Benefit Perception About the Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility in Pprivate Sector in Turkey: Using Web Sites for Announcing of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities

As a consept that adds value to both the society and the corporation, understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), contributes to the development of social welfare on the one hand and also forms a basis for sustaining the existence of corporations in a society on the other hand. Consequently as distinct from philanthropy, two-sided benefits including institutional and social taken into account in Corporate Social Responsibility activities. Therefore especially in order to ensure the corporate benefit, it is important to be aware of the public about their works of social responsibility. Today it is observed that corporate web sites are used effectively for announcing these works. This paper first of all aims to explore the perception of social and institutional benefit about the understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility in Private Sector in Turkey. In addition, the usage of corporate web sites for announcing of CSR activities, in order to ensure the corporate benefit, is also investigated in this study. In the first section of the study, the contents of CSR concept, its historical development and differences from philanthropy are described. In the second section, economic approaches that related to CSR are discussed. Subject of this study is examined in a scientific frames by doing a literature review for each of these two sections. In the third section which is based on research, according to results –announced 2011- of “Turkey’s Top 500 Private Companies” research conducted by Capital magazine, a questionnaire was applied to the companies that headquarted in Istanbul then evaluation of the datas obtained from survey are given. In addition it is specified that whether CSR activities are taken place in the web sites or not by examining the corporate web sites of the companies which applied the survey. According the results of the study, although the majority of corporations accept the institutional benefit of Corporate Social Responsibility, they have an opinion that social benefit of CSR is more than its institutional benefit. It is observed that % 67,6 of corporations, which look after only social benefit from CSR, don’t explain this kind of activities on their corporate web sites however, %79,1 of corporations which look after both social and institutional benefits from CSR, announce such activities on their corporate web sites.