Professional Research Proposal: CSR and Stakeholder Influence

This research proposal examines the influence of stakeholders on top management's decisions regarding sustainability reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The study aims to analyze the impact of both internal and external stakeholders, including managers and shareholders, on the formulation of sustainability reports. The research employs a qualitative survey method using questionnaires to gather data from 20 companies in Melbourne, Australia, and will incorporate both primary and secondary research. The proposal includes a comprehensive literature review covering CSR, the effectiveness of sustainability reports, and the impact of managerial share ownership. The research question focuses on whether stakeholders influence top management's decisions, with objectives to analyze the importance of CSR, the effectiveness of sustainability reports, and the roles of stakeholders and top managers. A hypothesis is proposed, along with research methods including data collection and variable analysis. The paper concludes by summarizing the key findings and implications of the research.

Running head: PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Professional Research Proposal
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive summary
The objective of the paper is to analyze the effect of stakeholders on the decision of the top
managers and formulation of sustainability report. It is seen from the literature that the
stakeholders both internal and external influence the formulation of sustainability report and the
decision of the managers. This is because the stakeholders influence or get influenced by the
operations conducted by the firm. For the purpose, a hypothesis has been drawn and a survey
method is used for the research. The survey method will be a qualitative research with the help of
a questionnaire. The research will consist of both primary and secondary research method for
better result and understanding.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Corporate Social Responsibility..................................................................................................3
Effectiveness of Sustainability Report.........................................................................................4
Impact of managerial share ownership on sustainable report......................................................4
Hypothesis.......................................................................................................................................6
Research Question.......................................................................................................................7
Research Objectives.....................................................................................................................7
Null Hypothesis...........................................................................................................................7
Alternative Hypothesis................................................................................................................7
Research methods............................................................................................................................7
Research Design..........................................................................................................................8
Collection of Data........................................................................................................................8
Variable used...............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
With the increasing globalization and modernization, it has become necessary for
organizations to carry out corporate social responsibility and work sustainably according to the
needs of the environment. It is becoming a standard feature in all the small and large companies.
The environment of the business is degrading day by day. Thus, it is necessary that they carry
out their daily operations in a sustainable manner (Brown 2013). This will not only help the
company grow in a sustainable manner and increase the trust of the citizens towards them.
Corporate Social responsibility is also termed as corporate self-regulation that is integrated in the
business model of the company. The company to get profitability also does the CSR
responsibility of the company. There are evidences showing that CSR helps to increase the profit
of the company in long run. It is also noticed that the firm that wants to increase their reputation
by being socially responsible usually carries out the CSR (Korschun, Bhattacharya and Swain
2014).
It is seen that while implementing CSR in their daily operations the company needs to
formulate a sustainability report stating the steps they will take and its effectiveness of those
steps. However, many people influence the making of good sustainable report for the company.
The people that broadly influence the making of a sustainability report are the top managers and
the managerial share ownership such as the stakeholders (Costa and Menichini 2013). The
influence on CSR by the stakeholder shows that knowledge the stakeholder hold about the
organization and their views about the social responsibility it has to the society. The stakeholders
and the top managers are voluntarily encouraging the implementation of CSR through a proper
structuring of the sustainable report. They are also influencing the behavior by investing a lot of
their capital. On the other hand, it is seen that CEO of the company influence the CSR through

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its own personal behavior. On the other hand, it is believed that a firm carries out CSR in order
to increase the value of the stakeholders. However, the CSR strategy followed by the company
depends on the needs of the stakeholder and other holders of the company. Thus, it is necessary
that the managers of the organization act as leaders and formulate the sustainability report of the
firm. Thus is because stakeholders are very important for the firm and important member of the
company such as the CEO should take any decision related to them (Huang 2013).
The paper will discuss about the relationship between that stakeholders and the top
management of the company in designing the sustainability report for successful implementation
of CSR. It will further carry out literature review on this ground o show the relationship between
CSR and managerial share ownership. For the research purpose, a hypothesis is drawn and the
methods to collect the data and follow further analysis are stated.
Literature review
Corporate Social Responsibility
Enterprises should not only focus on being profitable but also focus on being
environmentally responsible organization for their citizens. Thus, it becomes necessary for the
enterprises to take up corporate social responsibility tool for their business. However, the
corporation needs to form a proper structure for implementing CSR in their company that should
help them rise above eh standard (Tai and Chuang 2014). Further, it has been described that CSR
is a way of embracing the responsibility of the entity and the processes by which the activities of
company is carried out in a sustainable manner. CSR ensures that the activities done by the
company should a positive impact of the environment and on its stakeholders. Corporate Social
Responsibility is a global issue and its put forward by all types of company with a aim of earning

