What Drives Socially Responsible Design in Organizations?: Empirical Evidence from South Korea

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study that investigates designers' underlying motivations for socially responsible decision-making within an organization and identifies the empirical link between the level of designers' awareness of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related issues, the degree of firms' design management capacities and their perceived performance in terms of socially responsible design (SRD) in organizations. Using large samples targeted across the range of designers in South Korea, the current study empirically supports that SRD decisions are determined in large part by important interaction between the designers' true beliefs and the firm's level of CSR. Our results also show that a firm's design management capacity plays a significant role in integrating environmental and social issues into product and service development and achieving better SRD performance and ultimately CSR goals within organizations.