Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Case Study in UAE and Community Expectations

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical review of topical developments in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices under the influence of UAE community expectations. To investigate the concept of CSR in UAE, this paper primarily draws on secondary sources including extant literature on CSR practices, government reports, industry reports, companies’ CSR/sustainability reports, newspaper articles, and publications of international agencies. The findings of this paper reveal that the concept of CSR is relatively underdeveloped in UAE. There is a general perception among community expectations and business practitioners in UAE that CSR relates to altruism or philanthropic activities. However, only few large local companies and multinational enterprises hold a well-defined CSR policy. Small and medium enterprises limit their CSR engagement to comply with codes of conduct set by foreign purchasers. The discussion in this paper is based on the secondary data; therefore, the empirical research is needed to validate the findings of this study. Further, this research presents a generic reflection about how CSR is practiced and perceived in UAE community expectations. Thus, the limited number of researches in UAE on CSR provides opportunity for further research in different theoretical perspectives and sectors.