Abstract
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been a topic gradually developed worldwide and widely discussed in different perspectives. A perspective considered it as a form of charity and support to the disfavored and as something voluntary. The other treated it as an integral part of the company and as a duty of the entrepreneurs to participate in this form of administration. Though CSR has its various emphases in practice, it basically points to the duty of the company to respond to others and not just itself, but as a social entity composed of individuals belonging to a group or social structure, with values, principles, and beliefs. CSR is conceived as a form of corporate administration which participates actively in this field and contributes positively to it in different perspectives. This study aims to discover factors driving employers to implement programs of this nature. Specifically we took Honduras as an example, trying to discover what led them to develop CSR programs, in a country with a lot of depression indicators and with many social gasps. We have developed a model based on the Institutional Theory suggesting that CSR can directly affect organizations. From the theoretical framework, we defined the research hypotheses and objectives. Then we conducted survey, and the statistical results show surprising results that among 6 motivational factors in the model (sanction, rule, social obligations, social networks, external image and internal agreement), only social obligations and external image have significantly positive effects on companies’ CSR awareness. It implies that social factors have higher impact on the awareness of CSR than law enforcement in such low developed countries as Honduras.