Local public corporate responsibility: A scale development and validation

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a long tradition in business, but it is relatively new in public administration. Recently, there has been general consensus that there is a need to promote CSR in public administrations so as to improve transparency, governance, and the efficient allocation of public resources. We develop a new scale for measuring local public corporate responsibility (LPCR) based on CSR international standards and inputs from experts and academics, who evaluate whether the selected indicators are relevant, useful, adequate and practical for measuring LPCR. We test the tool empirically by analysing the CSR practices of 24 municipal councils in a Spanish territory. The result is a scale that allows us to determine the extent to which the municipal councils are socially responsible. This tool gives citizens access to information about CSR in their municipal councils and enables the identification of areas where municipal councils face challenges and require improvement.