Corporate social responsibility towards employees: A research on BIST100 companies

The aim of this PhD thesis is to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively the understanding of corporate social responsibility towards employees and the factors affecting it in Turkey. The concept of corporate social responsibility has been in the literature for a long time; it can be defined as voluntary activities carried out by businesses out of legal obligations towards their stakeholders and society, which have a large share in their profitability. Employees of companies come first among these stakeholders, and therefore the relationships between the business and its workers are one of the most basic indicators of an enterprise's social responsibility. However, there are very few studies on corporate social responsibility for employees in our country when compared to other social responsibility areas. In this study, firstly, the literature in this field is examined, the concept of corporate social responsibility towards employees is defined and its development, importance and scope are touched upon. In the second part of the study, the regulations and the codes of conduct regarding corporate social responsibility and employee rights are given. In this context, firstly, the problems that cause the need for behavior codes, and afterwards, respectively, international, multi-stakeholder, industry and company-based regulations are mentioned. In the last part of the study, in order to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively the understanding of corporate social responsibility towards employees and the factors affecting it in Turkey, descriptive and statistical analysis is made regarding the social responsibility reporting of companies in our country and the existence of social responsibility indicators in their reports.