Role of Corporate Social Responsibility Audit on Strategic Decision Making: a Case Study of Selected Firms in the Mobile Telephony Industry in Kenya

Abstract

The present-day CSR, sometimes also called corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, responsible business and corporate social opportunity; is a concept whereby business organizations consider the interest of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and other stakeholders as well as their environment. The study was a cross-sectional survey. the target population consisted of departmental heads and middle level staff in the following departments: Marketing, human resource, public relations, audit and operations in Airtel Kenya and Safaricom Ltd. Stratified random sampling was employed in carrying out the study. Primary and secondary data was collected for this study. Primary data was collected by administering a structured questionnaire. The data from the completed questionnaires were cleaned, re-coded and entered into the computer using the statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) for Windows for analysis. Based on the findings of the study, the sampled employees agreed that the companies pay their employees more than similar local companies as supported with a mean of 3.820 and a standard deviation of 0.821. It was also revealed that Safaricom Kenya Ltd and Airtel Kenya encourages employee participation in community projects (mean- 4.028 and standard deviation-0.802) and that they have health and safety regulations in place in the workplace (mean-4.154 and standard deviation-0.835). According to the analysis of the findings, it was generally established that the two organizations were in involved in improving infrastructure and social amenities such as health centres. Based on the respondents, the companies were involved in improving social infrastructure and living conditions in surrounding communities (mean-3.624 and standard deviation-0.554) and in building schools, health centres, and electricity connections for the local community (mean- 3.120 and standard deviation- 0.754). From the findings, the employees of the two firms are involved in the strategic integration of CSR into organizational strategies as evidenced by mean of 4.01 and a standard deviation of 0.82. The study results also indicated that CSR values have been incorporated into the explicit values of the organization (mean- 4.01 and standard deviation- 0.82) and that there are good bases for setting the organizational CSR goals, such as benchmarking to CS successful organizations or adopting generally accepted practices and standards (mean- 3.62 and standard deviation- 1.15). The study recommended that the management of Safaricom Ltd and Airtel Kenya should allocate more financial resources to the CSR kitty of their companies to cater for publicity and elaborate organization of the events. The current CSR programmes should be expanded to engage more employees and serve more needy cases in a wider geographical area. There is also urgent need to come up with a CSR model that delivers tangible benefits to all stakeholders from each CSR investment by Safaricom Kenya Ltd and Airtel Kenya.