Perspectives of corporate social responsibility: a comparative analysis of organisational corporate social responsibility in South Africa and the UK (original) (raw)
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Africanus: Journal of Development Studies
The issues of poverty and inequality, unemployment and the poor living conditions of employees in communities where local and multinational corporations operate have reemerged on the development agenda as a result of growing labour unrest in South Africa, particularly in the mining sector. This article aims to contribute to the conceptualisation and understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR), including how the philosophy of a developmental state is understood by different stakeholders. A qualitative study was conducted of the CSR initiatives of ten listed national and multinational companies. Interviews were conducted with multiple stakeholders, including the labour force, government, business representatives and community members. The findings suggest that CSR remains an underdeveloped field of enquiry in development studies, underpinned by diverse ideological perspectives among stakeholders regarding its direction and implementation. Despite this situation, an emerging...
corporate social responsibility in South Africa
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not a new issue. There has always been the need for organizations to make profits and the needs of society. CSR has been considered more intensely that ever since the early 1990s, building on a trend that had been growing since the start of the 20th century. CSR refers to all of an organization’s impacts on society and the need to deal responsibly with the impacts on each group of stakeholders. Typically these are: shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and the community – both local and global. Key issues will vary from sector to sector and from organization to organization. Business is arguably the most powerful institution of our society and Ever since the publication of the second King Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa (King II) in 2002, South African corporates have sharpened their focus on their commitment to the ‘triple-bottom-line’, an expanded baseline for measuring a company’s performance which includes, in addition to the traditional financial yardstick, an accounting of the impact of their activities on society and the environment. It is impossible for organization’s to ignore the impact of social, ethical and environmental issues on their business. The cost of neglecting these issues will be high. Business has emerged as the dominant institution in global culture. The other institutions of society – political, educational, religious and social – have a decreasing ability to offer effective leadership. Business, by default must begin to assume responsibility for the whole. The ‘business case’ for CSR is the fact that organizations are pursuing their corporate social responsibilities in response to market forces and in pursuit of shareholder value. The CSR thesis is that organizations will build shareholder value by engaging with stakeholders other than the legal owners, and by taking account of their impacts on society. It is a mistake to pose CSR and profitability as mutually exclusive; the aim is to achieve social responsibility and profits. While the impact of CSR has broadened, many organizations still seem unconvinced that behaving responsibly is necessarily good for business in the hard-nosed sense of building shareholder value. This may be because research on this key topic is scanty and severely limited by a lack of hard data. But, increasingly there is evidence of positive links between social and financial performance.
World Bank Institute Research Studies, 2003
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a popular business concept, especially in developed economies, and is argued to be largely founded on Anglo-American philosophies and values. As typical of other business concepts, CSR is on its way to globalization, especially through Transnational Corporations (TNCs). But to what e xtent are these philosophies and values shared between developed (north) and developing (south) economies? How does the south perceive CSR and what does it mean to it? How could TNCs use CSR strategically across their various locations and cultures? These are some of the questions this research will intend to address, amongst others. The study will undertake a comparative analysis of UK and Nigerian stakeholders' views on CSR. It is believed that it will add to the body of knowledge on CSR, especially as the study relates to Transnational Corporations who are, out of market necessity, caught in-between the north-south divide web. The policy implications of the study would, also, be highlighted.
Southern African Business Review, 2022
Purpose/objectives: In the absence of a socioeconomic transformative business agenda, our purpose is to propose a transformative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) management model for businesses in South Africa. Design/methodology: A case study design was followed, using document analysis and a questionnaire as data collection methods. Thirty respondents, representing nine businesses from the banking, food and telecommunication sectors, were sampled. Findings: The results suggest that businesses do not follow a systematic, uniform reporting format annually and do not fully comply with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards or B-BBEE compliance targets. Furthermore, no clear evidence could be found in the sampled companies' sustainability reports of how much money was contributed annually to socioeconomic development, and no progressive CSR trends could be discerned. Practical implications: A practical model with guidelines is presented to assist South African businesses to successfully comply with statutory and regulatory obligations and international CSR reporting requirements. Originality/value: The proposed transformative CSR management model offers a tangible framework for businesses in the absence of such a framework. The main elements of the final model are the oversight and management of CSR and CSR activities, stakeholder management, intervention impact planning, stakeholder engagement, implementation, and sustainable impact reporting. This model can be implemented and used by various stakeholders in the business sector to accelerate tangible and sustainable socioeconomic transformation in South Africa.
