The contribution of the ungc to develop csr strategies in higher education industry: A case study

Abstract

United Nations Global Compact, a global corporate responsibility initiative launched by United Nations in 2000, has more than 12,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders from over 170 countries. Becoming the largest voluntary corporate social responsibility initiative in the world and having approximately 440 academic participants, UNGC published “UNGC for Higher Education Institutions” (HEI), a guide book for higher education institutions in implementing the ten principles of the UNGC within the organization and then leading their global adoption. Although UNGC has been criticized both as a failure and as a success in the literature, with respect to both criticisms, this paper will discuss the opportunities offered by UNGC for HEI to Universities in their CSR practices. This study makes two main contributions with the evidence from Istanbul Bilgi University case: (1) discuss the effectiveness of UNGC as a guideline for universities in developing CSR practices in their business operations and (2) discuss how UNGC helps to make universities’ CSR implications visible. © 2019, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.