A Study on the Impact of University’s Social Responsibility Activities on the University Image and Organizational Loyalty

Abstract

According to the increase of the awareness regarding the importance of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity at the present, in our country, too, centered on the universities in Seoul and the capital city region, the CSR activities of the universities in Korea, including the educational service in Korea and overseas, the provision of the free-of-charge, educational service, and the support for the educational costs which have the alienated class of the community, etc., have been expanding gradually. And, according to this, they have been changing gradually to the expansion of the publicness, which is the main purpose of the non-profit, educational institutions. According to the changes of the CSR activities of the universities, most of the precedent researches regarding the preexistent CSR activities have been attaching the importance to the corporations that are the profit-making organizations. And it is the actual circumstance that the researches on the CSR activities of the universities, which are the non-profit institutions, and the others have been very insufficient. As such, in this research, regarding the directionality for continuously expanding the CSR activities of the universities and the effects resulting from the CSR activities, by determining the influence relationships among the social responsibility activities of the universities, the images of the universities, and the level of the organizational loyalty, it is intended to research whether they can have the positive influences on the work activities through the overcoming of the psychological sense of insecurity and the proactive behavior on the part of the university employee.

To accomplish the purpose of the research, by utilizing the statistical package program of SPSS, the analyses of the level of the feasibility and the level of the reliability of the survey and the multiple regression analysis for the verification of the hypothesis had been carried out. And, regarding the results that were obtained through an empirical analysis, it appeared that the ethical responsibility activity and the legal responsibility activity of the social responsibility activity were the factors that influence the image of the university. And it appeared that the philanthropic responsibility activity and the economic responsibility activity did not influence the image of the university. And, also, it appeared that the image of the university after the social responsibility activity of the university had a positive influence on the level of organizational loyalty. Such results simply that, regarding the social responsibility activity of the university which pursues non-profit making, differently from the social responsibility activity of an ordinary corporation, of which the economic and charity responsibility activity is important, based on the special character possessed by the university, the image of the university can be instilled through a social responsibility activity, too, which has the strong moral and ethical personality, and that, for the instillation of the level of loyalty of the constituent members of the organization, the university must place the emphasis on the social responsibility activity that is centered on the ethical responsibility activity and the legal responsibility activity.

Regarding the academic meaning of this research, by empirically analyzing the relationships among the social responsibility activity of the university, the image of the university, and the level of organizational loyalty, the research result can be found from the point that it had investigated the relationships among them to overcome the sense of employment insecurity that has been possessed by the employees of the university recently and to present a directionality for the social responsibility activity of the university. It is judged that, in the researches in the future, if the empirical researches with the students, who can be said to be the main agents of the universities, as the subjects get proceeded with, and even better meaning can be presented.