Research Proposal on Corporate social responsibility assignment

Question

Task: Write a research proposal on corporate social responsibility assignment testing the relationship between organizational performance and financial performance.

Answer

Chapter 1

Introduction
The term CSR used in the corporate social responsibility assignment reflects Corporate Social responsibility. It is the biggest trend organizations are now considering in their respective business models. Now, the core motive of CSR is to establish effective relationship between the corporate business and the society. Establishing relationship between the corporation and the society refers to when an organization do different activities in order to solve different social issues. In most of the cases organizations saves a certain portion of their annual profits to invest in one or multiple CSR initiatives. For example companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and many other organizations are engaged in different CSR activities like solving educational issue, woman empowerment related issues, reducing poverty, solving child labor issues etc. (Saeidi, Sofian, Saeidi, Saeidi, & Saaeidi, 2015)

The performance of an organization depends on several aspects. The performance of an organization can be measure by measuring the performances of different sub sectors of a business like “Financial Performance”. As per the opinions of some researchers considered to prepare this corporate social responsibility assignment there is a relationship between the CSR activities and the performance of the organization (Chen, Feldmann, & Tang, 2015). The purpose of this research proposal on corporate social responsibility assignment is to perform a thorough research and test whether there is casual relationship between organizational performance and financial performance.

Problem Statement
Since the promotion of the concept of CSR, different experts pursue different descriptions of CSR that different organizations usually consider. Some of the experts explained that through the implementation of CSR strategies organizations can improve the financial performance in their domestic countries. On the other hand another group of experts argued that an organization should not keep its focus on the CSR activities unless it establishes a stable position and reputation in the market. So, the main problem is there are many small and medium sized organizations which are seeking towards investing CSR activities but they are confused about the right time of doing such investments in CSR initiatives. This research on corporate social responsibility assignment will allow the small and medium sized organizations specially based in Australia in order to understand the perfect time to make CSR investments.

What are the aims and objectives of the research on corporate social responsibility assignment?

• The core purpose of this research is to provide a detailed understanding regarding the relationship between CSR activities and financial performance.
• This research will explore whether there is a positive or negative correlation between the financial performance and the CSR engagement.
• This research will explore past literatures in order to find the relation along with some other research methodology as well.
• To evaluate positive aspects of CSR
• To explore the impact of CSR on consumer purchase decision making process

Research Questions

• Is there any relationship between the CSR activities and financial performance of organizations?
• If any relationship is there between CSR and financial performance, then is it positive or negative?

Justification of research
This research on corporate social responsibility assignment will deliver detailed understanding regarding Corporate Social responsibility. This research on corporate social responsibility assignment will be helpful in order to deliver proper knowledge to the leaders of Australian small and medium sized organizations about the perfect time where they can make their investments in CSR activities, and along with that how much investment they can make for the purpose as well. Through this research on corporate social responsibility assignment the leaders will be able to have a detailed understanding regarding the advantages or disadvantages (if any) of CSR activates for their financial performance.

Research Outcome
The outcome of this research will effectively address all the research questions. This will address areas like the relationship between CSR and financial performance, impact of CSR on consumers; purchase decision making process, time of CSR investments etc.

Chapter 2

Conceptual Framework (Literature Review)

Advantages of CSR Initiatives for a Firm
The literature written by Galbreath (2010) noted herein corporate social responsibility assignment explores the question that “does the CSR initiatives benefit a firm?”. The core research idea of this article is to explore the benefits of CSR for a firm beyond accounting based financial benefits and traditional benefits as well. So, based on the research objective it can be stated that CSR has accounting based financial benefits. The core findings of this research on corporate social responsibility assignment depict that the organizations engaged in performing CSR activities are able to achieve benefits more than the bottom-line outcome. One of the core benefits that CSR delivers to an organization is that it helps the brand to reduce its employee turnover. Reduction in the employee turnover refers to the improvement in employee motivation and along with that a significant increase in their performance. Increased performance refers to increased productivity and sales that definitely puts a positive push in improving the financial performance as an output.

In this particular area the article written by Yee, (2012) also explores several benefits of CSR for a business. The corporate social responsibility assignment examines that the most impressive and effective benefits the author has found from this research is that CSR activities helps in establishing effective and health relationship between the corporations and customers. It is quite obvious that when there is positive and effective relationship between the customers and the organization it naturally build trust within the customers’ minds, This trust push the customers towards purchasing the product or services of those organizations who are engaged in performing CSR activities. Along with that high trust levels allows the organizations to keep their customers for a longer period of time and along with that this attracts new customers as well which increases the.

Impact of CSR Activities on Consumer Purchase Decision Making
Consumer behavior plays significant role for any business. As customers are the core drivers of any business, corporations are considering consumer behavior significantly. The consumer behavior basically refers to how a consumer acts towards making any decision regarding whether he/she should purchase the product or not. There are several factors which have impact on consumer decision making, and CSR initiatives are one of them, according to Hajase, Dirani, Hashem & Haddad, (2017). This article utilized in the corporate social responsibility assignment basically explores the impact of CSR on consumer decision making. The findings of the research end up by extracting information related to the positive impact of CSR on the society, individuals and the corporation. A huge percentage of the surveyed participants mentioned that if an organization practices CSR activities then this can make positive changes in their minds and make them purchase the products in higher quantity. So, the overall findings of this research on corporate social responsibility assignment depict that the impact of CSR initiatives in terms of facilitating the consumers’ purchasing decision is positive. This particular approach has to be implemented by all the small and medium sized organizations situated in Australia.

