Mapping Perceptions and Implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility for Construction Firms via Importance–Performance Analysis: Paths of Improvement

Abstract

The demand for construction firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been growing in response to the different expectations and needs of organizational stakeholders. Given the complexity of the CSR connotation, it is a significant challenge for practitioners to configure their considerations and enact strategic management plans to implement CSR practices based on their constrained resources. Hitherto, little study has been conducted to classify various aspects of CSR practices (ACSRs) based on firms’ management priorities, thereby proposing paths of improvement toward CSR (PICSR). This study investigated the potential PICSR for construction firms through importance–performance analysis (IPA) of various ACSRs. Based on a review of the literature and a multiple-case study, an online questionnaire was designed and used to collect data from top-tier construction firms after a pilot study. Cluster analysis was employed to classify firms into different groups based on their CSR implementation scores, followed by the IPA to categorize the ACSRs among different firm clusters and thereafter the establishment of the potential PICSR. The results indicate that although all ACSRs that focus on the employees’ interests and CSR organizational arrangement generally are categorized as Keep up the good work and Low priorities, respectively, dispersive distributions exist in the perceived importance and implementation of most ACSRs across different firm clusters, resulting in the diversity of PICSR. The findings contribute to the current CSR knowledge by proposing potential PICSR for construction firms and provides a useful reference for practitioners to evaluate, configure, and optimize their resources toward achieving organizational social responsibility goals.