Corporate Social Responsibility; Learnt rather than Imposed

The intention of this paper is to provide an alternative understanding of corporate social responsibility with a particular focus on social issues in relation to human resource development through an understanding of workplace learning for low educated employees. A theoretical understanding of CSR is setup and combined with a theoretical discussion of human learning, positive social change, and integrative learning within the hospitality organisation. This research recognisesthe importance of the individual's motives for exercising CSR at the lower levels of the organisation. The intention is to provide a perspective on the positive social processes that lower level employees (middle management/employees) undergo when working according to CSR-principles, based on social motives and behaviour, combined with an introduction to the learning intentions of low educated employees at lower organisational level. A hermeneutical paradigm is applied to the understanding of human (inter-) action in relation to understanding a phenomenon as CSR and motives for social change. It is suggested that the process of postive social change is divided into four phases, similar to The Human Learning Process by Stuart Dreyfus. The authors also aim to suggest a bottom-up approach to the implementation of CSR-principles, as the majority of contemporary CSR literature favours a top-down approach.