Enriching Organisational Knowledge of Corporate Social Responsibility From the Traditional African-Nigerian and Islamic Religion Perspectives

1.0 Introduction

Organisational knowledge of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been dominated for decades by the American-European perspectives, although there are different perspectives to this debatable concept. This preference for CSR perspective from developed countries is obvious in the historical discourse of CSR. According to Carroll (1999), the long history of CSR could be linked to centuries of observed unethical behaviours and misconducts of corporations in the developed countries which later triggered agitations in the United States calling on the corporations to show more empathic concerns towards the society and the people. The agitation in favour of CSR became more pronounced in the 1950s through a widely celebrated treatise of the United States economist Howard Bowen titled “Social Responsibilities of the Businessmen” (Roy, 2010; Tounés, et al., 2011). Ismail (2009) opined that Bowen’s understanding of CSR is premised on the realisation that businesses could impact positively on the lives of the society through philanthropic initiatives and social-welfare projects.

Another perspective to the origin of CSR emanated from Tounés et al. (2011) who noted that the Protestant and Catholic groups were instrumental in the emergence of CSR through their philosophies of ‘public service’ and ‘stewardship’. The Catholic group preached to their members, particularly the property owners in industrial society, to imbibe the spirit of selfless service, empathy and contribution to support the society. It was the church’s philosophy as enunciated above that inspired ethical consciousness and led to the adoption of social responsibility.

For Mintzberg (1983), CSR had long existed as a consciousness to show concern for others in the society, a term widely known among Europeans as ‘noblesse oblige’, which literarily connotes ‘nobility obliges’. The root of ‘noblesse oblige’ indicates that it was a common French notion, used for describing ethical traits and worthy character displayed by a typical country gentleman, especially one who fulfils social obligations to the community. Obviously, CSR predated Bowen, it has been a noble English value practised by responsive individuals for ages. Bowen got credit for articulating CSR within the business context (Raimi, 2015).

Further exploration of CSR’s origin by Ismail (2009) indicates that CSR is an age-long practice traced to Oliver Sheldon, who wrote on the social performance of businesses in 1923 – a nuance that identified a strong link between social performances of business in the society and their market performances. Similarly, it has been explained that before the discovery of CSR in Europe and America; there had existed a well-developed philanthropic model called Zakat - a form of religious tax enjoined on the rich as part of their social responsibility for supporting the poor (Roy, 2010). Whereas, Tounés et al. (2011) wrote that opinions differ on the origin of CSR. There are write-ups that traced the earliest proponents of CSR to the Protestants in the United States of America. In other words, the two prominent religious group (Protestantism and Catholicism) were instrumental to the emergence of CSR through rigorous advocacy of church’s philosophy of public service that inspired ethical consciousness and a personal sense of responsibility among the congregants.

The African-Nigerian and Islamic perspective of social responsibility has been fairly explored by scholars in their quest to unveil indigenous African and Islamic ethical practices (Amaeshi et al., 2006; Helg, 2007, Le Grange, 2012; Raimi, 2014), but there is still need for deeper exploration in this direction. A separate CSR discourse from non-Western lenses is important because Africa has a different CSR agenda and challenges, which are quite different from those of the developed climes (Visser 2008).