1. INTRODUCTION

A fundamental question that arises in the realm of CSR is that what exactly constitutes it for a corporate entity. This is the knowledge gap that we have tried to answer in this paper, the relation between Company Act. 2013 and its implementation in the corporate scenario. Differing definitions have been proposed, inclusive and exclusive of each other (Singh, 2010).

This goes on to suppose that the practice of CSR is part of the larger business strategy and is an imposition of duress from stakeholders.

Given the increased understanding of social issues and causes people have begun to focus more on the social standing of the companies they interact with. Increasingly companies have begun using a concept known as “cause branding”. The company may come into an association with a for-profit organization for behind the product working and a not for profit or institution based for a cause for the purpose. Cause branding serves both the company by way of raising money and awareness for the company and the cause and to increase engagement with a company’s brand or product.

Also because branding makes the company or a brand name synonymous with the cause, thus providing it with a potential differentiator from the other competitors. Also it may result in for the company into enhanced brand/company engagement and image, improved employee loyalty, more positive corporate reputation. We have explored how CSR influences company’s policies.

From the Social Venture’s perspective, it provides it the much needed resources which it may not had had access to. Also it results into much better awareness for the cause as the venture can leverage on company name and brand. This is along with the increased donations and recognition in the society Potential tradeoffs for the companies are here like ceding of control and long-term influence on the company’s actions and image which it must wield well.

The larger meaning in essence is that it is not the “pressure” but the accountability towards all the stakeholders in the society that constitutes the CSR in a corporate (CSR and Sustainability Policy, 2014).

PSUs/CPSUs are regulated not only by Companies Act. 2013 (Section 135, Section 198 etc.) for its CSR compliance and implementation, but also DPE (Department of Public Enterprises) 2013 guidelines also.

If one restricts the area of concern to India in particular, the scope narrows down more and is of a different nature; with respect to the historical context. This is substantiated by the point made by Jorge A. Arevalo and Deepa Aravind that “CSR approach that is most favored by Indian firms is thestakeholder approach and that the caring or the moral motive, followed by the strategic or profit motive, are important drivers for Indian firms to pursue CSR” (Jorge and Arevalo, 2011).

Thus in this context many have expressed doubts regarding the ‘quality’ of CSR initiatives being undertaken; “quality field can significantly contribute to the deployment and uptake of the corporate social responsibility agenda yet needs to reinvent and rejuvenate in key areas such as management systems; integration of strategy, operations, technology, CSR and quality; incorporation of corporate governance; and improvements in third party certification and internal auditing practices” (Pavel Castka, 2007) thus as much as the CSR activities are being carried out the scope of quality and accountability remains limited. The current paper thus focuses on the Corporate CSR. While scope of this remains wide, the gist of the contribution made by Corporates along with others can be made out by the observation that “India public sector a long time flag bearer of Indian industries is definitely on the forefront of discharging its corporate social responsibilities. The public sector has entered areas which were earlier shunned by the private sector. It has proved its worth and created a benchmark in the history of CSR activities in India” (Roy, 2012).

2. LITERATURE REVIEW:

Management review literatures are usually narrative. They are criticized for being prejudiced and not having thoroughness, while reviews in the field of medical have improvised by adopting a methodology which is more systematic, reproducible and transparent. According to the guidelines of the method of systematic literature review portions like the scope of the review, the process of identifying relevant literature, and the results are included in the current review.

2.1. Scope of the review:

The scope of the current research paper is divided into two parts. The first part being form includes academic journal articles and it excludes magazines, trade publications, news, reviews and editorials. The second part being the content, focuses in this research paper on the effect on consumer purchase intention as a result of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). So we initially excluded articles relating to only CSR or only Consumer Purchase intention as we wanted a link between the two topics and not a separate review about each of them.

2.2. Identification of relevant literature:

The literature review process was conducted only once in the month of July 2017. We searched for keywords like ‘csr’, ‘CSR’, ‘corporate social responsibility’, ‘consumer purchase intention’ and ‘consumer behavior’ in two databases Ebscohost and Scopus. These databases were chosen because of the qualitative content they provide, as well as its relevance to the business and our research.

