https://doi.org/10.37955/cs.v6i3.2799
Received June 23, 2021 / Approved October, 30 2022 Pages: 73-80
eISSN: 2600-5743
Social responsibility as a strategy in
university management
Responsabilidad social como estrategia en
la gestión universitaria
Gustavo Gonzalo Cortez
University of Zulia
Guayaquil, Ecuador
gustavo.cortez@uleam.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2193-5908
ABSTRACT
We are at a juncture where social responsibility is perceived as a new
way of doing citizenship and working for development, which
generates interest in various groups of civil society, including
universities, to strengthen its relevance in society. The objective of this
paper is to analyze social responsibility as a strategy in university
management. It is a descriptive documentary study, based on a
systematic review of articles and texts selected with clearly defined
criteria. The results indicate that social responsibility forces to
restructure and rethink the university tasks in the 21st century, so that
it can be at the forefront of the processes of transformation and change
with scientific, technological, social and cultural orientation. It is
concluded that under the strategy of university social responsibility it
is possible to perceive the social, economic, political and welfare needs
that are poorly met and require solutions, managing to articulate
teaching, research and extension, with a view to strengthening the
university-environment linkage.
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RESUMEN
Estamos en una coyuntura donde la responsabilidad social es
percibida como una nueva manera de hacer ciudadanía y trabajar para
el desarrollo, por lo que genera interés en diversos grupos de la
sociedad civil, entre ellos las universidades, para afianzar su
relevancia en la sociedad. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la
responsabilidad social como una estrategia en la gestión de las
universidades. Es un estudio descriptivo documental, basado en una
revisión sistemática de artículo y textos seleccionados con criterios
claramente definidos. Los resultados señalan que la responsabilidad
social obliga a reestructurar y repensar los quehaceres universitarios
en el siglo XXI, para que ella pueda ser vanguardia de los procesos de
transformación y de cambios con orientación científica, tecnológica,
social y cultural. Se concluye que bajo la estrategia de responsabilidad
social universitaria logran percibirse las necesidades sociales,
económicas, políticas y asistenciales que son poco satisfechas y que
requieren soluciones, logrando articular la docencia, investigación y
extensión, con miras a fortalecer la vinculación universidad-entorno.
Keywords / Palabras clave
Social responsibility; universities; university management
Responsabilidad social; universidades; gestión universitaria
Introduction
Today we do not only talk about corporate social responsibility, but the
term has acquired relevance for various sectors of society such as:
foundations, corporations, public agencies, universities, guilds, and
other institutions that have the duty to identify and provide solutions
to problems of public interest, through strategies and citizen initiatives
that are inspired by transparency, plurality, sustainability, as well as
civic ethics. In other words, social responsibility (SR) goes beyond the
limit of the company with its environment. In this sense, Pinillos
(2005) considers that corporate social responsibility is a concept to be
defined and offers some clarifications about it, among which he
highlights the fact that the corporation to which this responsibility
refers is not only limited to the large multinational company, but to
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the institutions (in its broad sense) that directly or indirectly have the
capacity to generate socioeconomic impact in the community where
they are developing their activity.
Thus, it is important to establish a concept of Social Responsibility
(SR) that is adapted to the State and public management in different
social areas, such as university education, through programs aimed at
improving the quality of life of the people. This implies a paradigmatic
challenge for the management of universities, in the sense that social
responsibility is not an exclusive patrimony of entrepreneurship, but
poses a new relationship between University-State-Society as a real
factor of transformation. All this is framed in the growing consensus
that the development of a democratic society will not be possible
without the participation and cooperation of three basic actors: the
state, the market and society.
The objective of this paper is to analyze social responsibility as a
strategy in university management. It is a descriptive documentary
study, based on a systematic review of articles and texts selected with
clearly defined criteria.
Traditionally, it has been considered that the company as a production
unit fulfills the economic function of producing goods and services to
satisfy human needs. The traditional consideration of this function
understands that the company, in the development of its economic-
productive activity, implicitly fulfills a social function centered on its
contribution to the general objectives of economic policy, as goals
expressive of the degree of economic and social welfare desirable by
the community (Díez de Castro, 1982:38-39).
In this context, it is considered that the most important responsibility
of the company to society is to effectively fulfill its economic mission
of providing the products and services it requires, in addition to others
such as protecting the environment for future generations, the
discussion that presents corporate social responsibility as an element
of particular importance for the permanence and success of public or
private business organizations arises. In this regard, seeking to be an
excellent company is not incompatible with being a responsible
company, where the business plan is included with the life project.
The responsibility of the company towards society as a whole, or social
responsibility understood as an integral responsibility, that is,
economic and social, according to which the company, in the exercise
of its function, must be aware of the real and total effects of its actions
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on the environment, adopting a positive attitude towards the
consideration of the values and expectations of the same.
According to Guedez (2006:75), CSR is defined as "the capacity to be
accountable for what one does or does not do, as well as the
corresponding consequences of what was or was not done. It is
equivalent to being accountable to others or being accountable for
oneself; it means being accountable for everything, to everyone, all the
time and everywhere". Thus, the implementation of CSR requires a
social balance sheet with three stages: political, technical and the
integration of social objectives. The social balance sheet is a reference
point for determining the extent to which institutions have achieved
this responsibility (Reyes, 2006: 134).
According to Belmartino and Bloch (2002), CSR includes the adoption
of criteria in business management, such as the formalization of
policies and management systems in the economic, social and
environmental spheres; transparency of information on the results
achieved in these areas; and, finally, external scrutiny of these results.
