Sustainability of Corporate Social Responsibility Integration into Business Activities: Changes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Pandemic COVID-19 created new challenges for organizations that significantly altered processes in business environment. The changes have also affected the commitment of organizations to their corporate social responsibil-ity. There are only few examples of sustainability measurements of the-se activities or their benefits. Therefore this research intends to fulfill this gap. The main aim of the research was to examine the changes in corporate social responsibility integration into business activities through measuring their benefits and to explore the impact of pandemic on its sustainability. A new indicator was created to measure the sustainability of benefits of corporate social responsibility focused on business activities of organizations. Case studies were conducted in 5 different organizations during two time periods, before the pandemic in 2017 and during the pandemic in 2022. All organizations selected for analysis had declared the implementation of ISO 26000 requirements. A comparison during the 5-year period enabled mapping of all changes in corporate social responsibility activities and related benefits. The results indicate that the situation during the pandemic worsened the abilities of many organizations to develop new partnerships in local communities or with new socially responsible customers. It was discovered that the most positive consequence of the pandemic was a decrease in energy consumption that many organizations experienced. However, the risk is the sustainability of this positive development in environmental performance of organizations after the pandemic. The sustainability of corporate social responsibility integration measured through its benefits has not significantly decreased during the pandemic. However, the variability of particular activities increased since some areas stagnated and only few areas recorded an increase.