Our search which was conducted in July 2017 yielded 50 results (see Table 1 for the detailed information). The information extracted included the title of the article, the author(s) information, publication year, name of the journal, type of the document,its language, subject and its database. From the collected set of articles, 5 duplicate articles were eliminated, which resulted into an initial sample of 45 articles. For a few articles only abstracts were read in order to verify their relevance to the scope of the research whereas a few of the articles were read completely by the three co-researchers. Thus, each researcher read 10 articles making a total of 30 articles for the complete review. Difference of opinions between the researchers wastogether reviewed until we reached at acommon final agreement.

In total 10 articles were not included because they weren’t complying with the initial predefined content and form criteria, i.e. for being not academic (viewpoints, magazine articles, editorials and features), or off the topic. This filtration phase gave us an outcome of 35 relevant articles. Then, we extracted the full version or full texts of these relevant articles and examined them so that they be included in the review, which was based on thebefore mentioned criteria. Results of joint evaluationexcluded further 5 articles, finally leaving behind 30 articles for the current paper.

Table.1:Search Research Details

Database	Scope and search criteria	Date of search	Number of items
Ebscohost	Search: Academic Journals	26/07/17	25
Scopus	Search : Academic Journals	26/07/17	25

Figure.1. Flow chart of the phase two of the process of systematic literature review of literature of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its impact on company perception.

2.3. Systematic literature review results:

The 30 articles which are included in the current review got published between the year 2004 and 2017, with a stable and exceptional rise over this thirteen-year period. The reason behind the rise is that the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerged only a few years ago. For instance, in India CSR became compulsory after Companies Act, 2013 was introduced in India.

3. METHODOLOGICAL REVIEW:

The methodological review aims to give you a brief idea about the methods which were used in research in order to study the change in customer’s purchase preference or behaviour towards companies doing CSR or taking up CSR initiatives, without mentioning the design of research and the procedures used in detail. On the lines of methodological approach, parts giving details of the research methods applied were taken from every paper. A discussion between the co-researchers took place which led to categorizing of the articles methodologies into the following:

A. Non-empirical Research/Approach which is mainly theoretical and would consist of reflective essays and conceptual or scientific papers.

B. Quantitative Research/Approach which would include surveys and analyses of data via “z and t tests”.

C. Qualitative Research/Approach which mainly would include interviews, observations and case studies.

D. Mixed Research/Approach which is a mix of the above two.

The following graph gives insight regarding the number of papers and percentage of papers which were found under each of these categories (Also refer Table.2. for tabular form of this data):

Figure.2. Various methodologies of research which were used in the literature reviewed.

The current methodological segmentation can be described by taking into consideration the various papers referred to. This research has been conducted to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the effect of CSR and its impact on Company For this purpose, descriptive method has been used for an in depth and transversal understanding, supplemented by secondary data.

A range of options are available for conducting a Case Study research, these include interviews, observations, questionnaires and documents. To gain an understanding of CSR and its impact in the company perception. Effort has been made to direct it towards the ongoing effect along with the scope of the act with respect to the company to make this paper various sources were used. The study was initiated by a detailed review of existing literature and findings on the current scenarios so as to gain better insights into the context. Along with this published reports and papers around the topic in India were thoroughly studied.

Review of secondary literature, existing policies helped in formulation of research basis. The secondary research also provided insights and clarity about the future scope of study.

In addition to this focus has been made on initiatives for a more practical perspective. It’s a qualitative paper focusing on the general overview of present CSR scenario, the researchers kept in mind the objectives of the study while collecting and analyzing the data.

The superiority of Non-Empirical Approach/Methods and Qualitative Approach/Methods in reviewed research papers on the topic CSR and Consumer Purchase Intention can be explained by the modernity of the topic since CSR is a recent trend which has been going around among the companies since the introduction of The (New) Companies Act, 2013. Research in novel areas is focused first on issues which are definitional, then on exploration studies, and lastly attention is shifted towards theory measures and methods.

