Abstract
In recent years, the topic of Corporate Social Responsibility is widely discussed in various contexts: in businesses, government, not for profit organizations, university studies, with customers and users of various types of business, etc.
Our study focuses on the role of CSR in Higher Education Institutions and on the role of the teachings related to this discipline in Italian universities. In particular, we intend to analyse lessons learned from the CSR in all Faculties of Economics, leaving out other types of tertiary education (e.g., master, postgraduate courses, etc.).
The research questions to which we intend to answer are:
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1.
How widespread is the teaching of CSR in Italian universities?
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2.
In consideration of the growing importance of CSR in many important aspects of today’s global economy, are the Italian universities moving in the same direction, giving more attention to this discipline?
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3.
How CSR is interpreted in Italian universities?
The data collection has been performed using two source categories: the database contained in the web site of the Italian Ministry of Education and the web sites of all the existing Faculties of Economics in Italy. These sources are useful to identify all the CSR teachings in bachelor-level degrees and master-level degrees. Our aim is to outline the contents of these teachings, analyzing the following aspects:
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Type of course (bachelor or master-level)
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Year
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Number of credits awarded
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Type of examination (basic, characterizing, etc.)
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Main topics identified in the program
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Textbooks
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Professors in charge
In this way we try to draw a map for each of the analysed courses in order to identify their significant features (e.g. the type of approach to CSR welcomed by the teacher).
The idea of the paper and bibliography are due to the common work of the two authors; Sections 8.1, 8.2 and 8.6 are to be attributed to Patrizia Torrecchia; Sections 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.7 and 8.8 are to be attributed to Carmela Gulluscio.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Lipari (2012: 11–12), “In Italian research tradition, Economia Aziendale (Concern Economics) is an autonomous and organic discipline on natural, social -environmental conditions and on internal, external-administrative modes of economic production of goods and services by all kinds of azienda (concern). It is the general category of administrative activity unit (concern for profit, non-profit and mixed ones), which tends to meet human needs by means of economic wealth.
Economia aziendale analyses the environmental and administrative dynamics and complexity of each azienda relating to organizzazione, about the system of human resources as subjective aspects of all azienda activity, to gestione, about the system of operations as objective aspect of azienda management , and to rilevazione or ragioneria, about the system of recording of operational events through financial and all other accountings.
Here, in general, we adopt azienda (as singular) and aziende (as plural) as genus, and, in particular, impresa (as singular) and imprese (as plural) as species, referring to a kind of azienda/e which produces goods and services for market (nearly ‘for profit organization/s’)”.
- 2.
- 3.
At the Università di Bolzano courses are taught in three languages: Italian, German and English.
- 4.
The name of the lecturer will be useful at a later time, if a decision is made to repeat the investigation for other academic years. In this way, the reasons for any changes in educational contents may be analysed. Other information obtained during the investigation was not processed in this paper either, and it will form the basis for further research in the future.
- 5.
Module credits (crediti formativi universitari—CFUs) are an instrument adopted by universities to evaluate the workload required for students to be able to pass an examination. It is officially estimated that 1 CFU requires 25 h of work (which may involve attendance to lectures, seminars or workshops, as well as individual study). In order to get a bachelor-level degree, Italian students must obtain 180 CFUs, while obtaining a master-level degree requires 120 CFUs. These credits comply with the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), which allows to compare Italian university courses with other European courses.
- 6.
According to the Ministerial Decree No 509/1999, teaching activities in Italian universities are classified into the following categories:
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(a)
Basic
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(b)
Characterizing
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(c)
Related
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(d)
Freely chosen by the student
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(e)
Relating to the preparation of the final examination
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(f)
Other (relating to the acquisition of additional knowledge and skills, such as, for example, linguistic and IT skills)
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(a)
- 7.
Modules can be delivered through lectures, seminars, case studies, workshops, etc.
- 8.
The examination may be an individual written assignment, group class work/presentations, written or oral examinations. These types of examination may be used individually or in combination.
- 9.
Modules in Italian, in English and in German were identified.
- 10.
Among the Italian universities three had more than one faculty of Economics. These were the Università di Bari ‘Aldo Moro’, the Università di Bologna and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Currently, following the reform n. 240/2010, Italian universities are no longer divided into faculties. In the Italian university system there are now departments and degree programs.
- 11.
The number of universities that offer at least one module on the concern economics area related to CSR topics is greater, but some of them were eliminated from the investigation because the available data were not sufficient to carry out the analysis.
- 12.
Compliant with the Ministerial Decree of 16th March 2007, modules involved in the concern economics area include also the SECS-P/11 area for LM-56 courses and the SECS-P/09, SECS-P/10, SECS-P/11 and SECS-P/13 areas for LM-77 courses. In this study the analysis was made with reference to the SECS-P/07 , SECS-P/08, SECS-P/09 and SECS-P/10 areas.
- 13.
The number of modules devoted (even partially) to CSR and ethics is much greater than that of the modules wholly or mainly focused on these aspects. This is clear if the results of this study are compared with those of a previous study carried out by ICSR (2009). According to this study, in 2008, in bachelor level degrees, 65 modules were totally or partially devoted to CSR topics, while in master level degrees their number was even greater (79 modules). In contrast with the present study, the research by ICSR has taken into account all the modules devoted to CSR and ethics in a broad sense, whether or not related to the scientific area of concern economics. It also analysed, for example, the courses of the scientific area M-FIL/03 (moral philosophy).
References
Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale. (1980). Gino Zappa founder of Concern Economics. Papers for the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Foreign Language Series (Vol. 2). Bologna.
De Cristofaro, T. (2011). L’insegnamento universitario delle discipline economico-aziendali: un’indagine sul settore scientifico-disciplinare SECS P07 nelle Facoltà di Economia. DASTA Working Paper Series, paper n. 25.
ICSR—Italian Centre for Social Responsibility. (2009). Formazione manageriale e CSR: indagine sulle recenti tendenze nell’insegnamento della CSR. Nord America, Europa, Italia a confronto.
Lipari, C. (Ed.). (2012). Papers on Accounting and Accounting History. Milano: Tipografia Greco e Greco.
Matten, D., & Moon, J. (2008). Implicit’ and ‘Explicit’ CSR: A conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 404–424.
Vogel, D., & Enderle, G. (1992). The globalization of business ethics: Why America remains distinctive. California Management Review, 35, 30–49.
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Gulluscio, C., Torrecchia, P. (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility in the University Courses in Italy: An Empirical Analysis. In: Aluchna, M., Idowu, S. (eds) The Dynamics of Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39089-5_8
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