Adoption of corporate social responsibility – incorporating a stakeholder perspective
Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 2006
CSR can be understood as the voluntary integration of social and environmental concerns into business operations and interactions with stakeholders. Previous research has established that companies use CSR initiatives to communicate with their stakeholders, but it has failed to discuss and analyse CSR explicitly from the stakeholder perspective. The present study's contribution to existing knowledge has been to analyse how CSR affects organizational practice. In this regard, the study has offered an analytical framework based on neo-institutional theory and stakeholder theory. The study has also demonstrated that it can be fruitful to go beyond a dualistic analytical approach to link stakeholder thinking and CSR in a more proactive and responsive manner in order to bring about value creation.
Journal of Business Ethics, 2008
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly significant managerial concept, yet the manager as an agent of corporate bureaucracy has been substantially missing from both the analytical and conceptual literature dealing with CSR. This article, which is both interpretative in nature and specific in reference to the U.K. cultural context, represents an attempt at addressing this lacuna by utilising qualitative data to explore the perceptions of managers working in corporations with developed CSR programmes. Exploring managerial perceptions of motives for CSR initiatives, methods of stakeholder engagement, organisational integration of CSR and its impact on managerial work, this study concludes that an instrumental approach dominates, which indicates an external-internal organisational paradox in the design and execution of CSR initiatives.
Journal of Marketing Communications, 2008
The social responsibility of business has become a major issue in recent years and the reporting of such activity is becoming more prevalent. Companies are attuning to the benefits of being seen as socially responsibly and many industries are jumping on the bandwagon of reporting CSR and using different media to communicate their activities in this arena to their stakeholders. This paper considers the content of one type of such communications, the annual report, and looks at how organisations are taking a focused stakeholder view of CSR rather than a wider view as would be expected from the ambiguity of definitions of the concept. Differences in reporting practices were found by an analysis of the annual and CSR reports of 28 FTSE4Good firms focusing on a variety of industries. Findings show that there is a significant difference between how organisations in different industries report on CSR consistent with a stakeholder view of CSR, and that this reporting follows for the most part the expectations of the CSR communications literature. It is suggested that firms report on CSR in line with what their key stakeholders expect, thus giving evidence for CSR reporting as another tool in the marketing communicators toolbox.
“Apartheid-Induced” Corporate Social Responsibility in the Context of South Africa: A Review
Developing Country Studies, 2018
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to gain prominence in most parts of Africa. The aim of this study is to explore the nature and extent of recognition of CSR in South Africa (SA), a developing country. The need for CSR research focused in developing countries remains critical, particularly with the concerns that current CSR approaches and with their origins from developed countries, may not reflect and fully respond to developing countries context and circumstances encountered. The aim of this paper is to explore literature and to identify the nature and extent of CSR recognition in SA. This study therefore took a review research study approach. SA has a history of legal racial segregation, termed, ‘apartheid’. Within apartheid, humanity was defined on the basis of race. Thus, apartheid permeated the entire fabric of life. We find that CSR is largely ‘Apartheid-Induced’, and that the practice is two-fold: largely voluntary and less mandatory. The first model that emerg...
Corporate Social Responsibility: Applying Sustainability Principles in Stakeholder Engagement
Corporate Ownership and Control, 2017
There is a strong ethical case to redress poverty and inequality in South Africa. The South African corporate sector has been called upon to take responsibility for the ways their operations impact societies. There has been considerable change in the way the corporate sector concerns themselves with applying sustainability principles to the ways in which they conduct their business specifically in their social interactions with stakeholders. This sees the South African corporate sector investing millions to support sustainable community development and social programs. The total corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure in South Africa was estimated to amount to R8.2 billion in 2013/2014 (Trialogue, 2014). Although major South African and multinational companies have had ample opportunity to express and communicate their views on the potential of CSR, the voices of communities continue to be thwarted and stifled when they should logically lie at the heart of effective change...