CSR Modules in Catholic and Ecclesiastical Universities in the Italian Territory

There is not a single and universally accepted approach to social responsibility. The starting hypothesis of this study considers that the different cultural, economic, socio-political, religious and environmental contexts have an important role in defining the type of approach taken towards CSR. The research project aims to identify the features of the concept of CSR in a specific cultural context, represented by universities located in the Italian territory and managed by Catholic institutions. These universities, in fact, assume some importance in the Italian social and cultural context, strongly affected by Vatican’s presence on the Italian peninsula. The basic aim of this research project is to study the modules dealing with CSR issues in higher education institutions of Catholic orientation located in the Italian territory. The latter can be divided into two main categories: 1. Clerical universities 2. Catholic universities The first category includes institutions directly dependent on the Holy See. In the second category there are facilities which have been granted juridical personality in Italy. They receive a permission to operate from an ecclesiastical authority. However, they undergo to the Italian legal provision (entities with extraterritoriality). Our detailed research questions seek to: (a) determine whether there are modules dealing with CSR issues in these universities (b) analyze the nature of these modules, checking whether they belong to Italian accounting and business administration disciplines or to other scientific areas (c) examine the educational contents of these modules and compare them in Clerical and Catholic universities The analysis will be realized through the websites of these universities and interviews with professors in charge of the identified courses. In this way it will be possible to make a survey of the modules related to CSR issues, analyzing not only their quantitative diffusion, but also their contents from a qualitative point of view. Moreover, we will compare what we find with previous results on the current state of education in the field of CSR in all Italian universities, in order to identify the distinctive features of these modules in the Italian Catholic context.