Development of a Scale on Individual Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility Constructs: Based on Microfoundation Theory

Abstract

The authors develop a scale to measure individual perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) constructs based on microfoundation theory. To develop the microfoundation based CSR scale, the research methodology involved two stages (qualitative research followed by quantitative research). In qualitative research, Focused Group Discussion (FGD) was conducted to extract items for survey questionnaire development. Subsequently, quantitative analysis was carried out. The data were subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The study sample comprised of 407 management students of Indian business schools who enrolled in CSR and sustainability courses. The developed scale comprised of four variables namely Customer Product Preference (CPP), Customer Firm Preference (CFP), Investor Preference (IP) and Employability Preference (EP). The results were arrived at by undertaking Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and CFA. The scale developed and extended the theoretic conversation on CSR from the organizational level discussion to an individual level discussion based on microfoundation theory. This is one of the first studies to develop a scale on individual perspectives on CSR constructs based on micro-foundation theory.