Developments in Corporate Social Responsibility Understanding and Practices in Turkey

Abstract

Businesses are open systems that operate in line with customer demands and needs, resulting in profit. Nowadays, as a result of the increase of competition in the national and international arena, it is not enough for businesses to offer quality products or services. Likewise it is not sufficient to offer this product or service to the market in accordance with the purchasing power of the consumer. Corporate social responsibility aims to comply with social norms and values in order to increase the quality of life of employees, families and society (Kotler & Lee, 2006; Bowen, 2009; Mohr, Webb & Haris, 2001, p. 47). At the same time, it can be expressed as the efforts of companies to reduce or eliminate their harmful effects on society and to maximize their long-term beneficial effects (Mohr and Webb, 2005). With corporate social responsibility practices, businesses make their lives more sustainable by getting approval from their stakeholders (Vo, 2011, p. 90). While CSR is seen as an important tool in establishing a relationship with the society and giving back to the society what has been taken from the society, it is also an important factor in the formation of corporate reputation (Bear, Rahman, & Post, 2010, p. 208). In a study done by Pfau et al. (2008), it was concluded that CSR ac-tivities have an effect on corporate reputation as a result of the perception created on individuals. In the literature, there is no study examining the change in the field of CSR in Turkey in recent years. The contribution of this study is that it presents the change in the understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility in Turkey in a holistic framework in the light of published reports. The change experienced by year and subject, the change in the perspective of companies, society and NGOs on CSR has been discussed within the scope of the research. In this study, firstly, corporate social responsibility is discussed conceptually. Then, through the social responsibility studies conducted in Turkey, we examined the changes in the fields of corporate social responsibility activities in Turkey in recent years, the target group of the activities, how the enterprises evaluate CSR.