Doing Business In Compliance With Corporate Social Responsibility: The Practice Of Selected Business Organizations In North Shewa Zone

Abstract

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility was originated in the USA of America around 1950th. In the immemorial time many peoples have the concept about CSR is that businesses are taking advantage of consumers and society. In their minds, they think businesses are all about profit making and they care less about the society, environment and human right issues. But now days, it refers that an obligation of businesses undertake to account for social communities and stakeholders and a right that are entitled to assert to business .Because of this, corporate social responsibility has drawn increasing attention from different sectors across the country. Hence, traditionally a company exists primarily to make profits. Nowadays, there are many issues to be dealt with apart from money making. In Ethiopia, literatures indicates that only limited local as well as international or multinational organizations have been practicing CSR in a fragmented ways. Accordingly, this research was aimed to examine the practice of corporate social responsibility in north shewa Zone. Specifically, the practice in East cement S.C and Tesfaye manufacturing. Up on the nature and purpose, the research is led by qualitative approach. Key local communities and in-depth employee interviews were used as main data collection techniques. In addition, document review and systematic observation were also used to get supportive data. In-depth interviews were conducted with beneficiaries whereas key informant interviews were employed with managers of organizations. Totally, there were 34 research participants: 16 employees from two companies, 10 local communities, 2 Managers, 6 office representatives were participated in this study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the research participants based on the predetermined objectives of the research. The finding of the study shows that East Cement and Tesfaye manufacturing have several corporate social responsibility programs (CSR) in relation to employees‘ treatment, community service, environmental protection, and customer handling. This research concluded that though there are several CSR made by the two companies but these have been made without regular budget as well as working procedures.xii Social Responsibility can be a difficult concept to grasp because different scholars beliefs to which actions improve society‘s welfare. The idea of CSR is that the decision makers of the corporations are obliged to take actions which protect and improve the welfare of the society as a whole along with their interest. Every firm in the world is a social organization. It does not prosper in the vacuum. In all its operation it is fundamentally influenced by its environment. CSR is currently still in its infancy stage in Ethiopia including the corporation in north shewa zone. The majority of initiatives result from philanthropic rather than the strategic CSR approach. CSR is an important agent to address the challenge of social dimension of human development .However, Ethiopia lagged behind the concept of corporate social responsibility guidelines and frame works. There is some business organizations that engage in various business sectors in North Shewa Zone, but these businesses run merely for their own immediate profit and do not properly integrate social, environmental concerns and their interactions with stakeholders/society into business operations. In light of these, this study is premised on the hypothesis that CSR is not well practiced by business organizations in North Shewa Zone, and examines law practice of CSR compliance of business organizations in the area