Corporate Social Responsibility on Disaster Resilience Issues by International Contractors

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting is gaining importance in the construction industry as an effective tool to communicate social citizenship. Despite the increasing attention on the role of the construction industry in disaster resilience, CSR reporting on resilience issues among construction practitioners has yet to be explored. The present study adopted the concept of disaster risk management and stakeholder theory and first established a CSR-resilience evaluation framework with 20 resilience issues and 46 indicators through a modified Delphi technique. Thereafter, a sample of 295 international contractors was selected from the Engineering News-Record (ENR) list from 2014 to 2018, and a systematic content analysis approach was conducted to analyze their CSR-related reports and compare the corresponding results among regions. Results indicated that Asian and Middle Eastern contractors have the highest and lowest levels, respectively, of CSR reporting on resilience issues. Clients’ and governments’ concerns were given the top priority by all regions, except Chinese contractors emphasized the client’s and community’s concerns. Asian and Chinese contractors showed a higher emphasis on the community’s and employees’ concerns than those of partners and suppliers, whereas the European, US/Canadian, and Middle Eastern contractors showed otherwise. The present study contributed to filling in the gap to establish a CSR-resilience indicator system for the construction industry and provided a useful reference to comprehensively understand and measure the CSR reporting on resilience issues by the construction industry.