Abstract:

Over the past decades the social responsibility concept has gradually gained unprecedented momentum in the public and business debates. As any other organizations, the 21st century higher education institutions have proved their focus on social responsibility. The present study is an attempt to explore the professors’ opinions on the social responsibility of their faculty. Our research was based on a pilot study, an explanatory research method which allowed us a better understanding of the dimensions of the social responsibility of faculties, the elaboration of a set of hypotheses and the identification of new research directions.

The aims of our paper are to present the theoretical approaches related to the concept of social responsibility of organizations, and to analyze the results of a pilot study regarding professors’ opinions on this concept within a Romanian faculty. To such ends, a set of two hypotheses was tested during our research. The results of our study demonstrate that professors are not only acquainted themselves with the rhetoric of social responsibility, but are also involved in projects related to this domain. Through a better formulation of the problems and the generation of new ideas, the results of the study might constitute work hypotheses for researching on bigger and more diversified samples of professors from different faculties from Romania or abroad.