PRACTICE AND CHALLENGES OF DISCHARGING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE CASE OF BGI ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The objective of this study is to make assessment on the practice, challenges and benefit of discharging Corporate Social Responsibility by taking the case of BGI Ethiopia. Theories of Corporate Social Responsibility, triple-bottom line and stakeholder’s theories as well as different literatures are used to make the assessment. The practice and challenges of CSR in the company have been studied by using important stakeholders which are customers, community and employees as a respondent. To decide the sample size and select samples from the customer and the surrounding community easily convenient sampling is applied and judgmental sampling is applied to select the interviewee of the company from the target population. After stratifying the samples from the employees as managerial and non-managerial proportional stratified sampling is used to take samples which are proportional to the size of each strata of the employees. Questionnaires were distributed to 227 respondents totally that including employees, the surrounding communities, customers and 195 were collected. A detail interview was made with the officer of the company and document analysis is made by using documents from the company, websites, periodic magazines, brochures etc. So data’s were collected using both primary and secondary sources of data. The collected data’s were organized, coded and analyzed using SPSS version 16 software and the results which were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics like frequencies, mean and percentage is presented by using tables. The finding of the study mainly shows that the practice of CSR in BGI Ethiopia is not formally organized and is more of temporary philanthropic limited to charities and event sponsorship which are intended for brand image and reputation. The finding also shows that the company’s CSR is also challenged due to lack of awareness and understanding of the stakeholders, visibility factors, narrow perceptions, lack of separated and clear Guidelines or regulations and policies from the company and the government, lack of NGOs who are working on the issues etc. Periodic discussion and transparency on the issue of CSR, developing organized reporting mechanism and guidelines as well as policies, helping and initiating NGOs and other concerned bodies to make research and create awareness, making the employees to understand the significance of organized and holistic approaches of CSR are some of the recommendations which are given in the study.