A comparative analysis of corporate social responsibility practices of Turkish companies and companies with foreign ownership

Abstract

The concept Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been very popular both in the academia and business world especially in the recent fifty years. Supranational and non-governmental organizations, governments, business world and scholars strive for promoting CSR. The main objective of this study is to investigate the CSR practices of listed companies with a special emphasis on the differences between CSR practices of Turkish companies and companies with foreign ownership. Shareholder theory, stakeholder theory and institutional theory establish the theoretical framework of the study. For this aim, CSR practices of companies listed in the Istanbul Stock Exchange National 100 Index as of the last quarter of year 2009 is analyzed. The data were collected from archival sources such as annual reports, corporate governance compliance reports, and official web sites. Content analysis method is used for the analysis. Activities carried out by companies beyond ethical and legal obligations were regarded as CSR and every activity is coded as a project. These projects are investigated based on various dimensions namely subject area, target, scope, partners, level of engagement and time span. Findings reveal that there are significant differences between CSR practices of companies. This difference can be observed both among the Turkish companies, and between Turkish companies and companies with foreign ownership. Especially, scopes of the projects, engagement levels of companies in the projects and types of partnerships while carrying out the projects substantially differ between Turkish companies and companies with foreign ownership.