A Study on the Corporate Social Responsibilities of the Sri Lankan Banking Sector

Abstract

Present day society and customers expect the firms to contribute broader way to tackle social issues. Thus, businesses are expected to produce and overall positive impact on society. Therefore, society and customers expect the businesses to undertake corporate social responsibility (CSR). Even though, Sri Lankan Banks are undertaking CSR activities, so far, no research has been carried out to analyze their CSR adaptation. Therefore, main purpose of this study is to investigate the corporate social responsible practices of Sri Lankan banking sector organizations. This research was limited to the Sri Lankan banks. Corporate social responsibilities is operationalized in terms of four variables; economic responsibilities, legal responsibilities, ethical responsibilities, and discretionary responsibilities. Researcher adopted quantitative methodology and used structured questionnaires for data collection. Questionnaires were distributed among 35 banks which comprises of 22 licensed commercial banks (LCBs) and 13 licensed specialized banks (LSBs). All entities in these two categories were considered for this study and were identified as banks and each Bank was considered as a unit of analysis. Descriptive analysis was used for data analysis. Results showed that Sri Lankan banks are mostly concerned about ethical and discretionary responsibilities than economic and legal responsibilities. It is advisable for banks to concentrate more on economic and legal responsibilities than discretionary and ethical responsibilities. Finally, recommendations have been given as to how Sri Lankan banks can manage their CSR contribution successfully.