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high profit and value (Tai and Chuang 2014). On the other hand, Crane, Matten and Spence
(2013) states that the increasing effect of global economic crisis has gave way to implementing
CSR in the business processes. This has made CSR a popular management process in the
business. Thus, companies are creating corporate social responsibility report to let the people
know about the steps they are taking for the society. Further, it has been noticed that the idea of
CSR has expanded from just recycling and multiple usage process. Altogether CSR has been
described a social responsibility of the business including the legal, ethical and other economic
expectation of the society from it over the time (Crane, Matten and Spence 2013).
Effectiveness of Sustainability Report
Fernandez-Feijoo, Romero and Ruiz (2014) has described that the company should take
up effecting sustainability report formulation for CSR activities. This is because sustainability
report works as a transparent communication tool through which they can convey their social
responsibility to the investors and other stakeholders of the company. The amount fo
transparency put in the sustainable report depends on the pressure from the stakeholders of the
company. Moreover, the company has to keep a link between them and the stakeholders because
the stakeholders always affects or gets affected by any operation taken by the firm. Thus, their
involvement in the formulation of CSR is necessary. However, the increasing transparency of the
sustainability report of the firm has various consequences such as increases complexities,
conflicts and others. This is because all the stakeholders gives importance to their own benefits
and needs rather than on the whole company (Ioannou and Serafeim 2016).
Impact of managerial share ownership on sustainable report
To carry out successful CSR practices in the organization the entity should structure out a
sustainable report. The preparation of this sustainable report requires guidance and involvement

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by various stakeholders and top management of the company. Stakeholders and the top managers
of the company such as the CEO have different views regarding the determinants that influence
the implementation of CSR practices. Park and Ghauri (2015) in their paper have described the
determinants influencing the implementation of CSR and the sustainability report from the
stakeholders’ point of view. The process of implementing and carrying out a successful CSR
strategy in an organization is very complex and is considered as a voluntary decision between the
social concerns of business processes and meeting the expectations of the stakeholders. It has
been further analyzed that the stakeholder theory has helped in adding values to CSR and a new
type of thinking on corporate responsibilities. The common stakeholders of the company are the
consumers, the internal managers, suppliers, government and investors. They are considered as
primary stakeholders of the organization. For example, the policies made by the government play
a great role in encouraging the entities to take up corporate social responsibility. On the other
hand, managers directly influence the decision of the company with regards to internal activities
such as the remuneration policy, trade unions, work conditions and others. They are the one that
help business to carry out CSR for the active stakeholders of the company (Park and Ghauri
2015). According to Plewa et al. (2015) corporate volunteering plays a crucial role in shaping the
perception of the consumers towards the CSR practices of the organization. It is deemed to put a
positive impact on corporate social responsibility practice. Corporate volunteering is increasing
in the world and is accepted as one of the fastest growing CSR activity.
Tang et al. (2015) has described CSR as an initiative taken by firms to improve their
activities concerning social responsibility and according to the interest of the stakeholders. One
of the most important person of the company that is the CEO influence the decision of the
stakeholders in carrying out an effective CSR activities for the well being of the company. It has

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been seen that the nature and confidence of the CEO put a direct impact on firm’s decision to
take up effective corporate social responsibility or not. It is solely the decision of the company’s
CEO to indulge in socially responsible or irresponsible activities in short and long run (Manner
2010). Company’s involvement in CSR activities and formulation of sustainability report also
depends on a large extent on the top managers of the company. They are the one that formulated
the policies in the sustainability report after taking all the suggestion of company’s stakeholders
(He, Chen and Chiang 2015). Thus, it is stated that the company’s capabilities of taking up CSR
activities depends o the education, working experience, family or non-family working culture.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis is one of the essential parts of the report as it helps the researcher to know the
potential answer they can get from the research question. Hypothesis is considered as a
prediction made by the researcher based on past literature. A hypothesis consists of a research
question, objective of conducting the research, a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis.
There are two possible outcomes of the research stated in the hypothesis such as the predicted
result and the other stating all the possible outcomes.
The first one is known as the Null Hypothesis and the other one is known as the
Alternative hypothesis. Null Hypothesis is always related to the statement of the question to be
answered. Further, the final answer is also denoted in terms of Null Hypothesis. For example, we
can either accept the Null Hypothesis or reject it depending on the result. However, it can also be
possible that we neither reject nor accept the Null Hypothesis ad states that ‘do not reject Null
Hypothesis’. This does not mean that Null Hypothesis is true. It only suggests that insufficient
information has occurred in the research leading to no result (Rossi, Wright and Anderson 2013).

