ABSTRACT. In the context of some criticism about
social responsibility education in business schools, the
paper reports findings from a survey of CSR education
(teaching and research) in Europe. It analyses the extent
of CSR education, the different ways in which it is defined
and the levels at which it is taught. The paper
provides an account of the efforts that are being made to
‘‘mainstream’’ CSR teaching and of the teaching methods
deployed. It considers drivers of CSR courses, particularly
the historical role of motivated individuals and the
anticipation of future success being dependent on more
institutional drivers. Finally it considers main developments
in CSR research both by business school faculty
and PhD students, tomorrow’s researchers and the resources
devoted to CSR research. The conclusion includes
questions that arise and further research directions.
KEY WORDS: corporate social responsibility, Europe,
mainstreaming, survey of business schools, teaching and
research
Introduction
This paper reports on a 2003 survey of corporate
social responsibility (CSR) education – by which we
mean teaching and research – in Europe.1 The significance
of this survey lies in the question as to
whether business schools are no more than brainwashing
institutions educating their graduates only in
relatively narrow shareholder value ideology which
has been raised by numerous commentators in the
aftermath of recent corporate scandals in America in
the business press (Caulkin, 2004; Goshal, 2003;
Willen, 2004) as well as in Academia (Adler, 2002;
Gioia, 2002). Others have concluded that there is an
‘‘intellectual bias against business ethics’’ in business
schools and that teaching and research in business
ethics and similarly oriented areas is systematically
discouraged and seen as a ‘‘field of study […] falling
somewhere on the vector between ambivalence and
disdain’’ (Hosmer, 1999, pp. 91, 102).
Conversely other surveys have presented a more
positive picture, notably the Beyond Grey Pinstripes
report of the Aspen Institute conducted first in 2001
and repeated in 2003 (Aspen/WRI, 2003). These
findings contrast with some earlier studies (for an
overview see Collins and Wartick, 1995; Enderle,
1990) by depicting a growing interest and consolidation
of business ethics and responsibility related
topics in business schools’ teaching and research
agendas.
While the majority of these studies have focused
on North American schools and a good number on
related subjects such as marketing and ethics
Dirk Matten is a Professor of Business Ethics at the School of
Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, U.K.
His work has been in corporate environmental management,
international management and business ethics and is published
in journals such as Academy of Management Review,
Journal of Management Studies and Human Relations. He
holds two PhDs from Du¨sseldorf University and has taught
business ethics and CSR at Universities in Britain, France,
Germany, Belgium and the Czech Republic. He is the author
(with Andrew Crane) of ‘‘Business Ethics – A European
Perspective’’, published by Oxford University Press in
2004.
Jeremy Moon is a Professor of CSR at Nottingham University
Business School and the Director of the ICCSR. He has
published widely on a broad range of politics and public policy
topics. His interest in CSR was stimulated by his research
into the responses of British business to unemployment and
urban decay in the early 1980s. He has also conducted
extensive empirical research on CSR in Australia, specifically
regarding unemployment and education. These were the
subjects of government reports and submissions to a Australian
Senate committee. His current interests include theories of
CSR, CSR and societal governance and comparative CSR.
Journal of Business Ethics 54: 323–337, 2004.
_ 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
(Shannon and Berl, 1997), sustainability (Wheeler
et al., 2001) or assessment criteria for ethics courses
(Morris, 2001) only limited attention has been directed
at the topic from a European perspective.
This could in part be credited to the fact that the
general field of CSR in Europe is shaped somewhat
differently and took longer to take off as an academic
discipline. Certainly the most comprehensive
initial overview over the situation in Europe in the
late 1980s has been provided by Mahoney (1990) in
a comparative study of the teaching of business
ethics in the U.S., U.K. and continental Europe.
This work provided a first overview over the field
though the study is of rather limited value for
someone interested in the role of CSR in business
schools in Europe as it focused rather narrowly on
the topic of business ethics and was mainly interested
in a comparative perspective between the
three regions.
Apart from Mahoney’s seminal though dated
work, more recent information on the situation in
European business schools has been case-study based
work on business ethics practice in various continental
European countries (Zsolnai, 1998) or indepth
surveys in particular countries, most notably
the U.K. (Cowton and Cummins, 2003; Cummins,
1999). In 1998, the European Business Network for
Social Cohesion and The Copenhagen Centre provided
information of a range of business schools’
activity but did not aggregate or interrogate the
findings (EBNSC/Copenhagen Centre, 1998). So
far then, there has been little attention to assessing
the overall state and shape of the contemporary CSR
field in European business schools.
This paper reports on the findings of a survey that
was designed to fill these gaps. The first goal was to
provide an overview of teaching and research in the
broad field of CSR. We assumed that CSR would
mostly be understood as an umbrella term for a
broad set of synonyms and overlapping concepts
reflecting both business and society relations and
‘‘business ethics’’. The second goal was to capture
the range of meanings of and activities in CSR
reflecting Europe’s different business and educational
contexts. Thirdly, we were interested in finding out
what role in terms of visibility, acceptance with
students, resource provision for research and general
esteem the field possesses at European universities.
The background here is precisely those suspicions
about the potentially ambivalent role of business
schools in this context noted above.
While most of the above cited surveys (with the
exception of the ‘‘Beyond Grey Pinstripes’’ – report)
are rather narrowly focusing on Business Ethics as a
theme we decided to cast our net somewhat wider.
