The pyramid of corporate social responsibility model: empirical evidence from Malaysian stakeholder perspectives / Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki and Tengku Farrah Maimunah Tengku Mohd Yusof

There has been an increasing interest on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) worldwide. Many CSR concepts have been proposed based on the premise that the business institutions are part of the society. A set of CSR
concept as proposed by Carroll (1979; 1991) is utilized by this study. This concept which is known as the Pyramid of CSR suggests that CSR is basically presented by four dimensions, namely, economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic in their respective order of importance. This concept is widely
tested in the literature and most of them are examined from the western countries’ perspectives. Despite the extensiveness of empirical research on
CSR in the West, past research investigating CSR concepts Malaysian
stakeholders remains scarce. Therefore, this study provides empirical evidence
from Malaysian stakeholders’ perspectives on CSR concept proposed by
Carroll (1979; 1991). The study surveys a sample of 457 respondents (45.7%
usable response rate). The results show that Malaysian stakeholders ranked
the four dimensions as economic, ethical, legal and philanthropic accordingly.
The ranking of dimensions by the Malaysian stakeholder was slightly different
from the idealized model suggesting cultural factor as contributing to the
differences. The study also highlighted gender, race, and education level,
working experience and religiosity factors that contribute to the differences in perception.