Abstract:
Business organisations are an integral part of the society. They depend upon the
society for their continued existence and growth by impacting it. Therefore, it is
believed that they should give back the positive impact of their businesses to the
society in return. Hence, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the practice which
gives business organisations the opportunity to perform towards the betterment
of the society, has become one of the prime business practices in the word today.
Though CSR has received such an attention in the global context, the empirical
findings suggest that the Sri Lankan organisations are low responsive for CSR.
Further, a lack of researches conducted on CSR in Northern Province orgnisations
in Sri Lanka could also be noted. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to make an
understanding on the current CSR practices i.e. initiation and implementation in
Northern Province organisations in Sri Lanka and to identify the lacking areas. The
study focused only to explore the perceptions of management on this regard. After
a comprehensive literature review, semi-structured interviews were conducted with
five respondents, who represented the top management of five selected organisations
andwho are well experienced in CSR. The collected data were analysed through
manual content analysis. The research findings showed that the CSR practices of
Northern Province business organisations are not adequate while a more concern
has been given to internal CSR than external CSR activities. Further, nothaving
separate division/committee to carryout CSR, designing CSR activities based on
head offices’ perspective, lack of community awareness, and lack support from
stakeholders and encouraging bodies are the issues that need to be addressed,
in order to improve initiation and implementation of CSR in Northern Province
organisations in Sri Lanka.
