ifkad articles

The impact of educational and training program on cultural context: the role of Italian Universities

Rocco Reina, Concetta Lucia Cristofaro, Marzia Ventura

It’s very interesting to think about the possibility that CSR can become a new way of thinking and acting in the global community. But, in order to do this, it’s important to influence the same CSR’s perception and obtain an impact on social and economic culture of a territory. Under this conditions, a key role could have the educational institutions, like Universities, in fact they have the responsibility to train and lead the new generation of students and future citizens. If the Universities insert in their own didactic plans courses related to CSR, these will be useful to help younger generations in understanding the issue of CSR and their awareness regarding its positive impact on the served community and the context (AACSB International, 2011). So, the object of the paper is to know how Italian Universities have been operating, on the assumption that if the Universities pay more attention to the practices of corporate social responsibility it will generate for learners greater interest and awareness respect the culture of ethics and social responsibility, by improving the quality of life in the context. The attention is focused on the identification of the learning programs present in the Italian Medium Universities (n°31 – Anvur 2015) and all teachings activity linked to the theme of CSR with a web analysis. The used methodology is organized in three steps: 1. Check the educational offer, 2. Analyse the training courses and specific programs related to CRS, 3. Analyse the students’ populations, in order to check their sensibility to the topic. This paper – based on empirical results – wants to identify the Universities’ sensibility regarding the theme of CSR. In this way it will be possible to analyse the impact of training respect to social and economic context. The outcome of this study can assist researchers, managers and institutions to better understand the effects of the culture on the context and therefore its quality of life.

IN: Proceedings IFKAD 2016 – Towards a New Architecture of Knowledge: Big Data, Culture and Creativity
PP: 1310-1329