JURNAL INTERNASIONAL : "Corporate Social Responsibility Education in Europe By Dirk Matten Jeremy Moon"

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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