Corporate Social Responsibility image in a financial crisis context: The case of the Spanish financial industry

Abstract

The latest international financial crisis has taken society to claim for a higher interest of companies on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This fact has lead to an important increase in the number of papers analyzing the role of CSR on crisis contexts. However, these papers are mostly theoretical in nature and little empirical evidence has been given on the real perceptions of stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to study CSR image and relevance for the consumers in the Spanish financial industry. For this purpose, a new scale to measure CSR is proposed based on the proposal of stakeholder theory. The results point to the relevance customers give to all corporate activities directly linked with their own benefit, while the philanthropic andeconomic dimensions of CSR are less important. These results have important managerial implications for both banks and building societies as they provide useful information for a more effective CSR management, according to the entities’ operative characteristics.