HRM. On the other hand, Banerjee (2001) believes that the concept of CSR is too broad to be applied and relevant across the entire organisation. To add on to this, Porter and Kramer (2006) also suggest that CSR approaches are so fragmented and disconnected from the business and strategy that organisations do not optimise the social benefits it can generate. For this reason organisations see CSR or sustainable activities as separate entities from the business operations and have not attempted to routinize them. Yuan, Bao and Verbeke (2011) further discuss that in order to integrate CSR initiatives they need to take part of the decision making process. In addition it is important that CSR activities are coherent and coordinated. Inadequate cross-‐functional coordination can lead to internal conflicts and poor performances towards achieving sustainable and corporate goals (Cordano and Frieze, 2000). In other words if CSR is integrated throughout the organisation, it may achieve better CSP. Within organisations there needs to be a strong internal linkage between CSR and the firm’s ‘core’ as Yuan, Bao and Berbeke (2004) put it.

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aspects in their decision-‐making processes (Laufer and Robertson 1997). This ensures an interaction between an organisation’s business practices and CSR activities. Laufer and Robertson (1997) further mention that in order to integrate CSR across the whole organisation it does not only have to be present at managerial level but also at an operational level and that CSR practices become part of everyday business operations. When employees are aware of these activities they will ensure that they enact upon them everyday in their daily routines, which creates high IOA and as a results CSR activities will be integrated.

In addition the core values of an organisation are important to look at. Collin and Porras (2000) define core values as the “central and enduring tenets of the

organization; they form the glue that holds an organization together as it grows, decentralizes and expands”. Past studies have indicated that core values

significantly influence organizational outcomes (Jin and Drozdenko 2009). In addition they state that the core values are part of a strategy to achieve successful organizational performance and that these values have deep meaning and importance to organizational members. This can directly be linked to the level of IOA as the core values are often related to CSR initiatives.

2.5 Proposition

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that CSR goals may be described in annual reports and other documentation but that employees are unaware of what they really are. May an organisation pursue its CSR routines without having to involve the majority of the employees creating low levels of IOA? One may think CSR can be implemented through a separate department that specially focuses on those issues. By contradicting the thoughts of authors the following proposition is made:

“In sustainability operating organisations the Internal Organisational Awareness

is not relevant to Corporate Social Performance”.

Therefore we have made the following model that can be seen in figure 3 below that has been adapted from Durden’s (2008) framework. Our model indicates that the IOA is irrelevant from achieving CSP. Even though there is transparency that increases the IOA, which results in the integration of CSR to pursue high CSP. In other words, there is a simple step for an organisation to have CSR goals that are performed by means of CSR coordinators, which results in high CSP, which is indicated by one direct arrow.

Figure 2 – MCS and social responsibility framework

Figure 3 – CSR awareness framework

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In short the literature tells us to integrate CSR throughout the whole organisation. Practice struggles with integration and shows situations where CSR is stored somewhere. What if a part of a company is engaged in CSR and that only designated people or units engage in CSR? Does such a situation lead to lower CSR output/performance? It does not have to be so. The literature urges to engage the entire organisation with all its employees to be involved in CSR while we believe that this may become unproductive. With the figure above we want to show that we do not want everybody to be dealing with the same activities such as customer relations or R&D. This is neither feasible nor efficient, thus maybe task division is an answer for CSR. We suggest it is important that there is task specialisation and division of responsibilities and avoiding that everyone is leading in the same direction, Otherwise this may eventually ground companies in unsustainable operations.

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3. Research Design

This section describes the steps of the research project. The study consists of a literature study and an empirical part. The literature study explains theory regarding CSR, CSP and employee’s perceptions in those areas. For the empirical part data was collected at one company by means of two sources. First of all secondary data was gathered in the form of documents, which were provided by the company. The second part of the empirical data was primary data, which was gathered in the form of questionnaires that were answered by the employees of the company.

