What Drives Socially Responsible Design in Organizations?: Empirical Evidence from South Korea

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study that investigates designers’ underlying motivations for socially responsible decision-making within an organization and identifies the empirical link between the level of designers’ awareness of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related issues, the degree of firms’ design management capacities and their perceived performance in terms of socially responsible design (SRD) in organizations. Using large samples targeted across the range of designers in South Korea, the current study empirically supports that SRD decisions are determined in large part by important interaction between the designers’ true beliefs and the firm’s level of CSR. Our results also show that a firm’s design management capacity plays a significant role in integrating environmental and social issues into product and service development and achieving better SRD performance and ultimately CSR goals within organizations.

Keywords:

• socially responsible design (SRD) decision-making
• design management capacity
• new product and service development processes
• eco-entrepreneurship
• corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yoori Koo

Dr Yoori Koo is a visual communication designer, researcher and educator. Her PhD in design management was completed at Lancaster University, in which she investigated how design and human-centred design thinking might lead to more sustainable products and services in organizations. Her work brings new and important insights to the existing literature – especially on the role of design management and the importance of organizations taking seriously the critical contemporary issues of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. She is currently Assistant Professor at Hongik University in South Korea, and a Public Service Design Consultant in the Ministry of Security and Public Administration, also South Korea.

Rachel Cooper

Rachel Cooper OBE is Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University. She is Director of ImaginationLancaster, an open and exploratory design-led research centre conducting applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions. Professor Cooper’s research interests cover: design thinking; design management; design policy; and across all sectors of industry, a specific interest in design for wellbeing and socially responsible design. She has published extensively on these topics, including books Designing Sustainable Cities and Constructing Futures (Wiley Blackwell). She is also series editor of the Ashgate series Design for Social Responsibility. She is currently working on Liveable Cities, an Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council funded six-year research programme working to identify design and engineering solutions that will lead to low-carbon, resource-secure, future cities in which societal well-being is prioritized. Also ‘The Creative Exchange’, an Arts and Humanities Research Council Knowledge Exchange hub looking at the growth of the creative industries through exploring the ‘digital public space’. She was a member of the 2014 Blackett review on the Internet of Things. She is a non-executive Director of the Future Cities Catapult, and a Lead Expert for the UK Government Foresight programme on the Future of Cities, and is on the UK Academy of Medical Sciences Working group addressing ‘the health of the public 2,040’.