As the founder of the European Business Ethics
Network has recently argued, ‘‘business ethics’’ has
not necessarily been the most popular term under
which business and society issues have been discussed
in the different European countries
throughout the last decades (van Luijk, 2001). Furthermore,
as Mahoney’s study has already indicated,
even within the narrow remit of ‘‘business ethics’’
there is a great variety of terminology within various
European countries and their respective philosophical
traditions (1990, pp. 167–170). The choice of
the particular terminology of ‘‘corporate social
responsibility’’ was determined by the fact that key
institutional players (such as the 2002 founded
European Academy of Business in Society, one of
the partners of this research), key media (such as the
Financial Times) and to a growing degree, corporate
oriented publications seems to have made this term
an increasingly popular label (see, e.g., http://www.csreurope.
org). Our results echo these assumptions as
indeed the variety of topics in the field proved
broader than the remit of ‘‘business ethics’’.
While CSR has been a subject of discussion in
business and academia in North America for quite a
long time (Carroll, 1999) the debate in Europe has
only gained momentum fairly recently. There is
much evidence that CSR is ‘‘an idea whose time has
come in Europe’’ (Wolf, 2002). It is manifest in:
company communications; company organisational
structures; company reports and audits; new business
coalitions; new consultancy firms; portfolios of traditional
business consultants; government policies;
and media coverage.
The new imperatives for CSR raise the challenge
for corporations to acquire and develop appropriate
skills and competencies. This raises the question of
the role played by universities and business schools,
the key provider of business education, in terms of:
_ provision of graduates with CSR skills,
_ supply of CSR education for practitioners,
_ specialist CSR education for industries,
_ research to advance knowledge in CSR.
324 Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon
The paper analyses these issues by addressing the
following questions:
_ Is CSR taught to business students, tomorrow’s
business leaders and managers?
_ At what levels and in what sorts of courses is
CSR taught?
_ What meanings are attached to CSR education?
_ Is CSR teaching conducted with business and
community partners?
_ What are the drivers for CSR teaching?
_ What teaching techniques are deployed?
_ On which themes does CSR research focus?
_ On which CSR themes do PhD students focus?
Methodology
Although our aim was to include as many countries,
institutions and types of CSR courses as possible, a
number of methodological issues arise in the study of
European CSR education.
_ What is a ‘‘university’’?While some countries use
this termonly for all institutes of higher education
(e.g., Britain) other countries offer a variety of
names for institutions of higher education (e.g.,
Germany, France, The Netherlands).
_ What is a ‘‘business school’’? Whilst many
countries have institutions called business
schools most German, French and Italian
business education, for instance, takes place in
‘‘management’’, ‘‘economics’’ or ‘‘accounting’’
departments, ‘‘chairs’’ or ‘‘faculties’’.
_ What is ‘‘CSR’’? Leaving aside translation issues,
there is a variety of labels used in CSR
educational courses.
_ What is ‘‘Europe’’? While territory between
the West of Ireland and the Urals is usually
referred to as Europe, it could also be defined
by the European Union (EU) or by certain
cultural or religious traditions (Crane and
Matten, 2004, pp. 26–31).
We focused our research mainly on the major
Western European economies of the EU plus
Switzerland, Norway and Iceland as these countries
have the longest standing tradition in (capitalist)
business education. Furthermore, these countries can
be regarded to be characteristic of ‘‘Europe’’ to a
stronger degree than those Eastern European countries
which only recently joined the capitalist economic
system and are only just about to formally
join the political system of the EU. We acknowledge
a growing number of higher education institutions
in business and economics which follow a capitalist
approach in post-communist Eastern Europe and
would encourage a more systematic inclusion of
these institutions in future research. At the current
stage though, we considered the aggregation of
business schools of both parts of Europe in one
survey as too heterogeneous to provide a picture for
Europe as a whole. However, we received responses
from two Eastern European EU ‘‘accession’’ countries
(Poland and Slovenia) which have been included
and increased the population to twenty
countries.
Given our interest in identifying how demand for
CSR education is satisfied, nine questions addressed
teaching:
_ availability, names and enrolment in CSR
modules and programmes,
_ integration of CSR into the core curriculum
(‘‘mainstreaming’’),
_ teaching partners and tools,
_ drivers of CSR teaching,
_ future success factors for CSR teaching.
These were complemented by seven questions about
CSR research:
_ faculty members and PhD students involved
and their interests,
_ resource provision,
_ interest of and collaboration with business.
As the concept of CSR does not originate in Europe,
we expected a range of terms to describe it and
as we aimed to capture a culturally sensitive picture
of CSR education, we provided respondents with a
range of CSR synonyms (Table I).
Our focus is institutional and thus contrasts with
Mahoney’s (1990) earlier study which investigated
the subject of ‘‘business ethics’’ in a comparative
perspective. Our research tool was expressly designed
to elicit information about business schools and their
broader attitudes, approaches and indeed their
openness towards teaching and research activities in
Corporate Social Responsibility Education 325
the chosen area. Using the website of the International
Education Information Centre2 we identified
institutions with a facility for business education,
whether in business schools or in university faculties
or departments of management, economics,
accounting, administration etc. This yielded 669
institutions whose heads of schools, deans, directors
or rectors were invited to complete the survey.
