Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Human Resource Management - as New Management Concepts – in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

© 2014 Kaunas University of Technology. All rights reserved. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a management concept based on the creation o f a balance between economic, social and environmental goals is more and more accepted as an indicator of the success of the company as a whole and as a possibility for the achievement of sustainable development. In one of the most important developments in this area, in 2001 when the Commission of the European Communities brought the Green Paper for Promoting a European framework for Corporate Social Responsibility, the main definitions about CSR and external and internal dimension have been explained. Inside the internal dimension human resource management (HRM) was emphasized as an area which is primarily included in the CSR practices. Since employees and managers are usually seen as very important factors of successful CSR implantation, in this paper the relations between these two concepts are analyzed.Based on the above mentioned, the aim of this study was to explore the existence of CSR in organizations from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and the relationship between CSR and HRM. The analysis was done trough the exploration of the differences between organizations that have or not CSR statements in relation to the level of environmental matters and existence of the HRM action plans. Subjects of the research are the concepts of CSR and HRM, as well as the empirical analysis of data from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Serbia related to the implementation of CSR in organizations. Based on data obtained in the Cranet research project from 2008 to 2010, it has been explored whether companies from CEE and Serbia have statements on social responsibility, or doing business based on some unwritten standards, and if there is a connection between these statements, the level of environmental matters and HRM practices in the organizations. Statistical techniques as descriptive statistics, crosstabs, chi-square tests and ANOVA test were used in SPSS Version 17.0. Based on the literature review on CSR and HRM, as well as on data analysis the authors attempted to explain the connection between these management concepts.