The article written by Komieh, (2018) also tried to explore this particular subtopic that is whether the CSR activities have any influence or impact on consumer decision making. The author have mentioned that just like CSR there are some other factors also which have significant influence on consumer decision making regarding the purchasing of goods and services. Usually different consumers have different purchase processes. There are dissimilar factors works differently for diverse consumers when they are making decisions at the time of purchasing any product or service. The author explains that maybe the CSR activities positively impact on a bunch of consumer groups and it may not have any impact on other consumer groups. The degree of influence of CSR activities on consumer purchase decisions is largely depends on the cultural background, perception, attitude of the customers. Consumer decision making is a psychological process which includes different types of aspects, and each of them has separate influential role when a customer is making decision regarding whether he should purchase or not purchase a specific product or service. From this analysis it can be said that Australian small and medium sized organizations should definitely consider CSR as a strategy to positively influence consumer purchase decision making, because when a consumer purchase product or services it improves the financial performance.

Min, Ai, Yeow & Cheak, (2012) has explored the same area in the article called “A Study Of The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) towards Consumer Buying Behaviour” Based on the findings of the article utilized in the context of corporate social responsibility assignment it can be stated that the modern customers usually pursue higher degree of expectations from the organizations, regarding their involvement in social and environmental welfare. Most of the cases the customers across the globe usually pursue positive attitude towards those organizations which are very much engaged in Corporate Social Responsible practices. The approach of modern customers has significantly changed, and it is continuously changing. They love to contribute for the welfare of the society through purchasing products and services. Keeping this scenario in mind modern organizations across the globe practice a strategy which includes marketing their products with a message which usually includes contributing a certain percentage of the profit made by selling each product and provide that profit for any social cause. This kind of CSR initiative allows the customers to have a feeling that they are making monitory contributions for the welfare of the society.

So, from this section it can be stated that Australian small and medium sized organizations should definitely consider small CSR initiatives in order to make their customers buy their product which will improve their financial performance as well.

Research hypothesis
In this research there will be two hypotheses H0 and H1. At the end of the research based on the findings the researcher will decide which hypothesis will be selected. These two hypotheses are mentioned below within this corporate social responsibility assignment.

H1: There is a casual relationship between CSR activities and financial performance of an organization

H0: There is no casual relationship between CSR activities and financial performance of an organization

Chapter 3

Research Methodology
Research methodology is the most important section of report on corporate social responsibility assignment. This section delivers clear guidelines regarding how the research will be conducted. There are several stages usually consist within the research methodology section. In this research there are some subsections like research design, research approach, data collection, sampling method and data analysis. The research methodology section of the research proposal allows the readers to comprehend the dependability and cogency of the research paper.

Data Collection
Data collection is an important subsection under the umbrella of research methodology. There are basically two types of data available, such as primary data and Secondary Data. Primary data is usually that information which is not available publically and collected through using different primary data collection tools, like survey, interview, focus group etc. On the other hand the secondary is that information which is available publically, and in terms of collecting secondary data different secondary resources are used like online/offline journal articles, books, authentic websites etc. (Johnston, 2017)

In order to perform this specific research on corporate social responsibility assignment the collection of both primary and secondary data has been considered. The secondary data has been collected specifically for performing the literature review section (Hoelscher, et al., 2015). Literature review is an important part of a research. In order to perform literature review researchers usually consider peered reviewed journals and books to collect secondary data. On the other hand in this research the collection of primary data will also play an important role. It can be stated that the result that will be extracted from the collected primary data will address all the research questions.

Now, at the time of performing the literature review only authentic and updated articles (published in authentic journals) have been considered. On the other hand to collect the primary data the researcher will conduct structured interviews with some consumers. In the process of structured interview the researcher will consider closed ended questionnaire. Closed ended questionnaires are very useful to have in-depth understanding of the behavior, perception and attitude of the consumers towards the specific topic.

Research Design
Research Design is another important sub-section under the research methodology of corporate social responsibility assignment. There are different research approaches available to the researchers, and they chose their research approaches based on their research objectives and questions. Considering this research topic and its objectives the researcher will go for deductive research approach. This deductive research approach usually utilizes when a researcher structures hypotheses to find out the result. The term deductive refers to reasoning from the particular to the general (Rahi, 2017). If a causal relationship appears to be indirect by a specific theory or case example, it can be true in many situations. A deductive approach is able test to identify the relationship.

The deductive approach can be illustrated for the reasons of hypotheses, which can be provided from the proposals of the theory. In simple words deductive research approach is alarmed deducting conclusions from propositions of premises. There are certain advantages of deductive approach for which this is chosen for this specific research on corporate social responsibility assignment, such as:

• Opportunity to quantity concepts quantitatively
• Opportunity to explain causal relationships between variables and concepts
• Opportunity to simplify research findings to a convinced degree (Rahi, 2017).

