PurposeThis paper has two purposes. First is to operationalise the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and trust in the context of a developing country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Second purpose is to test in a disaggregated perspective the impact of each CSR dimension on trust.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 264 customers of six banks and processed with exploratory, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations using LISREL 9.1.FindingsCSR is found to have five dimensions: legal responsibility, social needs responsibility, product responsibility, environmental responsibility and employee responsibility; trust is found to be a three-dimensional construct: integrity, compassion and partnership. Each CSR dimension has a positive impact on customers' perception of trustworthiness.Research limitations/implicationsReliability of trust is not high enough, suggesting the need to deepen research in order to find a more adapted CSR scale for banks. The smallness of sample size might have influenced the robustness of our psychometric results. CSR and trust relationships might be analysed in a more enriched framework including service quality, reputation and banks' employee performance as moderating variables. This paper has measured the two concepts from the customers' perspective only. However, both CSR and trust are best understood in a stakeholder perspective. So, it might be insightful to extend future research in a stakeholder orientation perspective.Practical implicationsBanks from developing countries are also concerned with CSR and should invest in it. Clearly, each dimension of CSR should receive enough importance if Congolese banks are to recover their customers' trust. The findings of the study also suggest that banks' customers are aware of the necessity for banks to comply with the country's legislation. Non-compliance can have severe influence on customers' trustworthiness to banks.Social implicationsFinancial institutions are generally evaluated through financial indicators. The findings suggest that banks customers and other stakeholders begin a shift towards requiring their banks to invest in social and environmental activities in order to improve their local milieu. These aspects are still very neglected, or adopted only as marketing strategies to improve image, without a true willingness to be socially responsive.Originality/valueThe two concepts are measured in a context where they did not receive enough importance (developing country), hence providing new knowledge in the field. Further, a disaggregated approach allowed understanding the way each CSR dimension impacts trust, which had not been the case in previous research.

In this paper, we provide new empirical evidence to the relationships between leadership styles (LS) and organizational performance, introducing gender as moderator variable. Data have been collected in two Congolese towns (Bukavu and Goma); an African post-conflict region dominated by very small family businesses that have not received enough attention. Combining exploratory factor analysis with a multivariate regression we found three main results. First, both leadership and performance are confirmed to be multidimensional. LS comprised participative/democratic leadership, and autocratic/directive leadership, while performance has three dimensions: employee efficiency/productivity, effectiveness, and customer satisfaction/retention. Second, the autocratic leadership is the more adopted both by men and women, with a slight non-significant difference for men. Although democratic leadership is underscored, it appears to be more adopted by women with significant difference. Third, controlling for other variables, only participative/democratic leadership styles have positive impact on SMEs’ performance, while autocratic leadership does not influence it. This implies that, in the growing competition facing SMEs, managers should adopt leadership style that allows their employees to internalize the firm’s objectives and to be committed. Also, our research confirms that women have much to give in managing enterprises, as they appear to be stronger in leadership styles, which have more impact on main dimensions of firms’ performance. Moreover, our results suggest new avenues for deeper research about leadership styles in family-owned enterprises.