University social responsibility in a territorial approach – with the focus on four Hungarian universities

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of university social responsibility has also occurred in Hungarian higher education institutions. Despite an increasing number of international studies some research gaps still linger. One such research gap concerns the territorial approach of the university social responsibility. This study aims to Tll this gap by analysing ways to specify whether a higher education institution is considered to be local, regional, national or global based on its social responsibility activities. The empirical enquiry of the study relies on quantitative content analysis of the homepages of four Hungarian universities (University of Szeged, Széchenyi István University, Óbuda University, University of Miskolc).

The first part of the study illustrates the concept of university social responsibility in the frame of different university models, then examines how the concept diUers from the third mission of universities (activities which are beyond education and research) and the way it can be interpreted in the context of university roles. University social responsibility means activities related to the dissemination of principles and values through university actors’ management and teaching that respond to social challenges. University social responsibility can be interpreted as one of the core activities of universities as education and research is covered with a responsible approach. The paper also presents the territorial approach of university social responsibility, which studies the kind of university social responsibility activities that are typical for a given territorial unit and examines whether a higher education institution can be considered local, regional, national or global? This paper focuses on the latter aspect by studying the activities of four Hungarian universities.

In our empirical research we first identified 300 university social responsibility activities based on the literature and our preliminary empirical data and selected those activities that were related to universities’ actions in its wider social context. Based on former empirical research we identiTed those activities that were managed in the four institutions. We then defined the territorial unit where the selected university social responsibility activities can be considered as local, regional, national or global and counted how many activities can be considered at the four universities as local, regional etc. Based on this method our analysis revealed that university social responsibility is most prominent in the case of all analysed universities at the local and regional levels.

It is important to highlight that our research is a first attempt to make such an analyses. We could not Tnd literature on a relevant research methodology, therefore the methods we applied in this research is our approach to the topic. The research contributes to the national and international literature of university social responsibility and provides guidance also for practitioners. It is possible to believe that learning how to manage territorial approaches of these activities can contribute to new ways of managing universities and leaders can make more conscious decisions about the social role of institutions.