A new perspective on corporate social responsibility: Stakeholder theory

Corporate social responsibility is the set of activities that businesses have to perform to gain legitimacy in the society and to ensure sustainability. The stakeholder theory defines social responsibility as a business?s economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities towards its various stakeholder groups and suggests these responsibilities to be changeable according to a business?s stakeholder network. The stakeholder theory also emphasizes that businesses have to define their social responsibilities according to the priorities of stakeholders who affect and are affected by the business? activities, and also suggest that this priorities can be composed with the help of stakeholder attributes. In this manner, the theory argues that corporate social responsibility implementations will create more added value for both businesses and the society.The purpose of this research is to evaluate the stakeholder priorities, corporate social responsibility implementations and stakeholder priorities of the businesses in the universe of the research from a stakeholder theory perspective and to determine the relationship and effect level between stakeholders? attributes and priorities. Results show that stakeholder attributes influence stakeholder priorities and priorities in corporate social responsibility implementations and that there is a significant relationship between the variables. This research, which supports the related theory also shows corporate social responsibility to be applicable from a stakeholder theory perspective.