Students’ Involvement In University Social Responsibility Activites

Since the end of the past century, there has been an increasing focus of various organizations, either public or private, on their social responsibility. Therefore, the need for organizations to engage in socially responsible activities has been debated in the literature and constituted a topic of interest for researchers from different fields of study (e.g., business, economics, sociology, philosophy) in recent decades. As social responsibility has increasingly influenced all types of organizations it has become not only a new way of thinking and doing business, but also a strategic tool. This is why other types of organizations, such as universities, embraced the concept of social responsibility. The paper aims to define the concept of university social responsibility and to illustrate students’ involvement in its specific activities in the case of a Romanian faculty. To such ends the authors used a quantitative research method and a case study. The paper shows that university social responsibility represents a challenging issue in today’s education of students and the implementation of this concept in a higher education institution constitutes a complex process facing both opportunities and constraints. The research could become a starting point to analyze and assess the involvement of the students in university social responsibility activities in Romania and abroad.