Research Approach
Research approach is another important sub-section under the research methodology. There are basically two types of research approaches such as Qualitative approach and Quantitative approach. Quantitative approach deals with figures and variables and uses statistical tools to analyze those collected data. On the other hand the Qualitative research approach deals with different theories and concepts and never considers mathematical numbers. In order to perform this research the quantitative research approach will be considered by the researcher. This quantitative approach will help the researcher to identify whether there is any causal relationship between two variables (CSR and Financial Performance). The quantitative approach explored in the corporate social responsibility assignment will be able to establish clear and précised findings for this research. There are certain advantages of quantitative research, for example:

• Quantitative research approach allows a researcher to consider higher sample size.
• Quantitative research allows the researcher to collect data in a faster way as compare to qualitative research approach.
• Quantitative research uses randomized samples.
• The duplication of results are possible at the time of using quantitative research
• Quantitative research is able to focus on evidences or a sequence of evidence
• The research performed with the quantitative approach is anonymous by nature (Nakajima & Telyukova, 2017).

Sampling
Sampling is basically the method of selecting a certain portion of a whole population which delivers significant understanding regarding the approach of the whole population. Considering the sampling method in order to develop this corporate social responsibility assignment, the researcher will go for the random sampling method. Random sampling is a probabilistic sampling method. In this method usually each and every sample has equal probability to get selected for the data collection process. In order to perform the research a random sample of 100 consumers will be considered for the research. There are some significant advantages this random sampling method has for this research on corporate social responsibility assignment such as:

• The biasness in random sampling is very low
• The process of random sampling method is very simple by nature (Palinkas, et al., 2015)

Chapter 4

Organization of the Study

Chapter 1:
Introduction to the research proposal.

Chapter 2:
Conceptual framework or the Literature Review

Chapter 3:
This chapter consists of the Research Methodology

Chapter 4:
This particular section of corporate social responsibility assignment includes the findings and analysis of the research proposal.

Chapter 5:
In this chapter of the proposal the entire proposed research will be abridged including the findings, analysis and discussions.

Reference

Chen, L., Feldmann, A., & Tang, O. (2015). The relationship between disclosures of corporate social performance and financial performance: Evidences from GRI reports in manufacturing industry. Corporate social responsibility assignment International Journal of Production Economics, 170, 445-456.

Galbreath, J. (2010). How does corporate social responsibility benefit firms? Evidence from Australia. European Business Review, 22(4), 411-431.

Hejase, H.J., Dirani, A.E., hashem, F., & Haddad, Z., (2018). Corporate Social Responsibility Impact on Consumer Decision. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313160723_Corporate_Social_Responsibility_Impact_on_Consumer_Decision

Hoelscher, D. M., Butte, N. F., Barlow, S., Vandewater, E. A., Sharma, S. V., Huang, T., ... & Oluyomi, A. O. (2015). Incorporating primary and secondary prevention approaches to address childhood obesity prevention and treatment in a low-income, ethnically diverse population: study design and demographic data from the Texas Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration (TX CORD) study. Childhood obesity, 11(1), 71-91.

Johnston, M. P. (2017). Secondary data analysis: A method of which the time has come. Qualitative and quantitative methods in libraries, 3(3), 619-626.

Komieh, R.A., (2018). Consumer behavior under the influence of corporate social responsibility, price and benefits of product in decision making process. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329035546_Consumer_behaviour_under_the_influence_of_ corporate_social_responsibility_price_and_benefits_of_product_in_decision_making_process.

Min, C.M., Ai, A., Yeow, J.A., & Cheak, A. (2012). A Study Of The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) towards Consumer Buying Behaviour. Corporate social responsibility assignment Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249649009_A_Study_Of_The_Effect_of_Corporate_Social_Responsibility _CSR_towards_Consumer_Buying_Behaviour.

Nakajima, M., & Telyukova, I. A. (2017). Reverse mortgage loans: A quantitative analysis. The Journal of Finance, 72(2), 911-950. .

Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015). Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research. Administration and policy in mental health and mental health services research, 42(5), 533-544. .

Rahi, S. (2017). Research design and methods: A systematic review of research paradigms, sampling issues and instruments development. International Journal of Economics & Management Sciences, 6(2), 1-5. .

Saeidi, S. P., Sofian, S., Saeidi, P., Saeidi, S. P., & Saaeidi, S. A. (2015). How does corporate social responsibility contribute to firm financial performance? The mediating role of competitive advantage, reputation, and customer satisfaction. Journal of business research, 68(2), 341-350. .

Yee, N.W., (2012). CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILTY; IMPORTANCE, BENEFITS, CONSEQUENCES, APPROACHES TO MANAGING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILTY. Corporate social responsibility assignment Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234167105_CORPORATE_SOCIAL_RESPONSIBILTY_
IMPORTANCE_BENEFITS_CONSEQUENCES_APPROACHES_TO_MANAGING_CORPORATE_SOCIAL_RESPONSIBILTY.