A need for research on the awareness and perception of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs among the hospital employees – A new research agenda

Abstract

The healthcare sector is one of the major sectors which contribute to the development of the country. It is important for the government to review its value and have a humanistic purpose of healthcare delivery. It should draw a red line under ethical issues and social issues that should never be lost in the quest for economic profits. Simply to be a non-profit organization is not enough for a non-profit hospital to be considered as fulfilling a social role, nor is it enough to be responsible in a reactive way. Hospitals should be proactive role models, focusing on increasing awareness, promoting prevention, and holding community events relevant to medical issue. There is a need to analyse if the private hospitals’ employees are aware about the CSR programs of their hospitals and their perception on CSR policies and programs of the hospital. Research also needs to examine if the employees perceive the hospital to have fulfilled their social obligations in terms of workplace, environment, and socio-economic responsibility. The study will follow a simple systematic literature review using the Scopus data base to know about the research in this area. The systematic literature review shows that not many studies have been done in this area. This study will act as a starting point to understand the CSR situation in the private hospitals in Malaysia and identify areas of opportunity to strengthen the employee and citizen friendly CSR initiatives. This research will serve as a guiding tool for the hospital management, the government and nongovernmental healthcare organisation to frame effective CSR strategy that is useful to the internal stakeholders like employees as well as the external stakeholders like the patients.