Interestingly this secured only a 9.7% response rate
(n = 65).3 In addition we addressed the survey to
members of a database of 3,000 European CSR
teachers and researchers4 in the expectation that this
cohort would be better motivated to respond.
Between March and July 2003 both cohorts were
invited by email to complete the questionnaire at a
custom-built webpage, via email or on a hardcopy.
As this yielded a response rate of the equivalent of
only 12% of institutions we increased our coverage in
two further phases of research in August and September
2003. First, the heads of one in three business
schools were invited by phone to reply. Second, we
conducted in-depth analysis of website and other
material of those telephoned but who did not reply.5
Overall the survey yielded responses from 24.8%
of the European business schools.
There was some variation in the response rates per
national grouping (Table II). The relatively high
response rates from the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic
countries is no surprise as the language and business
systems of the former are closest to the U.S. as the
birthplace of CSR and as the latter countries tend to
teach business education in English. Moreover,
inclusion in survey findings is likely to be regarded as
a marketing tool for teaching programmes and evidence
of esteem for research in Anglo-Saxon
countries.7
Definitions of CSR teaching units
Three questions investigated the nature of CSR
courses in terms both of individual modules
(semester length courses) and full dedicated programmes
(multiple modules leading to a degree or
other award). The variety in the conceptualisation of
CSR education is illustrated by the fact that forty
different programme labels were reported. Table III
presents 27 generic titles. Whereas only 16% of
institutions used the term CSR, a quarter used
Sustainable Development and another 16% described
their Environmental or Ecological Management programmes
as CSR. This indicates that CSR in
European business education is partly grounded in
the environmental agenda. The second most common
CSR programme label is Business Ethics (22%)
and given that ‘‘ethics’’ is included in another 18% of
programme labels, it is clear that the ethical
dimension provides another prevalent theme.
The combination of the Accounting, Corporate
Governance, Law and Public Governance and NGO and
TABLE I
Synonyms for CSR specified
Synonyms for CSR specified
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Business Ethics, Corporate Citizenship, Sustainability, Corporate Environmental
Management, Business and Society, Business and Governance, Business and Globalization, Stakeholder Management,
Governance
TABLE II
Response rates by national groupings6
Total
Europe
Nordic Anglo-
Saxon
France Benelux Central
Europe
Southern
Europe
Response rate (%) 24.8 39.4 46.9 22.0 7.6 21.4 9.6
Replies (N) 166 21 61 18 6 43 17
Respondents (%) 100 12.6 36.8 10.8 3.6 25.9 10.2
326 Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon
Government Partnerships labels illustrates another
characteristic of European CSR education: its embeddedness
in the wider corporate and social governance
themes. In addition, some of the labels
reflect more recent trends in management education
such as Business Transformation, Culture, Leadership,
Supply Chain Management, Stakeholder Management or
Tourism.
There is also great variety in the labels used for
CSR module titles (Table IV). CSR itself is used
only in 11% of institutions though is the second most
common single title. Environmental Management is
ranked third but is less prominent that among the
CSR programmes (Table III) even when Sustainable
Development (14%) is included.
The main difference between Tables III and IV is
the relative status of Business Ethics (35%) as a label
for modules. This is probably explained by the fact
that CSR programmes are designed and marketed to
be differentiated from similar programmes in other
institutions whereas modules need only be differentiated
from those within the same institution.
Moreover programme labels are more likely to reflect
their straddling of a range of subject matter
represented by their constituent modules. The fact
that so many module labels are only used in a small
number of institutions may reflect the comparative
ease with which they are validated and their orientation
to individual teachers’ special expertise.
The relative scarcity of modules and programmes
labelled CSR itself or such close synonyms as business
and society, corporate citizenship, diversity or corporate
values suggests that – unlike business ethics – this is a
recent development in European business education.
Nonetheless, it appears as a dynamic platform for
teaching a number of current societal issues or
management fashions. It is also striking that there is a
proliferation of CSR labels generally considered of
fringe status from a business school perspective (e.g.,
with reference to the disciplines of sociology,
TABLE III
Generic labels of CSR programmes
Generic labels of CSR programmes*
Sustainable Development 24%; Business Ethics 22%
Ecological / Environmental Management 16%; Business and Society 16%; Corporate Social Responsibility 16%
Globalization, Transnational Management Geopolitics 8%; Management/Business 8%; Accounting 5%; Corporate
Citizenship 5%; Human Resource Management 5%; Business Transformation 5%
Corporate Governance; Cross Sector Partnership; Culture; Finance; Law; Leadership; Managing Corporate Community
Investment; Marketing; NGO and government partnerships; Philosophy; Public Governance; Sociology; Stakeholder
Management; Strategy; Supply Chain Management; Tourism and Social Responsibility (all 3%)
*Respondents could give as many titles as there were different programmes
TABLE IV
Generic labels of CSR modules
Generic labels of CSR modules*
Business ethics 35%
Corporate Social Responsibility 11%; Ecological/Environmental Management 9%; Accounting 7%; Globalization,
Transnational, Geopolitics 7%
Sustainable Development 5%; Business and Society 4%; Corporate Governance 4%; Leadership 4%
Management/Business; Human Resource Management; Corporate Citizenship; Culture; Finance; Diversity Management;
Philosophy; Strategy (all 2%)
The Economics of Corruption; Sociology; Marketing (all 1%);
*Respondents could give as many titles as there were different optional or required CSR modules
Corporate Social Responsibility Education 327
philosophy, politics, history; and to topics such as
culture, critical decision making, equality, risk and
society).
