Social corporate responsibility in times of growth – social corporate responsibility in Icelandic tourism

Abstract

The emphasis on social corporate responsibility has been increasing in recent years. At the same time tourism in Iceland has grown considerably. Tourism is in many ways more dependent upon respecting the Icelandic nature in the long run and thereby social corporate responsibility should be relatively important for tourist companies. Research has however shown that companies do not always respect their obligations in social corporate responsibility. To better understand how sustainably and socially responsible tourist companies in Iceland acted, interviews were conducted with managers. In the interviews we asked them to place social corporate responsibility in their business model, in order to analyze if the social corporate responsibility was mainly on the surface or whether it was built into their business model. The findings indicate that part of the companies did so, but with different level of integration the group was divided in whether this created a financial burden. However, those who defined social corporate responsibility as a side project believed it was costly and more likely to be cut out in case of financial difficulties.