3.1 Study Setting

The company that has been chosen to perform this study will be the Rabobank. It is necessary for this bank to score high on the sustainability ratings in order to be able to test whether the employee’s awareness can indicate to be relevant or not. Therefore, we believe the Rabobank is the most suitable bank for this study. In 2005 Rabobank was ranked as the second most sustainable bank in Europe among the commercial banks assessed by the Swiss Asset Management Corporate Sustainability Assessment. The characteristics of the bank provide an interesting sample for the research in order to measure the behaviour of the employees and to test whether they are aware of the CSR activities. We believe the Rabobank is more suitable for this analysis compared to other banks such as ABN AMRO and ING as they score lower on the ‘eerlijke bankwijzer’. Moreover, this rating nominated the Rabobank as ‘Employer of the year 2012’. Furthermore the Rabobank seems to emphasize more on sustainability than its competitors do, as it is part of their core values, which does not appear to be so with the other banks. This paper will analyse a sample of a local Rabobank. The population of this local Rabobank is estimated to have 350 employees since exact numbers were not provided.

3.2 Data Collection

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3.2.1 Secondary Data Collection

Secondary data will be gathered in the form of archival records and documentation such as annual reports. Yin (1994) describes that the information gathered through this process is very reliable as it provides exact information. In addition van Aken, Berends and van der Bij (2007) explain that documentation can deliver information that has been forgotten by individuals from the organisation.

3.2.1.A Corporate Social Responsibility Goals

These different forms of documentations will be gathered to gain background information about the Rabobank and to determine their CSR goals. Annual Reports will be used to determine the Rabobanks overall CSR goals. Furthermore we will use documents from the local Rabobank to identify the CSR goals that have been specified to local needs.

3.2.1.B Operationalisation of Corporate Social Performance

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impact of the products which arise from the services the Rabobank delivers (Bebbington, 2007). In the next section we will describe which documents are used to measure CSP, and how these measures fit in the model of Bebbington (2007).

1) Economic measure:

To measure the economic benefit, which accrues from the investments in CSR, they will be looked at the amount of charitable giving, the existence of a corporate charitable foundation and the investments, which are directly related to CSR activities within the company. According to Wood (2010) this is an easy concept to measure, which is used a lot by companies to show how much of their income they give away to charitable institutions. This measure can be easily compared with other companies in the same industry.

2) Resources and Environmental measure:

The resource and environmental category will be measured by looking at the energy use of the company, the use of the different resources within the company (e.g. paper, office furniture, etc.).

3) Social measure:

Social category will be measured by looking at consumer and employee attitude reports. In addition this looks at the CSP at a more practical point of view by identifying in what kind of social issues an organisation is involved. There are an indefinite amount of social aspect organisations can focus on and of course it can’t emphasis on all of them so it is interesting to identify in which areas organisation want to concentrate and give priority to.

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4) Social Reporting:

Pressures to issue social reports are often experienced by organisations. This crates transparency concerning CSR for external as internal stakeholders. Because of such exposures, organisations might emphasise more on CSR and increase their CSP. By looking at social reports, stakeholders become aware of the social activities performed by the organisations. Further analysis could be made by looking at the amount of social reporting, whether this is done annually or quarterly. In addition according to Mobasher, Cooley and Srivastava (2000) the amount of social reporting could be quantified in the number of pages that is dedicated to CSR. This has to be measured by looking at companies’ self-‐reports.

5) 3rd_{Party
Assessment
Ratings}

In an article of Vermeir, van der Velde and Corten (2005) they explain how to measure the gap between CSR and Financial performance. They do this by using a third assessment rating, which are independent agencies that provide an in depth analysis of a firms CSR performance and gives it a rating. This measure is appropriate to measure the CSR performance of the Rabobank since they use several third party assessment ratings such as SAM, Oekom, Ethibel, Sustainalytics and ‘de eerlijke bankwijzer’, which has been described on the Rabobank website.

Having a third party assessment is appropriate measure as it gives a more objective point of view and reduces bias since it is performed from an external party. These ratings give a clear illustration of the company’s commitment to CSR activities. In addition they are easily quantifiable and accessible.

3.2.2 Primary Data collection

3.2.2.A Survey Research

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across subsets of the chosen sample so that different relationships can be identified (Cooper and Schindler 2008), therefore we hope to be able to identify a pattern of behaviour from the Rabobank employees. Furthermore surveys are a good in order to generate a high response rate; in addition they are perceived as more anonymous (Cooper and Schindler 2008), which is useful when discussing the topic of CSR since this remains a sensitive subject. Online surveys have become a popular method since the existence of the internet, not only do they quicken the responses but also are a greener form of surveys as they discard the use of paper. Therefore in this research an online survey method will be used. This technique also gives other advantages because they are faster, cheaper and easily modified if this study would extend by comparing different banks.