Level and types of CSR programmes
About two thirds (117 out of 166) of respondents
indicated that they offered CSR courses (either as
single modules or programmes). If the respondents
are representative of all European business schools,
this might be considered as a relatively impressive
level of provision. We assume, however, that CSR
course providers are over-represented in the sample
as about half of the respondents were taken from the
CSR researchers and teachers database and in any
case there is a greater likelihood for the active to
report than the inactive as it was clear that the
information about course providers would be made
publicly available.8
Table V indicates that dedicated CSR programmes
are most likely to be offered on Executive
and Short Courses (13%) and that these have
healthy enrolments, suggesting that industry itself is
something of a driver here. This interpretation is
reinforced by the fact that dedicated CSR MBA
programmes are second (12%) also with healthy
average enrolment numbers. Given that executive
and short courses normally address quite narrow
educational objectives it is also impressive that one
in six include a CSR optional module. Certainly
the figure of a third of MBA programmes offering a
CSR optional module indicates there is a reasonable,
if not uniform, supply of CSR education and
the fact that their enrolments are about two thirds
of the average suggests that there is a reasonable, if
not overwhelming demand from this cohort of
students.
This picture of industry being a CSR education
driver is reinforced when comparisons are made
with the more academic programmes. Although
similar proportions of schools offer CSR MA/MSc
optional modules, the relative student enrolment
rates are much lower. With regard to the MA/MSc
data, however, two qualifications seem to be
appropriate. First, there is serious variation as to what
an ‘‘MA’’ means: in some institutions (e.g., in
Germany, France, Scotland) this is a first degree
whereas in England it is a second degree. In addition,
countries such as Germany, Switzerland or The
Netherlands have other titles for this degree or have
only recently switched to the Anglo-Saxon terminology
of ‘‘Master/Bachelor’’ degrees so that we
would expect some confusion about the exact categories
in this part of our responses. Furthermore,
only few institutions with a dedicated provision of
this particular degree scheme provided actual figures
for enrolment which may explain the seemingly
high figures, especially for MA/MSc students on
dedicated programmes. Nevertheless, it is striking
that the course level with the lowest proportion of
CSR programmes is the Bachelor level. Whilst 50%
of respondent institutions offer BA optional modules
their enrolments are relatively low, compared to the
respective ratios for the MBA, for instance. Given
that the majority of business school undergraduates
TABLE V
CSR modules and CSR programmes in European business schools
MBA MA/MSc Under-graduate
(bachelor etc.)
Executive/short
courses
Proportion of schools with
dedicated CSR programmes
12% 11% 9% 13%
Average enrolments per year 74 200 240 87
Proportion of schools with
optional CSR modules
32% 35% 51% 17%
Average enrolments per year 45 34 78 77
Average enrolments in the entire
degree scheme per year
76 154 396 146
328 Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon
will not take an MBA or another second degree
there is an important challenge as to how CSR can
most effectively be infused into day-to-day business
through the education of the next generation of
managers.
Mainstreaming CSR education
One of the main criticisms of business school
education is that the socially irresponsible and
ethically dubious assumptions of certain core doctrines,
theories and concepts dominate the curriculum
and discourage awareness of CSR and ethical
behaviour among managers and corporations. The
allegation is that teaching Anglo-American style
shareholder-value oriented governance of capitalist
organizations, particularly in the core of MBA
programmes, is antithetical to CSR (Hosmer, 1985;
Stewart, 2004). It follows from this perspective that
for CSR education to make a difference in the
future of business it should be in the form neither
of a hived-off programme nor an optional module
but embedded in the core of business education.
Many CSR teachers and practitioners share this
view that CSR should be fully integrated into
degree level teaching programmes. This is known
as ‘‘mainstreaming’’ and would enable every business
student to be made aware of the social and
ethical dimensions of their future activities as a
businessperson. We therefore investigated the extent
and nature of CSR mainstreaming in European
business education.
Notwithstanding the definition of mainstreaming
presented above and recognising the fact that business
schools may adopt a variety of strategies, we
preferred not to define it for our respondents but
rather to learn from them how they define and
implement it.
Most (80%) schools describe themselves as
mainstreaming CSR into their teaching programmes
(Table VI). The strength of this finding is underlined
by the fact that this was the single most answered
question of the survey (87%). Moreover, half of
these indicate that they are mainstreaming CSR in
more than one way.
Table VII shows that the most popular way of
mainstreaming CSR is through the provision of
optional modules. This is a relatively low cost approach
but some critics would insist that the provision
of options does not fundamentally change a
business school’s core orientation and influence.
This criticism is met by the quarter of respondents
who have introduced compulsory modules to ensure
that every graduate has at least some basic knowledge
of CSR. The problem may remain that such modules
are regarded cynically or as removed from the
mainstream business of business. Hence it is
impressive that nearly 40% of respondents indicate
that they are embedding CSR in other modules and
courses. This would, for instance, imply that a
strategy module would not only teach a managerial
view of the firm (as being responsible mainly to
shareholders, customers and suppliers) but a broader
sense of the firm being intertwined in more complex
responsibilities towards a plethora of stakeholders
and other societal actors. Respondents also reported
a rich variety of other teaching activities designed to
mainstream CSR education such as special seminars,
speakers from the CSR industry, special events or
conferences.
