The impact of corporate social responsibility on corporate image in the construction industry: a case of SMEs in Egypt

ABSTRACT

The current study explores Corporate Image (CI) for companies as one of the primary measures of competitive advantage. Hence CI has been considered the dependent variable to test whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices could affect CI in SMEs. This research focuses on the construction industry in Egypt due to the limited availability of studies investigating CSR and corporate image. The authors performed a regression analysis to assess CSR's effect on CI in Egyptian construction companies. The results revealed that Egyptian SMEs in the construction industry implemented most of the CSR practices included in ISO 26000, and those practices positively impact the companies’ corporate image. The results of the study are in line with the literature and theory of both CSR and CI.

KEYWORDS:

• CSR
• corporate image
• developing countries
• Egypt
• SMEs
• ISO 26000

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.