Review of corporate social responsibility in India's top 40 companies.

• Main Authors: Tan, Desmond Kok Ming., Foo, Nigel Jong Meng., Phan, Thi Thanh Thuy., Thet Thet Khine.
• Other Authors: Ong Chin Siew, Dennis
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Management::Social responsibility
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/18863
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study reviews the corporate social responsibility if India’s top 40 companies. The first part of this report presents background information on India’s business and social development, highlighting the many daunting challenges confronting the Indian society today. India’s history of corporate citizenship and business-community relation is also described. The second part summarizes a literature review on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from a global perspective, focusing on the definition and evolution of CSR from different context and regions. The business case for CSR and other counter arguments are also discussed. The third part of this report evaluates the CSR efforts of the top 40 Indian companies according to Forbes’ 2007 Ranking. By developing a CSR index for each of the companies using a multi-criteria analysis approach, we evaluated the overall trend of CSR performance and examined the effects of some variables namely industry sector, company size, financial strength and age of company, on CSR engagement. The findings revealed a positive correlation between economic performance and CSR participation, and some consistent patterns from the variables. In concluding, the team opined that top Indian companies have contributed significantly to philanthropic activities but there are rooms for improvement in conformance and social entrepreneurship. CSR information disclosure by the majority of companies is good but much could be done to improve formal reporting. Comparing the industry sector, the financial sector stood out as being the least engaged in CSR or least forthcoming in information disclosure.