Overall it appears that many business schools are
seeking new ways of integrating CSR into the
school but that this is a relatively new multifaceted
and ongoing process. Tables III and IV also evidence
TABLE VI
Extent of CSR mainstreaming
Extent of mainstreaming Proportion(%)
Not mainstreaming at all 7
Mainstreaming in one way 41
Mainstreaming in two ways or more 39
No response to question 13
TABLE VII
Approaches to CSR mainstreaming
Approaches to CSR mainstreaming Proportion (%)
Optional modules 47
Embedding in other modules
and courses
38
Compulsory modules 27
Other CSR teaching activities
(seminars, special events,
conferences, etc.)
20
Corporate Social Responsibility Education 329
a serious approach to mainstreaming. Apart from the
variety of labels from different CSR traditions (e.g.,
sustainable development), current issues (e.g., globalization)
or fringe topics (e.g., risk and society)
numerous schools report integrating CSR into such
mainstream modules as finance, marketing, strategy
or human resource management and even management/
business in general.
CSR teaching methods
One of the most common ways of encouraging
enrolment in pioneering educational programmes is
to award student scholarships. Interestingly these
are used to encourage CSR education only in a
handful of institutions. These tend to be those
schools with strengths in CSR research and the
funding of the scholarships is exclusively sourced
from industry itself, industrial foundations or individual
industrialists. This is an area where growth
might be expected if the area of CSR education
matures.
There is widespread use of practitioner speakers,
be it from business, CSR industry or NGOs as well
as case studies from industry, and these methods
dwarf the more academic instruments of e-learning,
audiovisual aids etc. (Table VIII). This suggests that
the CSR teaching curricula are heavily influenced
by practice, a finding supported by the fact that
80% of respondents reported industry to be the
single most important teaching partner. This
influenced is balanced, however, by NGO and
academic inputs.
The role of NGOs, reported by two thirds of
respondents, is particularly interesting as it represents
the introduction of a new community of practitioners
to business schools. One might speculate that through
CSR teaching business education managers might be
assisted in overcoming more traditional boundaries
and improving their wider engagement. Surprisingly,
a rather common tool of inviting guest lecturers from
other universities, though reported by half of
respondents, is less widely deployed than industry and
NGO speakers. This may reflect the relative underdevelopment
of CSR as an academic sub-field.
Drivers of CSR education in business schools
The survey invited perceptions of recent and future
drivers of CSR business education. Respondents
indicated that hitherto the single most important
driver of the CSR agenda has been the initiatives of
individual faculty members (Table IX). The key
actors are not the leaders of the schools or universities
but individual faculty members with a research
interest or otherwise in CSR.
This finding is consistent with our interpretation
of the low response rates from business school
leadership which did not appear to signal high
TABLE VIII
Special teaching tools used in CSR
teaching
Teaching tool Percentage of
respondents using
the tool (%)
Business speakers 32
CSR case-studies 25
NGO speakers 20
CSR professional speakers 17
Internships 6
Communications/media speakers 5
Other, the five most popular: 17
E-learning
Debates/discussion forums
Simulations
Audiovisual aids
International student exchange
TABLE IX
Drivers of CSR teaching in business schools
Driver Average
rating_
Individual faculty members 4.3
Leadership of school/faculty/department 2.9
Business organisation 1.9
Students 1.8
University leadership 1.7
CSR-related networks and associations 1.4
Governmental/ministerial bodies 1.2
Other (‘society’ most frequently cited) 0.3
_Scale: 1 (not important) to 5 (most important).
330 Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon
levels of awareness of CSR education. Thus critics
of business schools are not completely wrong in
suggesting that business schools as institutions are
not encouraging social responsibility in business
education. Conversely the motivated individuals
have clearly succeeded in convincing school leadership
as this was ranked as the second most
important factor. We should temper these interpretations
by noting that these two constituencies
were the main respondents to the survey and may
have over-estimated their role in the development
of the agenda. Notwithstanding this our finding
highlights the significance of individual’s initiative
for the agenda of CSR education. This underlines
its position in the ‘‘pioneer stage’’ in the context of
its business school status. Quite a significant role
can be assigned to business and students as the two
major ‘‘customers’’ of business schools which reflects
some of our earlier findings about the interest
of business in CSR and the attractiveness of the
topic for students.
Looking at the future drivers of CSR in business
education the question arises as to what will
take it from the ‘‘pioneering’’ phase to its next
stage of ‘‘institutionalisation’’. The single most
important factor identified focuses on the main
‘‘stakeholder’’ of business schools in the shape of
‘‘business approval and support’’. Given that we
have identified a prominent role for business in
our analysis this may make for optimism about the
future of CSR teaching in European business
schools (Table X).
The importance of business schools’ institutional
environment is highlighted by the emphasis that
respondents place on the inclusion of CSR in
rankings and as a requirement for programme
accreditation. A key question is therefore whether in
the increasingly competitive world of business education
CSR is regarded as one of the most important
factors by key institutional actors involved in ranking
and accreditation in Europe as well as by individual
business school leaders.
