**2. From corporate social responsibility to university social responsibility**

The understanding of USR concept needs a review of the previous concept CSR. Therefore, it is essential to know the evolution of the CSR in order to contextualize the field of USR for HEIs.

The contributions of Howard Bowen, considered the father of the CSR [13], stated that busi‐ nessmen's decision‐making affects the society. With this statement, he established the basis of CSR, defining it as the obligations of businessmen to carry out desirable actions for society [14]. It can be seen that, from its beginnings, the *raison d'être* of CSR is to consider the impact of the policies, strategies and in general the organizational work.

In the 1960s, the CSR is evolving, conceiving business actions beyond economic interests in a managerial context [15]. In the educational context, in its first conceptualization, the USR concept has arisen in the university management to attract students and economic profits as a consequence. However, universities as public institutions have social obligations beyond legal and economic duties in areas like the political and educational aimed at achieving the welfare of society [16]. In this sense, compliance with the CSR is achieved by considering the needs of all stakeholders affected by the activity of the company, since institutional decision‐ making affects the entire social system [8].

The evolution of CSR leads to its relationship with voluntarism [17], disappearing any chance of seeing it as an attraction of economic benefits, as Davis [15] pointed out. In this context, universities have a social role and service to the community, so it is necessary to discuss the voluntary nature of the USR and its transition to compulsory. Regarding CSR definition, some works report that the compliance with the CSR is achieved meeting the social goals of citizens, as well as explain that the responsibility of the company depends on their size, having large companies more responsibility than small ones [18]. It is understandable for the university sector that responsibilities are also bigger regarding the size of the institution, since it has a greater impact on the environment and it affects the daily work in a greater number of people.

In the 1980s, the CSR concept was conceived as a process being defined as a "decision making procedure which constitute a CSR behaviour" (p. 66) [19]. Thus, as the CSR has evolved over time, it has been adapted to different types of organization, with diverse activity in different periods of time [20]. An important contribution is made by Porter and Kramer [9], establishing that a way to rethink the relationship between society and corporate performance is through "the creation of shared value." In this line, the authors reinforced the idea that organizations must create a greater understanding of social needs, remodeling capitalism with social rela‐ tionships [9]. This goes beyond the philanthropy and specific CSR actions.

The development of the USR has been smaller than the development of CSR in private com‐ panies [21]. However, the USR studies are gaining attention and value for the necessary pro‐ motion and development of civil values and responsibilities [22]. Particularly, this attention is focused on the university capability to influence on the education of citizens in a globalized world [23], and on the university goal of building a fairer society [24]. According to these facts, social responsibility justifies its application within universities.

Unlike the CSR, the USR arises from the concern of the educational sector to contribute to social development and the impacts of HEIs. This process must be taken into account through a partici‐ patory dialogue with society in order to promote sustainable development [25]. USR should be planned as a policy of continuous improvement of the university toward the effective fulfilment of its social mission through its different management areas: (1) the organizational scope, as an entity with its own structure that consumes, has staff employed and generates waste; (2) the edu‐ cational scope as an entity that is responsible for the students training; (3) the knowledge scope, as an entity that researches, producing know‐how and transmitting it; and (4) the social scope as an entity which interacts with others agents, communities and social subsystems [10, 11].

Thus, the importance of the university has been increasing, since these institutions have been pressured to act in a socially responsible way due to the important educational role that they play in the society. This process has been reflected in the third mission of the university based on the transfer of knowledge to society, meeting also its social demands [26].

From a theoretical perspective, the approaches which analyze the USR are diverse. According to Gaete, we identified three main approaches [27]:


Furthermore, another interesting framework is developed in the corporate citizenship theory, which concerns about the duties of the company as part of society and the integrative theories that explain that the company works to satisfy the social demands of stakeholders [31]. In this case, universities as organizations operate within society and influence different stakeholders also have rights and obligations and must be managed, taking into consideration the needs of different university stakeholders.

The inclusion of USR into university strategic management is reviewed as follows.