The aim of surveys is to generate a high response thereby trying to reach as many employees from the Raboabank. This will be done by designing a survey through an online survey program called Qualtrics and emailing them to Rabobank employees. The Rabobank has an estimate of 350 employees since the exact data was not available. Cooper and Schindler (2008) advise to make the surveys easy to read, clear response directions, advanced notification and to

encourage participants to respond. In order to follow Cooper and Schindler’s

(2008) advise we did the following:

1. Survey questions were short and written in statement form.

2. Only one question was asked per driver of awareness, therefore having few questions and a short survey.

3. Combine the survey with another student of the Rijksuniversiteit of Groningen who also gathered data from the Rabobank. This creates one single questionnaire instead of sending two, which might reduce the response rate.

4. A pilot student was asked to take the survey to assess the ease and timing of the questionnaire.

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6. Follow-‐ups and reminders were sent out. Reminders should also be sent because Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009) mention that online survey are easily and quickly rejected as respondents are only one ‘click’ from being discarding the survey.

7. To increase the response rate hard copies were created of the survey to bring them physically to the local establishments. However permission was not granted by the Rabobank to perform this method, as it would bother the employees.

3.2.2.B Questionnaire

As we want to measure attitudes of individuals within an organisation regarding CSR activities we used a 7 point Likert Scale type of questions (Gleen 2007). There have been many controversies in academic literature about how many points to use in the Likert scale as it may affect the reliability and validity of the response patterns (Cicchetti, Showalter and Tyer 1985). Different authors such as Symonds (1924) and Miller (1956) believe a 7-‐point Likert scale optimises the validity and reliability. It has been proven that respondents prefer to have an odd number of response categories as it allows a middle or neutral choice (Neumann and Neumann 1981). From a respondent perspective, a 5 point Likert scale might be easier and quicker to answer but respondent tend not to chose the extremes, which means it only leaves them one option from the neutral point (Colman, Preston and Norris 1997). For these reasons we believe it will be more appropriate to use a 7-‐point Likert Scale in this research as shown below. In addition in order to determine what the level of IOA is regarding the scale, we have split up the scale into three segments as shown below.

1 – Strongly disagree

2 – Disagree

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3 – Somewhat disagree

4 – Neutral à Medium level of Awareness

5 – Somewhat agree 6 – Agree 7 – Strongly agree 3.2.2.C Concept Measurement

The survey questions will be developed in order to determine the level of IOA, which can be done by looking at five drivers of IOA.

(a) The way an employee is personally motivated towards sustainable activities.

(b) The amount of sustainable aspects that are incorporated in an employee’s job description.

(d) How much emphasis is placed on sustainable activities when employees are evaluated.

(e) The communication of sustainable initiatives throughout the organisation.

(b) The strength of an employee’s organisational identity.

One statement is used for each variable to measure the level of awareness, which can be found in the Appendix I. Since we have five different variables we want to identify a relationship, which may explain the inter correlations among these variables (Tucker and MacCallum, 1997). The ultimate goal is to group these questions into one single factor meaning that they all explain the level of IOA.

If these five variables can be grouped into one factor we can add the total scores of each individual respondent, which means that everyone will receive a score out of 35, since each variable the max score is seven and we have five variables. The scores will be categorised into three groups as shown in the table below:

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Five drivers: 1) Personal Motivation:

Motivation in an organisation may describe the behaviour of employees towards organisational goals and at the same time satisfying their own personal needs (Urošević and Bojana, 2012). When it comes to environmental aspects, employee’s motivation is mostly driven by personal control (Shamir, 1991). Ramus and Kilmer (2007) determine that employee’s individual motivation promotes ecoinitiative, which may increase their awareness of present CSR activities. Therefore we believe that motivation contribute to the level of IOA.

2) Job description:

It is important as an employee to have a coherent job description in order to know what exactly is expected from him/her. Due to an uncertain and changing business environment it can be challenging to generate accurate job descriptions. This is the reason that organisations do not want to create job descriptions that are too specific (Grant, 1996). However this may lead to confusing and inefficient work procedures and areas may be forgotten. CSR activities might not always be written down as a priority since there might be more focus on other short-‐term goals. This means that CSR objectives mostly long term oriented might be suppressed and not all included in employee’s job description reducing the IOA in that area. However in order to guide employees, CSR values are achieved through additional audits, targets and manuals. This integrated process contributes to the level of awareness (Cramer et al 2006).