It is worth re-producing some of the comments
given under ‘‘other future drivers’’ of future CSR
teaching.
_ ‘‘Staff willing and able to teach the topic’’
indicates that even with a broader institutionalisation
of CSR in the business school curriculum,
the mere effort of pioneers will not
sustain a broader teaching programme. This has
particular implications for staff and junior academics
for whom CSR may offer an attractive
future field of work.
_ ‘‘Quality of teaching’’ is also mentioned, indicating
that once the topic has been developed
beyond that for the audience of the ‘‘converted’’
or ‘‘motivated minority’’, CSR will
need to be taught in an engaging and exciting
manner in order to appeal to ‘‘mainstream’’
business students.
_ One interesting and not completely flippant
observation of one respondent is the driver of
‘‘public opinion, driven by more scandals,
environmental disasters, fat cattery, corporate
manslaughter’’.
_ One respondent indicated the need for increased
interest by students: ‘‘It would help if
students had a moral basis – even from Sunday
school days’’.
CSR Research in Europe
On the assumption that university education in
business schools would be inextricably linked with
research, five questions addressed the research of
faculty members and research students. It is interesting
to note that our assumption does not hold
entirely true as only two thirds of the respondents
indicated that staff at their school were research
active in CSR and only a quarter provide PhD
supervision in the field. These figures underscore
our finding (above) that the general development of
TABLE X
Drivers of future success CSR teaching in business schools
Driver Average rating_
Business approval and support 3.4
Required for programme accreditation 3.2
Inclusion in business school ranking 3.0
Employment success of graduates 2.6
Governmental incentives
requirements, regulations
2.5
Increased enrolments 2.3
_Scale 1 (lowest) to 5 highest).
Corporate Social Responsibility Education 331
CSR education is not so much a function of academic
research but of a range of other drivers.
Certainly it gives rise to the suggestion that the
broad CSR agenda in teaching is more driven by
interest from industry than underpinned by academic
research. Notwithstanding the aggregate data
it is worth noting that some of the institutions which
have pioneered CSR education do have significant
numbers of researchers and PhD students confirming
the strong role of research active scholars in pioneering
the topic.
Consistent with our finding of the heterogeneity
of the CSR teaching area, the reported research areas
of European CSR scholars are anything but a
homogenous field. Although 20% of respondents
refer to CSR, nearly thirty different labels were reported
which we group under more generic labels
(Table XI). As with CSR teaching, environmental
and sustainability issues are prominent, exceeded
only by business ethics. Generally speaking, although
terms such as corporate governance, strategy and even
management occur it is not clear that this reflects research
‘‘mainstreaming’’ as these researchers are, by
definition, perceived either by the school leadership
(first cohort of survey recipients) or by their academic
peers (second cohort of survey recipients) as
‘‘specialists’’ in CSR research.
The research findings underline the importance
of the institutional environment of business schools
as research topics reflect the respective parameters
of academic journals and scholarly conferences
where researchers find outlets for their work. The
dominance of business ethics, for instance, is not
too surprising given the number and longevity of
journals in the field (e.g., Journal of Business Ethics,
Business Ethics Quarterly, Business Ethics: A European
Review). The same applies to environmental and
sustainability issues which are reflected particularly
in various European Journals (e.g., Business Strategy
and the Environment, Sustainable Development, European
Environment, Greener Management International,
International Journal of Sustainable Development).
TABLE XI
Research areas of European scholars in CSR
Research topic Percentage
Business Ethics 36
Environmental/Ecology Management 21
Corporate Social Responsibility 20
Sustainable development 18
Corporate Governance 17
Accounting and Finance, incl. 13
social/environmental reporting
accountability
Stakeholder Management 12
Globalisation 11
Strategy 5
Business and Society 4
Leadership 3
Corporate Citizenship 3
Marketing 3
Corporate communication 2.4
Culture 2.4
Corruption/Crime/Racism 1.8
E-commerce 1.8
Ethical Investment 1.8
Management 1.8
Corporate reputation 1
Gender 1
Sociology 1
Spirituality 1
Supply chain 1
Tourism, incl. 1
Ecotourism
Sustainable tourism
Trust 1
TABLE XII
Key words of PhD research topics in Europe
Research topic Percentage
Corporate Social Responsibility 5.5
Accounting and Finance, incl. 3.6
social/environmental reporting
accountability
Business Ethics 3.6
Sustainable development 3.6
Environmental/Ecology Management 3.0
Globalisation 2.4
Leadership 1.8
Corporate Citizenship 1.8
Stakeholder Management 1.2
Corporate communication 0.6
Corruption/Crime/Racism 0.6
Management 0.6
Marketing 0.6
Business and Society 0.6
Strategy 0.6
332 Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon
Similar relationships could be suggested to topics
such as accounting (e.g., Eco Management and
Auditing, Accounting, Organization, and Society). Less
popular research labels might be harder to place in
suitable journals with business school standing. It
may prove that more recent initiatives such as the
Journal of Corporate Citizenship or Corporate Governance:
International Journal of Business in Society and
the decision of more mainstream journals to produce
CSR special issues will contribute to the
growth, diversity and institutionalisation of future
CSR research.
