Environmental awareness of human resources in Moroccan PEEs, a good CSR practice

. Social responsibility is now a concern shared by all economic agents. This article focuses on the environmental aspect, and more specifically on the awareness of employees of public establishments and companies in Morocco, in order to assess the situation of this "black box" in this context. We thus present the results of a small survey conducted among managers and employees of these organizations, with the aim of observing their level of awareness of environmental protection, the relationship of their Public Establishments and Enterprises (PEE) with this awareness-raising process, as well as their future prospects. Above all, this work aims to pave the way for research into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices in this sector, and to highlight the importance of these strategies for the sector itself and for its stakeholders. Employee awareness is a key element in effectively integrating responsible practices into the day-to-day operations of public organizations. By understanding the current level of awareness, managers can develop action plans to strengthen this environmental consciousness.


Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an essential strategy for all types of organization. In that sense, our article deals with the feedback of employees about awareness strategies and the reality of CSR in Public Establishments and Enterprises in Morocco. In fact, CSR encompasses various aspects reflecting the social commitment of companies [1]. These aspects generally include economic responsibility, which involves generating profits by respecting laws [2] and regulations without causing economic harm to stakeholders.; social responsibility, which concern the social impact of activities by adopting policies that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, human rights, health and safety in the workplace, and local investment ; environmental responsibility, which involves reducing environmental impact [3] by limiting emissions, preserving natural resources, preventing pollution and promoting sustainability; and finally, corporate social responsibility, which encourages companies to contribute to solving global problems such as poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality and climate change, by supporting the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, although this can only be achieved by supporting and raising awareness of the human resources.
CSR is not confined to private companies; it also applies to public institutions [4] and enterprises that have a social responsibility towards their stakeholders, including internal human resources. In this way, they can benefit from a CSR policy to better meet the needs and expectations of their stakeholders [5] , while ensuring sustainable management of their activities. [6] In Morocco, a developing country, the government has launched an economic modernization program targeting various sectors and infrastructures [7]. Sustainable development has become a major issue, and CSR approach is being promoted by the Kingdom and the a CSR Charter and Label [8]. The integration of CSR into Moroccan public policy is progressing thanks to modern public management policies. Public institutions and companies recognize its importance and adopt CSR policies and practices in line with international standards. They involve stakeholders and employees.
The subject of raising internal human resources awareness of CSR practices in public institutions [9] and companies in Morocco remains a black box. Although CSR is an important issue for many economic and political actors in Morocco, it is less well defined in the public sector, which can lead to difficulties in finding well-defined policies that will ensure good CSR communication with internal human resources in the public sector, and which can be the subject of our study.
Also, topics related to raising awareness of CSR among internal human resources [10] in the public sector remain less clear and more confidential. There is a lack of transparency and communication around CSR-related practices in the majority of public establishments and companies, which will make it difficult to analyze their effectiveness and influence on CSR awareness policies [11] . The commitment to CSR strategies in Moroccan public enterprises is in its infancy, resulting in insufficient and incomplete CSR policies. Finally, the commitment to CSR strategies in Moroccan PEE is still in its early stages, leading to the insufficiency and incompleteness of CSR policies, which influences the supply of data. This article aims to : ▪ Gain an insight into the understanding of CSR among employees of Moroccan PEE. ▪ Demonstrate how PEE raise awareness of CSR among their internal human resources. ▪ Understand how CSR strategies interact with PEE internal stakeholders. ▪ The challenges of raising CSR awareness in PEE. ▪ Gain insight into the continuous improvement of CSR in Moroccan PEE.
In order to analyze our subject, an in-depth understanding of the context is required. To this end, a quantitative study is proposed to understand how CSR is integrated into these Moroccan PEE, how the practice of CSR is carried out in this type of organization, how these PEE ensure the continuous improvement of this CSR and finally the interaction with stakeholders. Our topic adds significant value by enlightening the vision of CSR in the public sector. By focusing on the integration of CSR into the policies and management practices of public institutions and companies, as well as understanding the importance of CSR within this sector.
In addition, our research encourages the exploration and advancement of knowledge in the specific field of CSR in the public sector, by making available in-depth information and analysis, our topic provides a basis for other researchers wishing to explore the subject further and contribute to its development. This topic will also give other researchers the chance to work on best practices from the private sector that can be adapted to the public sector through new public management, as is the case for CSR, thus helping this sector in its development.

Article maps
Our article will deal with the existence of spontaneous practices related to the respect of the environment, as well as environmental awareness in this sector. In addition, the study will present an observation on the formalization of practices in CSR strategies and employee feedback on this subject. Finally, we will present a discussion of the results obtained.

Choice of method
To answer our question in a thorough and rigorous way, we decided to opt for a quantitative survey. This approach enables us to collect objective, measurable data that will help us explore and understand the various dimensions of our study subject.
The objectives of this article are multiple and require an appropriate methodology to achieve them. Firstly, we seek to confirm certain realities that have been discussed or suggested in the existing literature. By using a quantitative survey, we will be able to collect empirical data that will support or refute these realities, thereby strengthening the validity of our results.
In addition, we aim to obtain a clear and detailed view of our subject. The quantitative survey offers us the opportunity to gather precise information on various aspects of our field of study, enabling us to gain a thorough and nuanced understanding of the situation.
Finally, one of the major objectives of this survey is to capture the reality of awareness and feedback of internal human resources in Moroccan PEE in the studied field. Using quantitative methods, we will be able to collect data from an aleatory and representative sample of employees of Moroccan public establishments in different cities across the kingdom. This will enable us to obtain concrete information on the practices, attitudes, opinions and behaviors of key players in our field of study.