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Having CSR policies and goal in place is one thing, but it is important to review or evaluate them in order to be able to measure their success. Evaluations help organisations to see whether they are achieving their goals. In addition, they can be a valuable tool to determine the successful and unsuccessful projects (Powell, Stern and Ardoin 2006). CSR activities need to be managed and measured as project collectively on corporate level using a project portfolio (Salazar, Husted and Biehl 2012). By reviewing such activity on a periodically basses will create extra emphasis in achieving CSR goals and create more awareness. The frequency and depth of the evaluation are factors that may influence such awareness.

4) Communication:

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is a coherent communication from the top to the rest of the employees in order to create awareness of CSR policies and avoid unclear implications.

5) Organisational identity:

Worcester (2009), states that in recent years CSR has been recognised as one of the most important factors that influences corporate reputation. Having a strong corporate identity can result in a competitive advantage (Balmer, 2009). Corporate identity is the building process, which refers to the impressions, image and personality that an organisation presents to its stakeholders (Schmit and Pan, 1994). This creates a company culture that is well embedded throughout the organisation. Trying to create such culture, it is important to anchor CSR aspect in a company’s policies for example by embedding sustainable aspects in mission statements (Cramer, Heijden and Jonkern, 2006). However, when CSR is not actively integrated in the daily behaviour it may simply remain empty ideals (Lauring and Thomsen, 2008). If CSR activities are incorporated in daily routines, employees might be more involved, which means they will be more aware of the CRS goals of their organisation an increases IOA.

3.2.2.D Core Values

It is important as an employee to recognise what the core values are of your organisation. This is especially relevant for the Rabobank since their core values are related to the underlying CSR activities. Therefore being able to determine the core values of the Rabobank can be linked to the level of IOA. In order to measure this concept, a list of twelve core values was created; the four core values of the Rabobank and the other eight remaining values were taken from other organisations. Employees were asked to select the four corresponding ones from the list of twelve. Each individual employee was given a score from 0 to 4 depending on their correctly chosen values.

3.2.2.E Functions of the employees

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In the questionnaire each employee is asked to indicate his or her function. This will enable us to identify whether particular functions have any significance on the results and effect the level of awareness. The employees will therefore be categorised according to their functions. In order to analyse these different groups and to see whether they are significant a Kruskal-‐Wallis test will be applied.

3.3 Data Analysis

3.3.1 Descriptive Statistics

In order to make sense of the collected data it is essential to gather descriptive statistics. We are dealing with a sample of 82 respondents, which is a response rate of 24% and need to give meaning to the data. Descriptive statistics are used to represent and characterise data in a manageable form (Tannenbaum 2010). This makes it easier to compare and identify the patterns within our sample. The survey statements that measure the variable that may influence the IOA are answered on a 7 point Likert-‐scale and therefore we can easily determine its distribution and identify scores. When analysing the scores of the variables we will specifically look at the mode scores instead of the mean scores. The mean score does not give any indication of the distribution of the data whereas the mode indicates the greatest part of the sample.

3.3.2 Assumptions

Earlier we mentioned we would perform a factor analysis in order to group the five variables together. In order to perform such analysis several assumptions need to be met. The most important is to gather a large response in order to be able to make generalisation about the population; the larger the sample the stronger the statistical power for the generalisation (Hair, Black, Babin and Anderson, 2009).

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we want to create data reduction and group five variables together, correlation is a necessary assumption.

In addition, this analysis also requires a Kaiser-‐Meyer-‐Oklin Measure of Sampling Adequacy that is greater than 0.5 for each individual variables as well as the set of variables.

3.4 Expected Results

The secondary data will be used to identify the CSR goals and evaluate the CSP of the Rabobank using the multidimensional framework that brings different performances together. We expect the Rabobank to score a high CSP. The primary data will determine in what ways the employees are aware of these sustainable initiatives. The expected results of this research are that there is a low level of IOA in CSR activities at the Rabobank despite of the fact that the data does indicate high sustainable performance. If these are the results that are born from this study, it can be implied that an organisation does not have to put its energy into including all employees in the sustainable goals of the organisation. It may indicate that CSR initiatives are not integrated throughout the organisation and that its objectives are only followed within an independent business unit.