This impression of a diverse and highly specialized
field is reinforced by our data on the work of
tomorrow’s CSR researchers, PhD students. Again,
although CSR itself is specified as a topic, so too are
a wide range of other topics which we have grouped
under more general headings (Table XII). The range
of topics is so broadly spread that we could hardly
identify any real clusters. Even the most frequently
used term, corporate social responsibility, is only used by
5.5% of the respondents. Environmental issues remain
prominent but they tend to be embedded in
sustainability-related and triple-bottom-line (economic,
social and environmental sustainability) research.
There is a sense that PhD topics are rather
more related to the mainstream business school fields
of ‘‘accounting’’, ‘‘management’’, ‘‘marketing’’ or
‘‘strategy’’ than is the work of faculty researchers.
This could reflect either the supervisors’ field orientation
or a calculation on the part of students that
this will provide a safer avenue for business school
careers.
Research organisations and resources
An important indicator of CSR’s relevance to
business schools is the way in which resources are
allocated to the topic. The fact that only 35% of
respondents answered this question could itself
suggest that this is not a priority (unless CSR research
was a sufficiently mainstreamed topic that
dedicated resources are not required).
About a fifth of the schools taking part in the
survey have some dedicated CSR research centres or
institutes (Table XIII). We suspect, though, that
these schools are over-represented among the total
cohort of institutions and may be closer to the
absolute, rather than the proportionate, number of
European schools with dedicated CSR research
centres. That being the case one might conclude that
the resource situation is rather sparse and schools,
funding bodies and business sponsors have not yet
realized the full potential to support CSR research in
business schools. Conversely, many business organizations
may not consider business schools as the
obvious places to fund research in CSR, reflecting
van Luijk’s assessment that business ethics in Europe
as an academic subject has faced considerable problems
in gaining currency with industry (van Luijk,
2001).
TABLE XIII
Resource provision at European business school
Dedicated resources Percentage of schools
where resource is
available
(absolute numbers)
Specialist research centre/institute 21 (35)
Library budget 20 (33)
Travel and conference budget 25 (41)
Research resources budget 21 (35)
Research staff 21 (35)
Doctoral seminars and conferences 14 (23)
Inclusion of alumni students 5 (9)
Other:
Book series on ethics and management (1)
Formal intra faculty group from different backgrounds
(finance, marketing, human resources, etc.)
(1)
Corporate Social Responsibility Education 333
The relevance of CSR research for industry
Table XIV indicates that respondents do make
their work relevant to industry. It should be noted
that answers to this question were provided by
only 26% of respondents. One possible reason for
the low response rate may be that some CSR
scholars see their work as adopting a critical attitude
towards mainstream business approaches. One
scholar, for example, responded to the question
about tools that his research would include by
commenting that: ‘‘absolutely no tools, tool-based
CSR is seen as a problem not as a solution, instead
change of mind set, building of alternative
leadership and organisation theory’’. This echos
van Luijk’s observations of the tension that
sometimes characterises business-academy relations
in CSR. Interestingly some schools reported
working with business-NGOs such as Transparency
International.
However nearly all respondents to this question
(and thus 25% of the survey respondents) express
strong interest in further and closer co-operation
with industry in a variety of ways, including:
_ collaboration with civil society and business,
_ work on CSR with SMEs in particular,
_ e-learning tutorial and education tools,
_ ethical accounting systems, third party certification
and codes of conduct,
_ development of corporate values,
_ facilitation of workshops and training,
_ assisting MNCs in developing countries.
There is probably some sort of overlap here with the
growing plethora of CSR consultancies that also
seek to advise business on CSR (Fernandez Young
et al., 2003).
Conclusions
This paper set out to address questions about the
extent and the ways in which European business
education addresses the broad topic of corporate
social responsibility. The survey has succeeded in
gathering data from a wide range of business education
institutions in a variety of countries and has
gathered opinion of business school leaders and
CSR teachers and researchers. Overall coverage of
about a quarter of higher education institutions
providing business education has been achieved
across Europe.
Our evidence leads us to give a qualified rejection
to the blanket claim that business schools are necessarily
incapable of educating business managers and
leaders in business social responsibility and ethical
behaviour. However, our findings are of some but
not all business schools taking initiatives in this area.
There is a highly diverse understanding, contextualisation
and packaging of CSR teaching. Although
the term CSR, its current agenda items and
other current business-society agenda items have
gained currency, many programmes are grounded in
the longer term orientations of business ethics and
environmental responsibility.
Two-thirds of our respondents provide some
sort of CSR education across the executive/short
course, MBA, MA/MSc and BA range, though we
are prepared to accept that this sample may overrepresent
aggregate CSR educational performance
across Europe as a whole. A high percentage of
respondents are aware of the imperative for
mainstreaming CSR, though the measures taken to
this end by some institutions would not necessarily
be recognised as such by other schools. Although
there is a disappointingly low level of CSR scholarships,
the extent of engagement of business,
NGOs and other academics in CSR education is
suggestive of a relatively collaborative approach to
CSR education.
Thus far, the main drivers of CSR have been
individual faculty members. Respondents indicate
that there will be a need for more institutionalised
future drivers, particularly in the form of support
TABLE XIV
Research relevance for industry
Research outcome developed for
business
Frequency(%)
Development of Tools for business 30
Consulting 28
Applied/collaborative research 22
Training and courses for companies 17
Joint conferences 7
334 Dirk Matten and Jeremy Moon
from business stakeholders and inclusion in programme
accreditation and ranking systems.
