Abstract:

Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) currently receive growing attention, both in the academic literature and in the business management practice, and top managers play an absolutely essential role in the integration of both concepts into corporate strategy. However, what is the ‘perception’ of our undergraduate students in the degrees of "Management and Business Administration" and the Simultaneous Degree of Studies in "Law and Management and Business Administration" ─who are bound to administer and/or manage a large part of these enterprises in the future─ about the aforesaid issues? Must firms behave as ‘good corporate citizens’ guided by ethics and respect for people and the environment? To what extent do these students think that the adoption of an ethical and socially-responsible behaviour could eventually have an impact on a firm’s competitive success? Are Ethics and CSR a potential strategic asset in value-creation terms? Taking as a reference the results obtained in an empirical study carried out among a sample of 287 undergraduate students from the above-mentioned degrees at University of Alicante (Spain), these and other questions are subjected to analysis and treatment in the present paper.

Keywords:

Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale (PRESOR), Student’s Perception.