Data collected
The questionnaire sent to employees of various grades at Moroccan PEE, in different cities across the kingdom. The survey took around 3 months to complete, including preparation, execution and data processing to obtain the results.
Our questionnaire was sent out to 250 employees in various PEE, and we received 126 responses, distributed as follows ( Figure 1):

Figure 1: Sample distribution by sector
To collect the data, we shared the questionnaire with the various officials of these establishments and the employees of these Public Companies via our professional network, social networks, by sending e-mails to the persons in charge, by sharing it in groups of officials and public employees and by making on-site visits.
In addition, 72% of responses came from employees of public-sector establishments, and 28% from employees of public-sector companies.

Existence of CSR practices related to environmental awareness in the public sector according to employees.
In this part, we'll look at the reality and context of environmental awareness within Moroccan PEE, and then consider how CSR practices manifest themselves and to what extent they influence the degree of awareness among PEE employees and civil servants.
we asked employees To better understand the environmental situation more precisely, and to find out environmental awareness is spontaneous, formal, and/or just not declared as a CSR strategy, we asked employees to confirm or deny that their PEE respects the environment in its activities. We received 70,6% of responses that claim that strategies are done formally while 29,4% deny belonging to any CSR Strategy. (table 1) Those responses call for an in-depth analysis of the situation. Actually, to better understand the use of CSR by PEE for environment protection, probably without a formalization and/or a communication, we asked our sample whether their PEE offers favorable conditions for the respect of the environment in these departments. Results show that 60,3% confirm that PEE offer environmental conditions that are considered as an indirect sensibilization, while an important rate (39.,7%) deny.
Continuing our in-depth study, we examined the extent to which PEE are directly involved in environmental awareness, and whether they are raising awareness among their employees. We also interviewed employees to find out whether they benefited from environmental awareness programs within their PEE. The answers expose that 60,3% benefit from an environmental awareness program, while a relevant percentage (39,7%) don't.

environmental awareness
In this sense, we used Likert scale, with 0 meaning that there is no influence while the 5 scale reflect that there is a big influence. We received the answers presented in (figure 2).:

Formalizing practices in CSR strategies
Generally, to succeed in the awareness program we must have a formalized plan as well as an interested employee, so to understand more the practices of CSR policies, we will analyze there is well defined strategy for this CSR in PEE and we will make sure if employees are engaged toward those policies. With this in mind, we began by looking at the regulatory formalities associated with awareness-raising processes, and asked our sample whether their internal regulations required them to respect the environment. 50% confirmed the existence of this close, but 50% said no.
In order to get a better idea of the formalization of awareness-raising, we went from the regulations to the reality of the formalization of direct environmental awareness-raising practices. To do this, we asked employees if they benefited from scheduled, well-defined awareness-raising sessions, to see how formalized the programs were, and whether or not employees were aware of the formalization of these programs. The results showed that 68% said no, and only 32% confirmed that it was done by a program (Figure 3): After all the analysis of environmental awareness in Moroccan PEE, one of the most important points found is the linking of these awareness-raising processes to a welldefined and communicated CSR strategy that can be understood by all stakeholders, including the internal human resources of these organizations. 60% responded that CSR strategies did not exist, while 40% confirmed that they did exist in their organizations ( Figure 4).

Figure 4:
Results on the existence of a CSR strategy in our PEE sample.

Human resources feedback
As shown at the beginning of this section, one of the requirements for the success of environmental awareness strategies is the commitment and willingness of stakeholders, including employees. To this end, we have tried to observe the willingness and importance of this awareness among employees.
In this sense, we tried to see how important environmental protection and environmental awareness are for Moroccan PEE managers and employees, and to what extent this influences their personal and professional lives, using a LIKERT scale, with 0= No influence and 5= Great influence.

Results
From the data collected, we report that spontaneous and non-programmed CSR practices exist in these PEEs, with 70.4% confirming and 29.4% disagreeing. In addition, 60.3% of the sample confirmed that their PEE offers favorable conditions for respect for the environment, compared with 39.7% who did not confirm this. Furthermore, 39.7% said that they benefited from environmental awareness programs within their PEE, while 60.3% disagreed. This shows that environmental awareness in Moroccan PEE is intentional and not programmed. To better confirm this, the Likert scale ( Figure 2) gave us a vision of the degree of influence of these PEE on their human resources, finding that the majority, (27.8%), chose degree 2, 21.4% chose degree 3 and 5, 6% chose degree 5 and 16.7% chose degree 0. Consequently, we can understand that the influence of Moroccan PEE on their employees is average. In order to get a clear idea of the strategic programming of environmental awareness in PEE, we can base ourselves on the last responses in this axis concerning, the existence of a CSR strategy, which was only confirmed by 40%. In addition, the existence of follow-up awareness programs, was only confirmed by 32%. As a result, we can say that PEEs have practices, but these are not defined in the form of programs, policies and strategies. Moroccan PEE therefore need to work on formalizing these practices. On the other hand, the employees showed the importance of these practices on their personal and professional lives: 62.7% chose degrees 3, 4 and 5 for the influence on their personal lives, and a majority of 84% chose degrees 3, 4 and 5. This shows that they acknowledge the importance of environmental awareness. This is confirmed by the last answer, which relates to their motivation to the development of CSR practices in their PEE.

Personal life Professional life
94% of our sample answered "Yes", with only 4% saying "NO". Finally, it remains to say that the human resources of these Moroccan PEE are very keen to benefit from more environmental awareness programs and CSR practices. This implies that Moroccan PEE need to work on developing CSR programs, policies and strategies.

Conclusion
To conclude, this article looks at the role of environmental awareness in Moroccan EAPs, showing that some of this aspect exists more or less in practice in these EAPs, except that they are not formalized and communicated as strategies or as part of the CSR axes in any EAP. This article therefore opens the door to other researchers in this field to work on this subject and complete this exploration of CSR in the public sector.