The Relationship Between Individuals’ Recognition of Human Rights and Responses to Socially Responsible Companies : Evidence from Russia and Bulgaria

An emerging body of literature suggests that there is a great need to investigate the relationship between the importance individuals place on key social and economic Human Rights and their perception of the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility. The primary aim of this study is to begin to address this lacuna by understanding how individuals in Russia and Bulgaria may place different emphasis on specific aspects of Human Rights when making decisions to purchase, work, invest or support the community operations for socially responsible organisations. Russia and Bulgaria were chosen also to test the veracity of assumptions, embedded in most literature, contending that the importance of individual perceptions of Human Rights is homogeneous across Eastern and Central European countries. Our data indicate that there is a significant correlation between individuals' sensitivity towards Human Rights and the perception of the importance of CSR. Our analysis also outlines significant differences between the Russian and the Bulgarian samples with regards to the manners in which individuals rank the importance of Human Rights