Corporate social responsibility practices in Uganda

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a business practice that benefits the society. The modern CSR is premised on Carroll’s pyramid of CSR developed in 1996. The implementation of CSR presents fears and challenges to companies especially in the developing economies. While many countries have legalized the practice of CSR across the globe, Uganda has not been legalized CSR practices. Being a relatively unfamiliar concept in Uganda, this book was intended to examine the factors that motivate companies to embrace CSR practices despite having no legal obligation to fulfill. The results show that the main CSR approach employed by the companies has been community support pointing to philanthropy and the main motives included providing benefit to the community and attracting more customers. Although stakeholder theory had been widely adopted to support CSR practices, the philanthropic approach employed without any compelling laws has a linkage to the theory of planned behaviour. The implications of this finding are that CSR is ever evolving; the CSR position in developed economies is not comparable to developing economies; philanthropy is seen as the primary approach; and Stakeholder theory widely considered for CSR is relative and not universal.