Therefore, the case with burgeoning streams, early studies on Consumer Purchase Behaviour/Intention on the basis of the CSR activities done by companies consisted of conceptual papers, theoretical discussions, qualitative investigations and proposed models, paving way for more in-depth and quantitative research.

4. Thematic Review:

In writing of the paper, emphasis was laid on having a broad understanding of the topic and come up with a follow-on outcome on the topic of study. In pursuance of the same various research papers have been referred to either in entirety or part to weave a complete study.

Table. 2. Methodologies of research which were used in the literature reviewed.

Categories	No. of Papers	Percentage of Papers
Non-Empirical Approach	9	30%
Quantitative Approach	5	16.66%
Qualitative Approach	10	33.33%
Mixed Approach	6	20%
Total	30	100%

As a result, CSR Impact on Organizational Stability, CSR and Impact on Internal Customers and dual Relationship of Social and Cause Associations were found to be the top themes of the current research with 6 papers on each topic, followed by Impact on Customer Retention and CSR and Legal Compliance with 4 articles each CSR in B2B Markets and CSR strategy with 2 articles each. (Refer to Figure.2.)

4.1 CSR and Legal Compliance:

The topic most research papers talked about was the legal requirements and compliance for the same. These basically pertained to the Company’s Act. 2013 and particularly to Section 135 and Schedule 7 under it pertaining to companies those have to do CSR and what constitutes it.

4.2 Dual Relationship of Social and Cause Associations:

While going through the papers it was realized that a sizeable number of them talked about CSR and its impact, with a gamut of them focusing on the Dual Relationship of Social and Cause Associations. With them having an interlinked relationship.

4.3 CSR and Impact on Internal Customers:

It was seen by means of study of the papers that as general trend a company’s social forays have a positive impact on how employees perceive their employer. It has been noted that if the employees or moderated or bought up to date with the latest social activities of their employer as is the practice in lot of multinationals they take keen interest in it and are often encouraged to contribute.

4.4 CSR Impact on Organizational Stability:

As the corporate world gets more and more competitive and dynamic it is becoming tougher to differentiate for companies, along with their offerings. Papers studied talked about the role of CSR in ensuring sustainability and stability of organization by giving a sense of belongingness and equity in the organization.

4.5 Impact on Customer Retention:

Customers consider those companies which are into social activities as more responsible and trustworthy. This makes them more loyal to not only the company but also the brand and thus they are ready to stay with the brand. As Brian Hill mentions- “The good the company does is part of the perceived value of its products and services and can result in higher customer satisfaction”.

4.6 CSR in B2B Markets:

Since companies work in Business-to-Business Markets it is also important to explore its impact on the business. In this context we read various papers on the topic. The findings were positive in nature and the research papers were uniform in their opinion that in such businesses suppliers tend to identify their clients as opposed to their perception for B2C customer. In addition, they tend to identify such business with more stability during contingency situations.

4.7 CSR Strategy:

The impact of CSR on competitiveness of the companies are analyzed in the gamut of papers referred. The researches talk about the pro-activeness of the firms as opposed to the reactiveness. Also the papers mention that there appears to be no difference between the strategies of the service and manufacturing. They also talked about Caroll’s Four Domains of CSR and pyramid of CSR along with the alternative approach to conceptualizing of the framework. The three core domains are economic, legal and ethical considerations.

4.8 CSRCommunication:

Due to revelation of many cases of wrongs in CSR like embezzlement, rights abuse etc. The public perception gets seriously undermined. A CSR initiative must work in a society- however if the society itself refuses to trust the venture then it could be a problem. To achieve its target a company must address the problem of trustworthiness and reliance.

Figure.3. Main themes of research on CSR and Consumer Purchase Intention

5. LIMITATIONS:

There are a few limitations with regard to this research paper. Firstly, the selected keywords which were used for finding various research papers were too broad and inclusive. Hence the research papers found also included those which weren’t directly related to our topic. Also few relevant literatures would have been overlooked due to the same reason.

