Measuring Corporate Social Responsibility Perceptions Among Practicing Accountants: An Examination Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling

Accountant perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices can provide valuable insight for an organization, particularly those experiencing ethical dilemmas. By surveying 134 practicing managerial accounting professionals, this paper aims to provide the CSR perceptions of this very influential set of employees by focusing on the responsibilities an organization has to various stakeholders using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), an underutilized technique within behavioral accounting research. The results of the survey and structural analysis that follows show that most of the CSR constructs (social and nonsocial stakeholders, employees, customers, government) are positively related to each other supporting the stakeholder theory that stresses the interconnected relationships between a business and its stakeholders. While these results provide important implications from a corporate governance perspective, this study also emphasizes the usefulness of PLS-SEM to validate a measurement model and explore causal relationships which may aid researchers to explore other questions of concern using this methodology following the guidelines contained in this study.