E‐corporate social responsibility in small non‐profit organisations: the case of Spanish ‘Non Government Organisations’

Abstract

The image and the reputation of small NGOs have direct bearing on the capacity of these entities to retain and attract members, volunteers and donors. These attributes have been linked to the concept of Social Responsibility. Therefore, for NGOs to be socially responsible and to make this fact known is a key factor that will have a positive influence on their image and reputation and will contribute to their being recognised and to strengthening social confidence in them. This article analyses the e‐corporate social responsibility in Spanish NGOs. It shows the infra‐use that NGOs make of the Internet as an information medium to communicate their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. In terms of transparency, this implies that the CSR transparency on their websites is very poor, although it grows as the size of the organisation increases.

Keywords:

• NGOs
• CSR
• transparency
• ICT
• information
• small services
• Spain

Notes

The five dimensions to which they refer are: completeness, accessibility, transparency, full disclosure and relevance.

CSR is conceptualised by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (2002) as ‘the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to sustainable economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large’. At European level, it is included in the Green Paper: Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility (2001), as ‘a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis’.

Customising the web page requires identification of the site user, which can be managed either by collecting information on the IP from which the consumer is accessing the site, using cookies, or by the voluntary provision of information by the user (age, education, income, etc).

The Foro de Reputación Corporativa is a Spanish business association that represents the Reputation Institute. It is made up of 15 leading firms in Spain and its main objective is to research and spread knowledge on reputation.

Lauer's 1995 study concludes that a good public image can give an impression of safety, causing a positive influence on people's perception of non‐profit organisations.

Neely et al. (2007) maintain that the managers and directors of non‐profit organisations voluntarily publish information in their annual reports in sufficient quantity and of sufficient quality to increase the transparency of the institutions they manage, with the aim of reducing the likelihood of disputes and reducing the possibility that the management be accused of deliberately hiding such information.

A study analysing agency theory in non‐profit organisations can be seen in Jegers (2009) .

A review of the literature on this subject can be found in Healy and Palepu (2001).

The Fundación Lealtad [Loyalty Foundation] is a non‐profit institution founded in Spain in 2001 (http://www.fundacionlealtad.org)

See ‘KLD Europe Sustainability Index’ http://www.kld.com/indexes/esi/index.html

Cluster analysis is a multivariate technique, the objective of which is to classify objects or cases in uniform groups called clusters. The method used is the hierarchical clustering analysis or hierarchical clustering method, which allows these groups to be shown in tree (dendogram) form so that the objects within each group (cluster) are similar to each other (high internal homogeneity) and different from objects in the other clusters (high external heterogeneity) (Guerrero & Ramírez, 2002).

Commission Recommendation 2003/361/CE of 6 May 2003 concerning the definition of micro, small and medium‐sized enterprises (Official Journal of the European Union L 124/36 of 20.5.2003).

A micro‐organisation is defined as one that employs fewer than 10 people, small if there are fewer than 50 employees; medium from 50 to 249 employees and large more than 250.

A micro organisation is defined as one whose annual turnover is less than €2M, small organisations turn over less than €10M but more than €2M, medium less than €50M and more than €10M and large if the organisation generates more than €50M. In this case, the groupings were: 41.48%, micro‐organisations; 37.03%, small; 17.03%, medium; and 4.44%, large.