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Research Question
Does the stakeholder influence the decision taken by the top management of the company
while preparing the sustainability report for the implementation of Corporate Social
Responsibility?
Research Objectives
 To analyze the importance of corporate social responsibility in a company
 Effectiveness of sustainability report
 To analyze the decision of the stakeholders while formulating sustainability report
 To analyze the influential effect of top managers in the formulation of sustainability
report
 To analyze the influential effect of stakeholders on the decision of the top managers such
as CEO
Null Hypothesis
H0- stakeholders effect the decision taken by the CEO while formulating sustainable report
Alternative Hypothesis
H1- stakeholders does not influence the decision taken by the CEO in the formulation of
sustainability report.
Research methods
The research method used for the research of influence of managers and stakeholder of
the company on the CSR policies will be a qualitative method via a survey. This is because a
survey method is very effective in collecting information over huge population. Further, the
survey will be conducted with the help of simple random sampling and by effective analysis of

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the sampling results will be denoted. The sampling for data collected will include 20 companies
of Melbourne and each company’s perspective regarding the influence of top managers on
sustainability report will be known (Best and Kahn 2016). The survey will be done with the help
of a questionnaire through which data will be collected on various grounds that will make it easy
to analyze the result. Questionnaire prepared for this purpose will include both open ended and
close-ended questions. The close-ended questions will allow the respondent to answer between
two given alternative. However, the respect can also share their views through the open-ended
question. Further he responses given by the taken number of samples will be analyzed to
evaluate the view of the companies regarding formulation of sustainability report for CSR
(Verma Singh and Smarandache 2014).
Research Design
As mentioned above the research will be conducted on the basis of a questionnaire and
further analysis will be done on the answer derived. The questionnaire will be distributed to
companies taken in the sample with the help of physical questionnaire or on their office mail as
soft copies. This will allow all the members of the company to take effective participation in the
survey. Mail is a good way of sharing the questionnaire and collecting the data as internet is
being used on a wide range nowadays. Collecting the data through questionnaire is effective
because it is free from biasness, covers large data in a single time and it can be used by anyone
not familiar with these tasks. Moreover, it also allows the respondents to give their views as well
through the open-ended questions (Bryman and Bell 2015).
Collection of Data
Collection of data will be done by both primary and secondary research. Primary research
is a way by which the researcher collects data directly from the primary source. In this research,

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the researcher will collect primary data from the companies implementing CSR strategy. The
collection of data will be done by distributing questionnaire via mail or physically going to the
company. The participants of the questionnaire such as the managers and other stakeholders will
be asked to fill the questionnaire independently. They are expected to give all their answers truly
and with patience after understanding the crucial effects of their answers. On the other hand,
secondary research will be conducted by viewing the past data and evidences about the
influential effect of top managers on the implementation of sustainability report. The result of the
research will be given in a descriptive way so that is can be easily understood by everyone (Hair
2015).
Variable used
While conducting the research, the researchers are met by different variables that
manipulates their behavior and has an effect on the result of the research. Variables can be
dependent, independent, moderate or intervening. The variable used in this research will be
dependent variable, which is of primary interest to the researcher. The variable in this research
are the top managers, the stakeholders of the companies and the sustainability report. These
variables are interdependent on each other and are influenced by each other. The decision taken
by the top managers and the stakeholders influence the result of sustainability report. On the
other hand, the formulation of the sustainability report and the CSR initiative of the company
affect the existence of managers and stakeholders both externally and internally. This shows that
the variables of the company are dependent on each other. Thus, the research takes into account
the dependent variables (Lee 2013).
Conclusion

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From the above research, it can be deduced that the literature on the implementation of
CSR by the companies has shown that the decision of formulating a sustainable report is
influenced by the decision of the CEO and the needs of the stakeholders. The stakeholders of the
company both internal and external are affected by the operations done by the company. Thus, it
is important to include their decision while making the sustainability report. For the research two
hypotheses, statement has been given by which the result will be denoted. Further, the research
will be conducted with the help of primary and secondary research. The primary research will be
done with the help of questionnaire and distributing them among twenty companies. For the
purpose, a simple random sampling method will be chosen to make the task easy for the
researcher. Thus, a qualitative analysis will help the researcher to find the effect of stakeholders
and manager’s decision on the sustainability report of the firm. Result will be denoted in a
descriptive way to make it easily understood by everyone.