Corporate social responsibility and developing countries

Abstract

The criticism that the mainstream corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda was largely driven by the concerns and priorities of western countries and therefore tends to be insensitive to local priorities as well as inadvertently harm prospects for sustainable livelihood in developing countries set the tone for the emergence of a South-centred CSR agenda. The efforts to broaden the scope and content of mainstream CSR discourse and practice has meant three principal themes have come to dominate the emerging South-centred critical CSR agenda. The emergence of this critical perspective to CSR has not only contributed to the maturation of contemporary CSR agenda but has also generated rich insights with regard to the strengths and limitations of CSR practices within developing countries. However, the failure to critically engage with the role of government, adopt a bottom-up approach to CSR analysis and avoid a piecemeal research focus has meant the emerging Southern perspective to CSR is yet to achieve its full potential. This article suggests ways to address these shortcomings and contributes to the strengthening of the emerging critical CSR research agenda in Africa.

Training the CSR Sensitive Mind-Set: The Integration of CSR into the Training of Business Administration Professionals

“…The short-term mindset of business corporations makes the integration of long-term issues, such as CSR, difficult to integrate into educational programs [51]. The dissemination of sustainable development ideas is complicated, not only in corporations and/or the policies of the states [52], but also in higher education institutions, which, themselves, need certain changes related to the realization of CSR philosophy in practice and in studies in the preparation of future professionals [34,53]. It should transform their programs to transformative ones that would integrate a holistic approach [54] and would even change the metaphor (i.e., the way they perceive the world) of a war which is still based on business administration education [55].…”

“…While researchers from Western countries sometimes show the ongoing withdrawal of enterprises from the very idea of CSR and present themselves to stakeholders by imitating CSR as one of the marketing tools [3][4][5][6], or even lobbying [7] (pp. [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67], it is becoming a clear trend in post-Soviet countries. Therefore, attention is paid to the fact that the implementation of CSR should be oriented not towards charity, marketing, and public relations, but should first and foremost be understood as social responsibility towards stakeholders [8].…”

The state of corporate social responsibility research in Ghana: A synthesis of literature

“…For example, authors (Jamali & Neville, 2011;Visser, 2008) observed that the distinctive components of CSR in developing countries are commonly considered as less formalized and more philanthropic in nature. Further, strengthening the need to focus on CSR research in developing countries are the several contestations against the suitability of transferring developed countries' CSR frameworks and ideas to developing countries (Blowfield & Frynas, 2005;Idemudia, 2011;Luetkenhorst, 2004;Moon & Shen, 2010). This is evident in the north-south divide in CSR practices (Gugler & Shi, 2009), hence emphasizing the necessity to understand and appreciate the content and objectives of CSR in context appropriately (Okoye, 2012;Prieto-Carrón, Lund-Thomsen, Chan, Muro, & Bhushan, 2006).…”

“…This led to the formation of the south-centered agenda with a focus on determining the potentials of CSR and the limiting factors that affect the practice in the global South (Lund-Thomsen, 2005). Although ongoing discussions have commended the south-centered CSR to be instrumental to CSR maturity on the continent of Africa, authors argue that the concept is yet to reach its full potential because of the haphazard focus of analysis, which creates a lack of emphasis on the relationship between CSR and its outcomes (context, development, and practices) in the prevailing literature (Idemudia, 2011). Consequently, there is a strong call for the inclusion of southern perspective into the concept of CSR to stipulate how the concept can contribute to sustainable development in Africa.…”

The Role of NGOs in Building CSR Discourse around Human Rights in Developing Countries

“…In a general sense, NGOs are seen as powerless to change the external environment (Hudock 1999), but in terms of Foucauldian power, NGOs can be power holders byinfluencing knowledge (Singh & Titi 1995). In this paper, knowledge of the human rights framework serves to exert power over a different type of knowledge, which is the philanthropy-centred discourse of CSR.…”