CSR research is similarly heterogeneous with
similar emphasis on its ethical and environmental
aspects. Interestingly, tomorrow’s researchers, the
PhD students, have adopted more governance-oriented
approaches as well as grounding their research
in traditional business school research fields. Although
a surprisingly high percentage (20%) of
respondents to the question indicated that they had
some dedicated CSR research resources, given that
only a small proportion of interlocutors answered
this question, we suspect that in fact such focused
support remains rare.
There is a strong orientation of CSR research to
business relevance.
Notwithstanding our qualified rejection of the
most negative views of the capacity of business
schools to develop CSR education, questions remain
about the future directions for CSR education
and research. It remains to be seen whether
the future drivers that our respondents see as critical
for the future success of CSR education do take
effect. Interestingly, the UK government has recently
launched a CSR Academy to report on the
‘‘development and spread of skills and competences
for the practice of CSR’’.9 Questions as to the
balance of regulation, accreditation and volunteerism
may be crucial to propitious developments
here.
A comparison with earlier studies, in particular
with Mahoney’s (1990) work in the late 1980s
reveals a stunning dynamic of the field over the last
decade. His research suggested that the business
ethics agenda will possibly broaden and lead to a
process of ‘‘clarifying social responsibility’’ (1990,
p. 178). Our study shows, that the agenda has indeed
broadened and though ‘‘business ethics’’ still is
a strong term in branding courses and programmes
in Europe, the terminology has significantly
encompassed a whole plethora of terms and ideas.
Interestingly, the stronger popularity of the term
‘‘business ethics’’ in continental Europe as compared
to the U.K. which earlier work identified
(Mahoney, 1990: pp. 165–167) is confirmed by our
study as well. However Mahoney’s anxieties about
a potentially inferior role of business ethics as a
teaching area in the U.K. has not been echoed by
our data: the U.K., though not under the label of
‘‘business ethics’’, certainly is the leading country in
provision of teaching and research of CSR in
Europe, both on the level of enrolments as well as
institutions offering programmes and modules
(Moon and Matten, 2004).
In the light of earlier research, probably the most
unexpected finding is the strong interest in CSR
among practitioners and industry which is underscored
by our findings in a variety of areas (e.g., see
Tables VIII – X and XIV). Our study might even
allow a somewhat optimistic answer to questions
about the role of ethical issues in business schools
and the attitude of business educators to consider
social responsibility as part of the curriculum
(Mahoney, 1990, pp. 182–183). Particularly our
results on mainstreaming of CSR as well as the
relatively consistent coverage of the topic in most of
the countries surveyed seems to paint a somewhat
encouraging picture of the role of the ethical issues
on the teaching agenda of business schools in
Europe.
There are various ways in which this research can
be extended. Most obviously, regarding the question
of the development of CSR education it is important
to get some sense of trends. It is our intention to
replicate this study in a couple of years. The research
findings we have will be used to explore further
certain critical themes such as case-studies of mainstreaming
of CSR and intra-European comparisons
(Moon and Matten, 2004). We would be pleased to
support any researchers who wanted to use the
questionnaire for non-English language research,
especially in countries which were under-represented
in our own responses and even beyond
Europe.
This paper constitutes an important step in providing
an overview over CSR education in Europe.
It is intended that our findings focus the attention of
individual business schools and their stakeholders on
their CSR education provision and that they provide
benchmarks for further research in the area.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank a number of people who
helped with the research for this paper: Catherine
Barlow and Kin Ying Alvis Lo did the bulk of the
research and data collection and Mark Daintree
Corporate Social Responsibility Education 335
helped with the design of the electronic questionnaire.
We are also grateful to Wendy Chapple, Andy
Crane, Peter Lacy, Jan Jonker and Malcolm McIntosh
for their support during the survey design and
data collection.
Notes
1 The survey was designed and administered by the
International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility,
Nottingham University Business School. It was conducted
in partnership with the European Academy of
Business in Society (EABiS), the European Foundation
for Management Development and the UN Global
Compact. The survey was also supported by the European
Research Network for Business in Society, The
Copenhagen Centre, the European University Association,
and the Association of MBAs.
2 http://www.interedu.com/index.php3?file=mcb00000.
3 It is unclear whether this reflects the relative importance
that the business school leaders attach to CSR or survey
fatigue.
4 We are grateful to Jan Jonker (Nijmegen School of
Management, The Netherlands and EABiS) for their
contributions to this database.
5 In order to ensure that the survey included high ranked
business schools this analysis included Equis accredited
business schools which had not already responded.
6 Nordic Countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway and Sweden; Anglo-Saxon Countries include
the UK and Ireland; Benelux includes Belgium, Luxembourg
and The Netherlands; Central Europe includes
Austria, Germany and Switzerland (incl. responses from
Poland and Slovenia); Southern Europe includes Greece,
Italy, Portugal and Spain.
7 We should add that response rates per individual
question varied from 22 to 86%.
8 See the EABiS website at http://www.eabis.org/education/
directory.
9 DTI Press Release ‘‘Next Steps towards Corporate
Social Responsibility Academy’’ 25/09/2003 P/2003/
483, see http://www.csracademy.org.uk.
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Corporate Social Responsibility Education 337
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