Organizational Culture as a Precursor to the Practice of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Conceptual Standpoint

Abstract:

A harmonious relationship between business and society has been acknowledged to be an indispensible framework for a sustainable business performance. This is as no business venture can successfully operate without the society’s support, especially in the area of input resources and enabling environment creation which promotes business success and growth. Similarly, the extent to which such harmonious relationship is maintained will to a great extent depends on corporate social responsibility practices by organizations as means of given back to the society voluntarily. On this note, this study seeks to theoretically evaluate the influence of organizational culture in the promotion of corporate social responsibility practices. In line with this objective, literature on the meaning and nature of organizational culture and its dimensions were reviewed, followed by corporate social responsibility and its measures; there after we interlaced organizational culture and corporate social responsibility. Finally, the study concludes that corporate social responsibility display by organizations is a form of voluntary organizational behavior towards the society with the capacity to bring the organization cohesively close to its stakeholders and in the long run stimulates its goal attainment in a sustainable manner. We therefore recommend as follows: i) that organizations while in pursuit of their primary goals should also embrace CSR (ii) that organizations should identify stakeholders’ needs before adopting any given CSR approach.