A study of social responsibility of Sri Lankan immigrant entrepreneurs in Australia

Increasing globalisation, technological advancement and migration waves in the last few decades have changed the look of many advanced countries to be more cosmopolitan and Australia is no exception. The number of South Asian migrants in Australia is steadily increasing. Among the South Asians, there are 31,482 Sri Lankans in the state of Victoria and the majority of them are entrepreneurs. Social responsibility perceptions and practices of these entrepreneurs have not been researched. The study aims to fill this gap by undertaking a triangulation method to investigate the social responsibility perceptions and practices of these entrepreneurs and identify whether or not they are influenced by home country contextual factors, specifically national culture, and business environment. The study is a work in progress and the survey will be undertaken in the second quarter of the year. Socially responsible businesses have the potential to promote an overall approach to quality and sustainable development as they can have positive impacts not only on their own businesses but also on the community and the environment in which they operate. This study is thus significant as it will deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia.

Corporate social responsibility, new activism and public relations

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse why some contemporary corporate organisations are reluctant to articulate the effect of their market positioning behaviour on the unwilling communities that oppose their activities. It describes the communicative interactions between several large corporate organisations and the grassroots activist groups opposing their activities, in Victoria, Australia.

Design/methodology/approach – Extensive secondary data were collected, including extensive newspaper and radio transcripts from the campaign periods, web site downloads, letters and other campaign documents. The research design applied to the data, a qualitative, interpretative analysis, drawing on key theoretical frameworks.

Findings – The research findings suggest that powerful protest strategies, combined with the right political and social conditions, and a shift in the locus of politics and expertise, bring to light public concerns about the ethics of corporate practices, such as public relations, used egocentrically by organisations, to harmonise their activities in late modern Western society. It finds that no serious overhaul of business ethics can occur until the unity of public relations is critically scrutinised and reformed. It helps define an alternative holistic communicative approach which could be applied more widely to business practice that helps avoid the limitations and relativism of public relations.

Originality/value – The research flags new ways of thinking expressed in the notion of public communication that could lead to creative and unusual coherences vital to deal with the apparent ecological challenges for society in late modernity.

Corporate social responsibility : a resource-based view of the firm

This paper reviews the application of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an intangible dynamic resource, its application in the formulation of marketing strategies and its association with business performance, using the theoretical framework of resource-based view of the firm (RBV). The study aims to address the control and governance of the application of the CSR with respect to self-control and regulatory control of corporate compliance. A model of CSR is suggested that represents the predictors of the construct (CSR) to facilitate the test of its usefulness in explaining the extent to which organisations may choose to be socially responsible.

Skills, strategies, sport and social responsibility : reconnecting physical education

Physical education is one of the more difficult subjects in the curriculum for generalist classroom teachers in primary schools to incorporate confidently into their teaching. In many primary schools, the generalist classroom teacher defers to a physical education specialist. This situation has both positive and negative features. In this context, this study brings together several prominent models of physical education teaching in an approach that enables the curriculum to be encountered through the interests of the children. This approach offers a generalist teacher, through appropriate professional development, a means for delivering a high-quality physical education programme, and also complements the repertoire of the specialist physical education teacher at both primary and secondary school levels.

How do Australian small and medium enterprises communicate their corporate social responsibility activities online?

Much of the existing research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) focuses on large firms, with comparatively little on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The SME research focuses on barriers and drivers to CSR and neglects how SMEs communicate their CSR activities. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on a content analysis of 443 Australian SME websites which identifies how they are using this channel to communicate their CSR activities.