CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND EDUCATORS AS SUSTAINABILITY CHANGE AGENTS: A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR Eco-INITIATIVES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become one of the most urgent factors of sustainability in the corporate and non-corporate world. Although CSR has been widely researched in business settings, its application in the higher education institutions (HEIs) is relatively under researched. The conceptual paper will create a model to explain how CSR activities conducted by HEIs impact on the teacher eco-initiatives, where environmental information and green passion is the mediators, and green warm glow the moderators. Based on the CSR Pyramid and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory developed by Carroll, the paper will support the claim that CSR offers both information and psychological resources that can help educators to transform the commitments of sustainability of the institution into eco-initiatives. The green passion activates intrinsic motivation to act, whereas environmental information enriches information and clarity about sustainability goals in teachers. Green warm glow is the inherent reward of environmentally-friendly behavior and supports these processes by enhancing the connection between CSR and behavior. The theoretical contributions of the paper are: the theoretical provisions of the COR theory are extended to the sphere of higher education providing a dual-pathway (cognitive and psychological) model of CSR promoting the creation of eco-initiatives, and the consideration of emotional reinforcement as an intermediate. In practice, it assists the HEI leaders and policymakers to design CSR strategies to give sufficient information, foster passion, and reward sustainability successes among the teachers. Placing CSR in the background of HEIs, the framework identifies the role of educators as the sustainability change agents and proposes the roadmap of the subsequent empirical research.