Social Satisfiers and Sustainability of CSR Initiatives: Sri Lankan Perspectives

Abstract

This paper aims to determine whether the social satisfiers such as entity and community satisfactions lead to sustainability of corporate social responsibility projects; especially within an environment where economic wounds are still being healed and new opportunities are evolving within a society that has endured civil unrest for over 30 years. Government and society at large in a developing country expect corporate businesses to engage in CSR initiatives and complete those projects successfully, in other wards projects to be sustainable. The study used primary collected data for analysis collected from a sample of 360 shareholders /directors /managers /employees of 40 companies and 360 direct/indirect beneficiaries of 40 initiated CSR projects in Sri Lanka; these projects had been completed within a period of 5 years following a long civil war. The researcher used frequency percentage to summarise, descriptive data analysis, structural equation methods to test hypotheses and in-depth interviews. Interestingly, it was found that implementing CSR initiatives focused on merely benefiting society does not guarantee (less significant) sustainability of those initiatives.

Keywords: Social endeavor, CSR, sustainability, biological environment, entity satisfaction, community satisfaction, social environment, core competencies and satisfaction.