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4. Results and Discussion

This section will present the results and discussion from this study. This chapter is divided into three parts. First we will discuss the CSR goals that are present at the Rabobank followed by the second part, which will look at the CSP of the bank, which are gathered from secondary data. Finally we will discuss the level of internal organisational awareness. This will be done through primary data by looking at the five drivers that influence the awareness of employees

4.1 Corporate Social Responsibility Goals

According to the annual report 2012 of the Rabobank Group, the company tries to create an identity by integrating cooperative banking and sustainability together. To be more precise their mission is the following: “Contributing to the sustainable development of prosperity and well-‐being by helping customers, communities and society at large to achieve their financial and other ambitions” (Annual Report 2012). In addition sustainability is one of Rabobank’s core values. They believe that there is more than just the financial gains and therefore they emphasise that its cooperative business practices also contribute to sustainability.

In order to do this, the Rabobank has established four pillars to focus on. In 2012 they developed four key performance indicators (KPIs), which are described in the annual report 2012 as the following:

1. Helping costumers move towards sustainable business operations 2. Helping customers make responsible investments

3. Supporting community partnerships

4. Providing climate-‐neutral and energy-‐efficient services

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CSR Commercial

Objectives Management Internal CSR CSR in HRM Corporate CSR and Involvement

CSR

Networks New Dutch -‐ Communicate CSR objectives to the consumers -‐ Monitoring energy use -‐ Internal social monitoring -‐ Cooperation funds -‐ Groningen fair trade -‐ Integrating immigrant -‐ CSR workshops

for employees -‐ CSR workshops for employees -‐ Employee satisfaction -‐ Increase members ratio -‐ Sustainable city -‐ Integrating foreigners -‐ Promote sustainable investments -‐ Promote sustainable investments -‐ Diversity: Gender and ethnicity -‐ Stimulation

funds -‐ Readings and guest lectures -‐ Integrating exchange students -‐ Green Financing -‐ Green Financing -‐ Consumer

complaints

-‐ Sustainable procurement

4.2 Corporate Social Performance

In this section, the CSP posture of the Rabobank will be determined, by using different relevant documents about the bank. The results about the CSP outcomes will be categorized by five different categories. The ‘Sustainable Assessment Model’ from Bebbington (2007) categorises CSP in the following three sections: The economic, resource/ environmental and the social category. In addition we have included ‘Social Reporting’, which has overlap in all three categories and therefore will be described by it self. The last measure of CSP will be third party ratings, which is an external indicator, which cannot be incorporated into the SAM model but is an interesting indicator and therefore was included at the end of this chapter. Finally this section will end with a conclusion of the CSP of the Rabobank.

4.2.1 Social Reporting

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30 of pages dedicated to the annual reports from 2001 till 2012, which are summarised in the table 3 below.

The amount of pages dedicated to CSR activities in the annual reports per year

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

3 2 3 2 4 5 6 6 8 10 10 13

It is interesting to see that that there has been a gradual increase over the years in the amount of pages that have been published in the annual reports. Therefore we can determine that the Rabobank has improved in the field of social reporting. It may imply that the organisation is more involved in CSR activities and that it wants to inform its stakeholders.

It is also noteworthy to stress that in the years from 2001 until 2010 the chapter concerning CSR activities was located towards the end of the annual report whereas from 2011 onwards this section was located at the beginning of the annual report. We may interpret this finding as if the Rabobank gives a greater interest and importance towards CSR activities.

4.2.2 Economic category

Each year, the Rabobank donates about €500.000,-‐ to €600.000,-‐ of their net income to the local community. This is given through means of sponsoring, different charity funds and other projects. There are many associations, foundations and institutions in Groningen that have great ambition and future plans but simply lack the financial resources in order to achieve their goals. Therefore the local Rabobank established the “Stimuleringfonds” and the “Coöperatiefonds”. These are two charitable giving funds, which focus on the local community. The idea is that the Rabobank supports projects that contribute to the welfare and quality of life in the region. They will provide €80.000,-‐ in total, and up to € 5,000 per registered project. The money is solely for non-‐profit projects that are in the field of culture, service, education, sports and health care.

The relevancy of employees’ awareness of Corporate Social Responsibility