A Study on Social Responsibility Practices of Fashion Corporations

Abstract

In recent years, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has received particular attentions from both practitioners and scholars. This study focused on Korean national fashion businesses and identified various types of CSR practices in addition to social contributions. Besides, comparison in corporation by size of the number of full-time employees and sales volume were examined. A total of 1054 cases of 147 brands, 86 corporations between 2000 and 2012 were collected from internet articles and brand home pages. Findings were as follows. First, the types of CSR activities were categorized into the following six: economic responsibility, legal responsibility, consumer protection, protection of worker's right, protection of environment, and social contribution. Social contribution took largest portion of CSR activities (67.7%), followed by environmental protection (14%), and protection of worker's right (6.2%). The other three types presented limited cases but included negative aspects of CSR. Social contribution consisted of six sub categories (culture & art, sports, education, donation, voluntary service, and campaign), and donation took the largest part of social contribution area. Second, comparing 86 corporations by the size of the number of full-time employees, companies more than 300 employees (38.1%) were more likely to practice CSR activities. Similarly, companies with more than 500 billion won sales (13.1%) were more active in their CSR activities than their counterparts. Suggestions are given for improving CSR practices to fashion business.