Abstract:

The situation of Spanish universities in the field of Social Responsibility, hereinafter USR, and the integration of these subjects in their training offer have seldom been analyzed and there is little research on these issues. In fact, only the paper by Ruiz-Corbella and Bautista-Cerro (2016) for a sample of Spanish universities was found in the period 2000-2015 as an antecedent. Even though there is no previous and recent evidence for the specific case of university training in business, it is broadly understood as the degrees in Finance and Accounting and Administration and Business Management.

Our research objective is to review the importance of USR and its integration in the current academic offer in Spanish universities. The recent economic, political and social changes have led to the fact that higher education institutions should offer courses focused on USR to adapt to the new demands of society. It requires them to act in a socially responsible manner, completing the mere training of their stakeholders, promotes lifelong learning and provides equal opportunities for all stakeholders (Martí et al., 2014).

Specifically, we are interested in knowing if USR appears within their academic offer and how it is offered, depending on the type of subject in which it is included and its duration. For this purpose, the methodology involves an initial review of the literature that justifies the relevance of USR and a second stage of collection of primary sources through a review of all the websites of Spanish universities. As main outcomes, the awareness and commitment that students and professors have towards USR was borne out (Plungpongpan et al., 2016), although we identified some lack of training in values by universities (Martínez-Usarralde et al., 2017). Likewise, regarding the offer of training USR, we found that a large number of Spanish universities include subjects related to USR; however, there is an important percentage that still do not integrate these contents, and it is not yet possible to speak of a generalized presence of subjects with USR in the Spanish field.

The structure that we propose for our study will be based on the following sections. Firstly, an introductory block and then an analysis of the importance of the USR in a theoretical way and its incorporation into academic offer. The description of the methodology used will be in the following section and finally, we will point out the main outcomes and conclusions of our study.

References:
[1] Martí, J. J., Martí-Vilar, M. y Almerich, G. (2014): “Responsabilidad social universitaria: influencia de valores y empatía en la atribución de comportamientos socialmente responsable”. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 46(3): 160-168.
[2] Martínez-Usarralde, M.J., Lloret-Catalá, C. and Mas-Gil, S. (2017): “Responsabilidad Social Universitaria (RSU: Principios para una Universidad Sostenible, Cooperativa y Democrática desde el Diagnóstico Participativo de su Alumnado”. Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, 25(75): 1-25 (In Spanish).
[3] Plungpongpan, J., Tiangsoongnem, L. and Speece, M. (2016): “University social responsibility and brand image of private universities in Bangkok”. The International Journal of Educational Management, 30(4): 571-591.
[4] Ruiz-Corbella, M. and Bautista-Cerro, M. J. (2016): “La Responsabilidad Social en la Universidad Española”. Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, 28(1): 159-188 (In Spanish).

Keywords:

Social responsibility, university, degrees.