The Development and Validation of Stakeholder-Based Scale for Measuring University Social Responsibility (USR)

Universities are an important member of the society that are trusted with shaping future, nurturing individuals, fostering ethics, and making people more responsible towards both the corporations they work for and the society they live in. Researches that explicitly focus on measurement of social responsibility of universities are scarce. The research intends to develop and validate a measurement scale for university social responsibility (USR) by capturing the key determinants that best define the social responsibility of a university. Using systematic scale development process, the study involved both literature and focus group discussions to generate the require items. 383 respondents filled the questionnaires out of which 329 were usable. The study found that USR has seven dimensions namely: operational responsibilities, research/development responsibilities, stakeholder responsibilities, and legal responsibilities. These four responsibilities were categorized as survival level responsibilities. Intermediate responsibility included ethical responsibility while voluntary responsibilities included philanthropic and community engagement. The scale developed in the study will help to specifically look for the presence of social responsibility in universities/higher education institutions. Hence it can be important to study how well universities respond to needs of the society. There is a significant lack of research into development of a reliable and valid scale of USR. This study clearly highlights the factors that make up USR and provides a detailed scale to measure of social responsibility performance by higher education institutions.