Corporate social responsibility as an agent for social change

The intention of this paper is to provide a specific understanding of corporate social responsibility with a particular focus in social issues in relation to human resource development. The understanding of CSR is used to create a theoretical analytical framework that should provide researchers with key points to set up an interview guide for a future qualitative reseach. This research recognises the importance of the individual's motives for exercising CSR at the lower levels of a hospitality organisation. The intention is to provide a perspective on the positive social processes that lower level employees (middle management/employees) go through when working according to CSR-principles, based on social motives and behaviour. A hermeneutical paradigm is applied to the understanding of human (inter-) action in relation to understand a phenomenon as CSR and motives for social change. It is suggested that the process of positive social change is divided into four phases, which to a point can be compared to The Human Learning Process by Stuart Dreyfus. Another aspect of this paper is also to create a bottom-up approach to the implementation of CSR-principles as the majority of CSR literature today tends to focus on the management/societal perspective of this issue.