Social responsibility and university governance: Case study public universities in the central zone of Ecuador

Abstract

Social Responsibility (SR), currently plays a leading role in the management and management of organizations, guiding them to be socially responsible. The objective of the study presented is to analyze the factors associated with Social Responsibility and University governance, in public universities in the central zone of Ecuador. The investigative analysis was carried out with a 145 sample of students corresponding to the five public universities in the area, for which qualitative methodology was used, as it allowed explaining the problem from a social and descriptive context, the quantitative methodology on the other hand allowed apply a questionnaire to collect information and thus have a clearer appreciation of the objective reality of university management and its relationship with society; it is also non-experimental cross-sectional in order to achieve the proposed objective. Among the results obtained, common elements were found that are repeated in the 5 universities analyzed, 51.03% know the code of ethics, 31.10% say that there is evaluation and training of administrative personnel, 57.24% state that there are none. spaces for dialogue and participation of university actors, 75.67% say that universities have an organizational structure, in addition, a deficiency was identified in communication systems. The data also indicate that students have a negative perspective in relation to the ability of administrative staff to effectively fulfill their role within the university, which demonstrates that students have a negative view in relation to the management carried out by administrative staff in its role within the institutions, it can then be said that a very notable weakness is evident in university governance. These data are relevant for decision-making and the incorporation of effective strategies for responsible management of the institutions analyzed