SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN SPANISH UNIVERSITIES: AN APPROACH BASED ON ACADEMIC OFFER

The situation of Spanish universities in the field of Social Responsibility, hereinafter SR, and the integration of these subjects in their training offer have seldom been analysed and there is little research on these issues. In fact, only the paper by [1] for a sample of Spanish universities was found as an antecedent in the period 2000-2015. Even though there is no previous and recent evidence for the specific case of university training in business, it is broadly understood as being in the degrees in Finance and Accounting and Administration and Business Management. Our research objective is to review the importance of SR and its integration in the current academic offer in Spanish universities. Recent economic, political and social changes have led to the fact that higher education institutions should offer courses focused on USR to adapt to the new demands of society. It requires them to act in a socially responsible manner, completing the required training of their stakeholders; it promotes lifelong learning and provides equal opportunities for all stakeholders [2]. Specifically, we are interested in knowing if SR appears within their academic offer and how it is offered, depending on the type of subject in which it is included and its duration. For this purpose, the methodology involves an initial review of the literature that justifies the relevance of SR in universities as a step prior to a second phase of collection of primary sources through a review of all the websites of Spanish universities that constitute our main future line of research. As main outcomes, the awareness and commitment that students and professors have towards SR was borne out [3], although we identified some lack of training in values by universities [4]. Likewise, regarding the offer of training USR, we found that a large number of Spanish universities include subjects related to SR; however, there is an important percentage that still does not integrate these contents, and it is not yet possible to speak of a generalized presence of subjects with USR in the Spanish field. The structure that we propose for our study will be based on the following sections. Firstly, we will introduce the research objective and its background in an introductory section. Secondly, we will carry out a theoretical review of the importance of the USR and its incorporation into academic offer. The description of the methodology used will be in the following section and finally, we will point out the main outcomes and conclusions of our study.