Corporate Social Responsibility in a Hospitality Organisation: Towards an Analytical Framework

The intention of this work in progress paper is to provide an understanding of corporate social responsibility with a particular focus on social issues in relation to human resource management. The understanding of CSR shall be used to create a theoretical analytical framework that will provide the researchers with structures to set up an interview guide for future qualitative interviews. This research recognises the individual's motives for understanding and excercising CSR in the hospitality industry. The authors aim to construct an analytical framework taking as a starting point the understanding of implemented CSR-principles within an international hotel chain, recognised for its best practice. In the long term the intention is to learn how future hospitality professionals (present hospitality students) perceive CSR. The paper also includes refelctions on how different welfare state structures affect how CSR is practiced by corporations, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the human interaction that affect how the individual person perceive CSR. The CSR discussion is followed by methodological reflections on how interpretation of future empirical data should be conducted. A hermenutical paradigm is applied to the understanding of human (inter-) action in relation to understand a phenomenon as CSR-priciples. The paper is the very first thoughts on how a CSR analytical framework could be structured and which methodological approaches to apply.