Hypothesis.

The main hypothesis states that the important factor to increase the efficiency of social responsibility policy of Russian oil and gas producing companies, such as OAO “GazProm” is the adoption of improved social practices in the sphere of ecology and social projects in Russia.

Problem statements:

1. Social passiveness of corporate stakeholders in Russia is a fundamental problem for CSR.

2. The forcing approach of government to dictate the social responsibility manner to companies leads to the neglectful attitude to CSR duties.

3. The Insufficient level of the top-management’s motivation of companies in the Russian market is crucial for the development of responsibility level to company’s stakeholders.

Tasks:

1. To definite the social passiveness term..

2. To identify the ways how to overcome this passiveness.

3. To define the ways how the government influence CSR in Russia.

4. To find out how these methods influence companies.

5. To analyze how insufficient level of motivation of top-management influence the relationship between a company and its stakeholders.

6. To determine how to motivate a top-management of companies.

The professional significance.

The results of our research could be obviously used to study some special characteristics of implementation social responsibility policy in Russia and would help to analyze and explore new ways of stimulating consciousness of how corporate social responsibility is crucial for development of a corporation. Also such findings will fully support and justify the need for rethinking and redesigning the role of CSR in Russia.

Methodology.

There shall be conducted a theoretical and document analysis based on reports of well-known researches of Corporate Social Responsibility in Russia.

The Corporate Social Responsibility’s case study of OAO “GazProm” shall be explored and analyzed.

Also, a well-known method of qualitative research that is called informal interview (expert interview) shall be conducted. The head of Department of Energy, Vladimir Romanenko shall be interviewed. So that, no predetermined questions will be asked, in order to remain as open and adaptable as possible to the interviewee’s nature and priorities.

Literature review.

When we examine the concept of CSR, we can state it is an almost tortured concept. Votaw (1973) stated it right when he said that “corporate social responsibility means something, but not always the same thing to everybody”. The conceptualization of CSR has been steadily evolving and expanding, ever since it was introduced by Bowen (1953) (Godfrey & Hatch, 2007; Lee, 2008), which makes the field of CSR theories difficult to overview. Furthermore some scholars combine different approaches and use similar terminology but define them diversely (Garriga & Melé, 2004). The last ten years scholars wrote about corporate social responsibility, corporate social performance, sustainable development, corporate citizenship, social responsiveness, corporate governance, issue management, and stakeholder management (Garriga & Melé, 2004). Therefore there is not only an overload of literature on the topic of social responsibility, the debate between business and society has also been going on for decades with almost no consensus emerging on the definition of CSR (Kakabadse, Kakabadse & Rozuel, 2007). In the literature review there were distinguished six different focal points of CSR literature, in a more or less chronological order.

In a first stage scholars developed is pro CSR- attitude. Scholars started introducing the concept of social responsibilities of businessmen (Bowen, 1953). By using the social contract theory and the legitimacy theory, they subscribed to the position that business has responsibilities towards society. Simultaneously with the upcoming call towards business to start taking responsibility towards society, several scholars subscribed to a “contra CSR” position, which we distinguish as a second stage. Friedman (1970), for example, stated that “ the only business of business is business”, meaning that business has no other legitimate responsibility than the economical.

In a third stage, scholars started focusing more on “the conceptualisation of CSR”. Many scholars argued that because of the previous focus on arguing why firms should be socially responsible, there was a serious lack of serious in-depth analysis of the concept of CSR. Therefore the focus shifted towards answering the question “what is CSR?” Carroll (1979) offered the first strong conceptual model that comprehensively described the fundamental aspects of what he calls ‘corporate social performance’ (CSP).

To address Friedman’s (1962) assertion that CSR is illegitimate, in a fourth

stage scholars pointed their focus again on the question why business should engage in CSR, but this time not seen from a normative perspective (“ the normative case”) but from an economical perspective (“ the business case”) (Smith, 2003). The question now became as Bowman & Haire (1975) stated: “Does responsible activity come, net, out of the stockholder’s pocket?” Demonstrating a link between CSR and FP became therefore the focus of many empirical research projects. Since the emphasis had moved to the outcomes of social responsible actions, many scholars preferred referring to it as Corporate Social Performance (CSP) instead of CSR. “ Although corporate financial performance (CFP) is only one, and not necessarily the primary, expected consequence of adopting a CSR approach, the great bulk of empirical research on CSR contributions has focused on the relationship between the social and the financial performance of business corporations” (Geva, 2008).

The fifth stage started with Freeman’s (1984) “ Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach”. With this new stakeholder approach the question changed into “towards whom should business be social responsible?”. Freeman (1984)

introduced the stakeholder theory to create a new way of thinking about the essence of a corporation. The essential question for Freeman (1994) is for whose benefit and whose expense the firm should be managed. He defines stakeholders as “those groups who have a stake in or a claim on the firm. Specifically, including suppliers, customers, employees, stockholders, and the local community as well as management in its role as agents for these groups” (Freeman, 1994).

Anticipated results.

The practice part of research is directed on the OAO “GazProm” necessity to borrow some abroad principles and implement them in Russian market considering Russian mentality.

Firstly, we would determine the meaning of social passivness. Then, relying on the competent opinions of researches and results of conducted research we would make conclusions and recommend the right decisions to decrease a level of that passiveness. We suppose that this passiveness is the result of the social policy in Russia. The main cause is that majority of people do not feel safe in Russia and have a lot of everyday problems. Consequently, they have no time and desire to think of social problems, because they can not just satisfy their fundamental needs.

Secondly, we would analyze the tools that government uses to dictate manner to businessmen. The Russian market acquired some specific characteristics in the length of time, for example if you pay taxes and do not offend against law, it still doesn’t mean that the local government won’t force you to do something what they want. You always should reckon with the government. According to the project, we would recommend to modify that “forcing approach” into legal element or perhaps to integrate new juridical institute that would support the corporate social responsibility from the legal side in Russia.

Thirdly, to handle this formed situation with the insufficient level of motivation we would attract the sophisticated expert who would share his mind about that. It is obvious the giant oil and gas companies of Russia should borrow the improved abroad motivation techniques and try to integrate them into Russian business considering Russian mentality. Perhaps, we could appeal to West specialists who are sophisticated in that key.

So that, we expect that we shall learn unique experience from our research and shall explore some new way to perform social responsibility in Russia.

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