Insights on Social Responsibility of NGOS

The social responsibility of nongovernmental organizations starts from the values this sector defends. Despite the social vocation, a question arises as to whether the NGOs organizations are indeed responsible to society. Proponents of social responsibility of NGOs argue that good intentions and desire to do well are not enough to assign a status of social responsible actor to an organization. Through their activities, NGOs should prove their social role, meaning involving in meeting social needs and fighting social inequalities. In addition, they should make alliances with the business community to find solutions to society’s problems and even put pressure on companies to adopt socially responsible behavior. Opponents counter that NGOs are not companies and therefore the concept of social responsibility is not relevant to the nongovernmental sector. Moreover, the non-profit-distributing character and the social nature of their activities give the idea that they are, in essence, socially responsible. In this context, the purpose of the present article is to provide an overview of the existing body of literature on social responsibility of nongovernmental organizations and identify the most relevant papers in the area and the topics of interest. A review of previous literature in the field has been carried out and 67 articles identified in 12 international databases have been investigated. The analysis highlighted that there is an obvious increase in the relevance of this issue within academic environment and several thematic trends arise in the research of the nongovernmental sector’s social responsibility.