CSR thus merits including strategies that promote sustainable
production, investment and socially responsible consumption, among
others. In this context, CSR includes the adoption of social criteria in
business management, and implies the formalization of policies and
management indicators in the economic, social, health and
environmental spheres, which makes information transparency, co-
responsibility, knowledge building and its application complex.
Materials and Methods
Organizations also exercise their social responsibility when they meet
the expectations of different stakeholders (employees, partners,
customers, local communities, the environment, shareholders,
suppliers) regarding their behavior, contributing to socially and
environmentally sustainable and economically viable development.
Within this framework of ideas, social responsibility is understood as
the practice of an organization with respect to third parties. In other
words, it refers to the way in which the company or organization
relates to and impacts society through its practices, and the influence
that society and the expectations of social actors have on it.
Therefore, companies need to go beyond simple compliance with the
law or legal provisions and must create initiatives to improve all the
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actors involved. In this sense, it is understood that a company whose
fundamental values are ethical responsibility, equity and trust, but
which is also surrounded by a framework of commitment, will be able
to transform strengths into competitive advantages over organizations
that only have instrumental organizational values.
In this context, if the human component is the determining factor that
moves organizations and knowing the trends that are happening,
"alliances and agreements between stakeholders are required to
achieve continuity over time and therefore, business success, but
always under the reference of responsibility and credibility required to
be classified as an organization of the future (Pelekais and Aguirre,
2008).
Results
Social responsibility concerns all organizations, insofar as they have
an impact on society and the environment, and must contribute to
sustainable social and environmental development. Therefore, it
should not be a strictly business matter, since its ultimate purpose is a
common good in which all social actors participate from their
respective objectives and institutional tasks. The mission of
universities is to generate and disseminate knowledge in order to fulfill
the social function entrusted to them of training professionals.
The training of future managers and professionals in the business
world in the values of business ethics and social responsibility is
essential for their future behavior as managers and the stage of their
training is the ideal time to instill these values and principles in people
who are called to acquire responsibilities in the professional and
business world. In view of this, it is required that they comply with
their social responsibility and initiate a process of institutional change
to be in tune with the changes that have originated this new era.
Thus, by conceiving the university as an organization responsible for
the creation and dissemination of knowledge, as its main product, it is
disturbing in the sense of
(Martinez et al., 2008).
This means that the social responsibility of the university concerns
both the administrative routines (purchasing, governance, planning,
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service delivery, enrollment, marketing, personnel selection, etc.) and
the academic dimensions of training and research (Vallaeys and
Alvarez, 2019).
Therefore, without discarding the contributions of CSR, under the
pretext that universities are not companies, "without erasing all that
has meant during the last decades the efforts of management sciences
to build tools for monitoring organizational activities and impacts in
favor of human and sustainable development, we need a definition of
USR that is really useful and adapted to academic work" (Vallaeys and
Alvarez, 2019: 99).
Universities could not stay away from the reflection on Social
Responsibility, not only because they are organizations, but also
because they are responsible for training future professionals who will
work in companies, future citizens who will have to democratically
promote human rights, and future officials who will be responsible for
the common good of our world (Martinez et al, 2008).
The realization of the social responsibility of universities in the 21st
century will depend, on the one hand, on how their mission is defined
and, on the other hand, on the problems faced by the society in which
they operate.
The university trains the vast majority of professionals that make up
companies, public administration and international organizations, the
training they acquire at a conceptual and methodological level will be
the one they will later develop in their working life, which is why we
can speak of "University Social Responsibility".
University Social Responsibility (USR) is a new university
management policy that redefines the traditional outreach and social
solidarity, introducing a global approach to care for the administrative
and academic impact on all university processes.
It is "the responsibility of the university for the social and
environmental impacts it generates, through an ethical and efficient
management of its administrative processes and substantive academic
functions, in order to participate together with the other actors of its
territory of influence in the promotion of a fair and sustainable human
development". (Vallaeys and Alvarez, 2019: 112). The administrative
staff, in this sense, can be a new important protagonist of the social
and environmental commitment of Latin American universities, from
the exercise of administrative routines (purchases, agile procedures,
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healthy human relations, decision making, budget, transparency, fight
against corruption, selection of suppliers, healthy campus, etc.).
This consolidates the new issues introduced by the RSU that were
absolutely unknown from the model of extension and social projection,
i.e. all the internal problems of good governance, environment, work
environment, gender equity in management positions, among others.
On the other hand, university social responsibility is understood as the
university's capacity to disseminate and put into practice a set of
general and specific principles and values, through four key processes:
management, teaching, research and extension. In this way it assumes
its social responsibility before the university community itself and the
country where it is inserted (Jiménez cited by Vallaeys and Álvarez,
2019: 112).
Conclusions
Social responsibility in university management leads to the
development of a rigorous management approach, with measurement
and efficiency in strategies and processes, in order to avoid that there
is no real benefit to the university or to society.
The application of social responsibility in the university implies paying
attention to the dimension of administrative management, no longer
focusing on the three substantive functions of the university, but
rather on the four processes: management, education, research and
extension.
Therefore, the responsibility that the university must assume does not
originate in the fulfillment of a specific function (that of its "outreach"
to society), but in the exercise of all its daily activities, including
outreach activities. In this context, involving administrative
personnel, teachers and the student community more in the academic
work of the university, and no longer seeing them as support
resources, under the strategy of university social responsibility, makes
it possible to perceive the social, economic, political and welfare needs
that are poorly met and require solutions, managing to articulate
teaching, research and outreach, with a view to strengthening the
university-environment linkage.
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