The Value of Corporate Social Performance: The Case of a Local Public Transport Company

The Corporate Social Responsibility is traditionally viewed not as a productive investment, but like an expense of defensive character, destined to consume resources without producing new value. However, in the actual context, the public interest cannot be an objective only for the Public Administration; each enterprise should integrate in the management choices a CSR strategy (Borgonovi & Rusconi, 2008).The CSR is, primarily, intended as the ability to follow those lines of action which are desirable in relation to the aims and values of our society (Bowen, 1953). The development of studies on CSR has produced subsequently further definition, which tend to emphasize the importance of expectations of the community and the resulting social role played by itself in increasing weal (Frederick, 1960); to the definition of corporate social responsibility contained in the EU Green Paper, which identifies CSR as those behaviours oriented to the integration between economic, social and environmental variables in the management company (EU, 2001).This work aims to investigate the potential of investment in CSR in terms of creating new value as part of a new definition of sustainable business performance based on the joint and balanced maximization of economic, social and environmental objectives (Elkington, 1997). The objective of this research is to verify the impact on business performance due to the implementation of a specific design of CSR, named Contact, in a local public transport company of medium/big size (Turnover € 56.613.130, Employees 1.341).