سناریونگاری آینده‌پژوهشی مسئولیت اجتماعی

Aim and introduction: With the trend of sustainable development, the concept of social responsibility has become increasingly important. Over the past few decades, the term social responsibility has become very popular in modern companies. They are well aware of their role in relation to social responsibility in the three pillars of economic, social, and environmental. Currently, social responsibility is becoming a dominant approach in the research and actions of researchers and managers with the aim of aligning benefits with the environment and sustainable development. A review of the research background shows that despite the extensive research that has done in the field of scenario planning in various fields, there is little evidence of the application of scenario planning in the field of corporate social responsibility. In addition, considering the establishment of large industries in the Persian Gulf Mining and Metal Special Economic Zone and their production capacity, resource consumption, and destructive environmental consequences, the use of futuristic approaches in the field of corporate social responsibility is essential. Scenario planning provides an overview of the environment by identifying and focusing on the interactions between various trends and situations that may occur in the future. In this regard, the present study seeks to identify the factors affecting social responsibility in large companies operating in the Special Economic Zone of the Persian Gulf mining and metal Industries in Bandar Abbas and to draw believable scenarios based on the views of managers.
Methodology: This research based on the scenario method, and it is applied in terms of purpose. Participants in this study were 10 managers of companies located in the Special Economic Zone of the Persian Gulf Mining and Metal Industries who purposefully selected. The criteria for selecting these individuals based on the relevant organizational position, their knowledge of the subject, their job experience, and their education.In the first stage, literature review and expert opinions have used to identify the factors affecting social responsibility. Factors extracted from the literature review provided to the participants in the study.  Based on their opinion, some factors removed, merged, or modified, and finally 32 factors affecting social responsibility obtained. In the next step, cross impact analysis method with MICMAC software used to determine the key factors affecting the CSR. Understanding the key factors is one of the most important steps in scenario-based planning. At this stage, the first 32 factors as effective factors in the previous stage analyzed with MICMAC software to determine the key factors affecting social responsibility. The dimensions of the matrix were 32 * 32, and the results of the cross-section analysis method showed that the degree of filling of the matrix is ​​70%, which indicates that the selected factors have affected each other in more than 70% of cases. On the other hand, the matrix based on statistical index and on two rotations of data has 100% utility and optimization, which indicates the high validity of the questionnaire and their answers. In the scenario development stage, 5 key factors affecting the company's social responsibility were included as the input for scenario development. The scenarios were plotted using the Wizard scenario.
Findings: Findings of this study show that five factors including factors of industry standards in the field of social responsibility, strategic orientation of the company to social responsibility, media and social groups, business ethics, and sanctions as key factors affect corporate social responsibility. The possible situations facing social responsibility for each of the key factors were determined according to the complexity and based on a range of favorable to unfavorable conditions. Possible scenarios plotted using the Scenario Wizard Software.
Discussion and conclusion: The results of combining 15 situations for 5 factors affecting corporate social responsibility, which include possible situations for the future, showed that 5 scenarios with high compatibility and 37 scenarios with low compatibility can be considered. Strong scenarios divided into three groups of scenarios: "optimistic", "intermediate" and "pessimistic" based on similarity and degree of desirability. The findings of this study show that the intensity of the impact of adverse situations is more than favorable situations. Therefore, companies should pay more attention to adverse scenarios to be prepared to face those situations.