University social responsibility: perceptions and advances

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the perception of professors, students, administrative staff and academic directors about social responsibility in four universities of Rio Grande do Norte (RN) – Brazil.

The research was carried out in four universities in RN, Brazil. A survey was conducted with 1,318 students, 118 members of the administrative team, 104 professors and 29 academic directors, to whom a Likert-type questionnaire was applied, with 65 items allocated in seven dimensions as follows: organizational governance, human rights, work practices, environment, legal practices, consumer issues and community involvement and development. Exploratory factorial analysis and Cronbach’s alpha were the statistics used to analyze the data.

The research showed difficulties in assessing social responsibility aspects because of the lack of discussion and little socialization and debate of the data. Concerning everyday issues such as student service, environment issues, working conditions and local development is an exception because they have explicit opinions and often negative perceptions.

The data used were self-reported they were subjected to bias, such as self-attribution and selective perception by community members. The lack of a theoretical model of social responsibility to study a non-profit organization. This study offers a theoretical contribution to analyzing six variables in non-profit organizations.

The data collection instrument also contribute to Brazilian universities can meet the evaluation criteria of higher education institutions in Brazil by Law 10.861/04, which established the national higher education evaluation system.

This contribution allowed the authors to understand, which of them find the most consensus among stakeholders and which are the most contradictory, as well as to promote improvements in the implementation of social responsibility policies. The proposal of the instrument results in concrete actions for the adoption of the university, to accelerate the implementation of ISO 26000 in its statutes.

The study on social responsibility at universities of RN, Brazil, under dimensions of organizational governance, human rights, work practices, environment, legal practices, consumer issues, and community involvement and development is innovative and supports other universities to think their processes and better contribute in training new generations of citizens and professionals.