The second limitation is related to biasness. Since consumer purchase behaviour is affected by a variety of factors the behaviour changes overtime (like biasness of a consumer towards a particular brand) and according to the situations, also it is affected by the biases of those who (have done the primary work for formation of secondary data) are in power and hence the results tend to get affected by such biasness. Lastly, the research papers which were reviewed might not give a proper representation of the whole population (even after we taking care of the same by putting in appropriate keywords and referring to different types of research papers for our research).

6. DIRECTION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH:

It is suggested that to ascertain the impact the companies can carry out a more organized social impact assessment. Lot of corporates use 5Ps approach, which means

a. Profiling: Ascertaining what the need is

b. Prioritizing

c. Problem Analysis (Ascertain what is happening, the present scenario)

d. Problem Solving (Why it exists? What to do)

e. Planning to solve it

This SIA may follow the Merck’s 5 objectives; Disclosure of activity, Multi-perspective, Comparative, Periodic and Independent. These are self-fulfilling actions. The team may review the initiative through existing processes and literature. Also it was from the study of the research papers that there seems to be a paucity of paper which elaborate on the relationship between disclosures of CSR activities by the companies and their relative impact upon the perception of the company. There was also an observed lack of relative data on the impact of CSR initiatives by companies and their impact on the perception of the local stakeholders or the community.

7. CONCLUSION:

After conducting this study, it was observed that increasingly with the enhanced awareness about social welfare and the latest Companies Act. 2013 guidelines, companies have begun emphasizing on triple-bottom line of People, Planet and Profits. By further analysis, the larger meaning in essence is that it is not the “pressure” but the accountability towards all the stakeholders in the society that constitutes has begun to constitute CSR.

If one restricts the area of concern to India in particular, the scope narrows down more and is of a different nature; with respect to the historical context. In the said context many have expressed doubts regarding the ‘quality’ of CSR initiatives being undertaken. Therefore, as much as the CSR activities are being carried out the cope of quality and accountability remains limited.

Furthermore, it was concluded that Corporate Social Responsibility is an agent of change which strives to bring about social change. For the companies conducting CSR, to ensure that their social initiatives have a social impetus and impact to act as a catalyst they must have the following characteristics:

• Creation and sustaining of social value

• Identifying of novel opportunities in order to be able to serve the social mission

• Involving in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning,

• Exhibiting accountability

Apropos the perception of company with respect to CSR, it can be seen that CSR is about impact and the inherent quality of intervention as it is about the subsequent trickle-down effect. This effect is the activities of the enterprise initiating CSR and thus the associated opportunities to create social value and welfare.

Furthermore, in context of the impact of this perception, a CSR initiating enterprise must work in a society- however if the society itself refuses to trust the venture then it could be a problem. To achieve its target an enterprise must address the problem of trustworthiness and reliance. There are many companies who may consider compliance as the end of the line and ignore identifying this problem for the sheer reason that they serve customers who at times have no choice or they operate in a closed environment. Also due to lack of open and universal parameters to measure their performance they do not understand the impact it may have. The performance and effectiveness of a social responsibility is not easy to analyze as it lacks the parameters like accounting ratios etc. What is profit for a business firm is the social impact for Social Venture; however, the problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to quantify this impact or measure in definite terms. There are some practices like that of Council of Better Bureau’s Philanthropic Advisory Service, but they are seldom followed.

Thus an effective analysis of the performance of the venture would greatly help in testifying its credibility. Many of the questions remain unasked, as said before the ‘social’ in the venture should not warrant it as resources’ drain or an exception to the normal conducting of business as a duress. Furthermore, as discussed, even CSR initiatives can be leveraged as source of Cause Branding, it should not be a gimmick sans substance to be used to attract and dispose customer attention.

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Received on 06.11.2017 Modified on 18.12.2017

Asian Journal of Management. 2018; 9(1):823-828.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2018.00130.0