Abstract
A changing approach to social responsibility: a historic-normative case study of the North-West University (Potchefstroom Campus)As a direct consequence of its Christian character, the former Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (PU for CHE) engaged in local corporate responsibility programmes for a number of decades. When the PU for CHE was merged at the end of 2003 to become the North-West University (NWU) (including the PU for CHE) which emerged in 2004, these programmes continued at the Potchefstroom Campus, but were stripped of their Christian grounding. Now the University has a “value-driven” approach. This article tracks the changes to the normative character as well as the continued changes to the university’s position on social responsibility.
It was found that the North-West University’s normative points of departure have yet to be linked clearly to its community activities, and that formal corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities must be clearly differentiated from normal university business as well as student activities such as rag. It is argued that the problematic overlapping of profit-generating activities should be distinguished from all CSR programmes and the contribution of sponsors disclosed at all times.
Developments late in 2008 seemed to indicate that some of the most important problem areas be addressed when a new approach to “community engagement” is fleshed out. This could result in the NWU achieving the CSR goals set by both government and the University itself regarding its so-called do-values and developing a guiding philosophy on “community en-gagement”.
Copyright information
- Ownership of copyright in terms of the Work remains with the authors.
- The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the Work, provided attribution is given to the place and detail of original publication, as set out in the official citation of the Work published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the Work on the authors’ or their institutions’ websites or institutional repositories.
Publication and user license
- The authors grant the title owner and the publisher an irrevocable license and first right and perpetual subsequent right to (a) publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Work in any form/medium, (b) to translate the Work into other languages, create adaptations, summaries or extracts of the Work or other derivative works based on the Work and exercise all of the rights set forth in (a) above in such translations, adaptations, summaries, extracts and derivative works, (c) to license others to do any or all of the above, and (d) to register the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the Definitive Work.
- The authors acknowledge and accept the user licence under which the Work will be published as set out in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (Creative Commons Attribution License South Africa)
- The undersigned warrant that they have the authority to license these publication rights and that no portion of the copyright to the Work has been assigned or licensed previously to any other party.
Disclaimer: The publisher, editors and title owner accept no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed by any other person in this Work. Consequently, they will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this Work.
In cases where a manuscript is NOT accepted for publication by the editorial board, the portions of this agreement regarding the publishing licensing shall be null and void and the authors will be free to submit this manuscript to any other publication for first publication.
Our copyright policies are author-friendly and protect the rights of our authors and publishing partners.