The effect of corporate social responsibility activities on eliminating regional development differences

It is a fact that is expressed by everyone that the development differences exist between the countries and the regions within the borders of the country. Even in developed economies, regional development disparities couldn't be fully eliminated. For this reason, the concept of development is still up to date and is among the priority issues of central governments. With the liberalized world economy, depletion of resources, climate changes and ecosystem degradation have made the development problem more important than ever. With the acceleration of policies based on liberalization after the 1980s, the determining role of the firms in the markets has further increased. Therefore, it has been started to question how firms conduct their for-profit activities and what extent they participate in non-profit activities for the benefit of community. It is thought that the companies holding the power of capital play an effective role in eliminating regional development differences. Determining the direction and size of the impact of firms on the development of the regions which are located in can guide the policies to be applied to reduce the development disparities among the regions. For this reason, determining the relationship between the corporate social responsibility activities of the companies and the development levels of the regions has a great importance. The aim of this study is to determine whether the corporate social responsibility activities of firms have an effect on the development levels of the regions they are located in. In the first part of the study, which consists of three parts, the definition and historical development of the concept of corporate social responsibility, corporate social responsibility theories, stakeholders, dimensions, models and measurement and corporate social responsibility projects were emphasized. In the second part, the concept of regional development is handled; regional development theories, the causes of regional development differences, the aims of regional development policies and the historical process of development policies in Turkey are mentioned. Afterwards, the relationship between the basic principles of development policies and corporate social responsibility was evaluated and the connections between the dimensions of development and corporate social responsibility activities were explained. In the third chapter, the results of the field research conducted in five provincial centers (Ankara, Konya, Karaman, Aksaray, Niğde) which are border neighbors, have similar geographical and cultural characteristics, different development levels are given in order to determine the impact of corporate social responsibility activities on regional development. The relationship between the corporate social responsibility activities of small-scale firms that produce goods and located in provincial centers constituting the research universe and development levels of the provinces they are located and the levels of responsibility in regional development has been analyzed. According to the findings obtained by using the primary data collection method, there is no statistically significant relationship between the corporate social responsibility activities of the firms and the development levels of the provinces. Therewithal, a statistically significant and same-sided relationship was found between corporate social responsibility activities and the levels of responsibility in regional development. As the corporate social responsibility activities of the firms increase, their level of seeing themselves as responsible in regional development also increases.