adminof their commercial activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, environment, communities and other stakeholders (Davis 1975).
The starting point of corporate social responsibility stems from the supposition of a fiduciary relationship/position that exists between the corporation and the stakeholders such a notion states that the corporation should be run in the interest of the stakeholders.
It is widely known that for a business to be successful it needs to provide a good or service that is desired by the public and also to obtain a profit from providing the products or services.
While these are the most important components to a successful business, they are not the only ones.
By identifying the corporate social responsibility methods being used by companies in Zimbabwe, it is interesting to note that there is a growing awareness of the need to have strong corporate social responsibility strategies that are underpinned by five principles.
Such principles have been modelled as creating the best way for a company to give back to society thus making a positive difference to our community and creating a great place to work for their employees across Zimbabwe.
The social responsibilities of a business include those to its stakeholders. I have noted that the stakeholders of the firm include the shareholders, the environment, creditors, debtors as well as the community at large.
Lord Holme and Richard Watts went further to state that corporate social responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families.
This obligation is seen extending beyond the statutory obligations that are laid for companies to comply with legislation and sees organisations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees, their families as well the local community and society as a whole.
I have also noted that the concept of social responsibility or social responsiveness as some now prefer to call it, is a continually evolving concept and means different things to different people.
The concept of social responsibility has been with us since the beginning of mankind and has slowly evolved to its present state.
Charkham (2005) states that the first comprehensive approach to modern era social responsibility was ushered in 1953 with the publication of Howard R. Bowen’s book “Social Responsibilities of the Businessman”.
Bowen felt that public responsibility, social obligations, and business morality were synonyms to social responsibility. He described the term social responsibilities of businessmen as: “It refers to the obligation of businessmen to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of objectives and values of our society.”
In 1971, the Committee for Economic Development published a book in which they treated the relationship between business and society as a social contract between the two groups, with business’ major obligation being the providing of those goods and services that society needs.
Traditionally, these needs have been economic, such as production of goods and services, job opportunities, an improving standard of living, and a higher gross national product.
This traditional contract between business and society has been changing because of the addition of new social value responsibilities placed upon business.
Some of these new social value responsibilities include stricter compliance with national and international laws, social problems, human values, health care, pollution, quality of life, equal employment opportunities, sexual harassment, elimination of poverty, child care and elderly care, support of the arts and universities and many others. Basically, each of these areas of social value responsibility can be placed in one or more of three broader categories or headings of social responsiveness; these three categories are legal, moral ethical, and philanthropic.
Following the CSR Indaba held in April at the Rainbow Towers by the Regional Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, many people and groups (the stakeholders) felt that all business across Zimbabwe have a moral obligation to correct the social problems that beset society.
At the same time, many of these stakeholders also felt that that much of the business community has not and is not adequately dealing with many of these social problems of concern. All of these forces place pressure on business to respond to the emerging major social issues of the day. In today’s environment of global competition, companies need to become more innovative with respect to how they distinguish and market their products.
This is the approach that has been taken within countries like the USA and the UK where supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons have begun to look at corporate social responsibility as a distinguishing factor for their companies.
Their goal is to translate corporate social responsibility into a distinguishing factor for their products.
Essentially, companies are working on the assumption that consumers will reward them (i.e. purchase their products) for support of social programs.
The same can happen in Zimbabwe as it’s high time that all companies start having effective corporate social responsibility strategies as part of the operations both in theory and practice.
Terrence N. Chimanya, MSc, LLB (Hons), BSc, ACIS, MCMI is a corporate governance practitioner and Senior Manager — Governance, Risk and Compliance with PricewaterhouseCoopers Zimbabwe. He is writing in his personal capacity as a corporate governance practitioner. Terrence can be contacted on [email protected]
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