Indigenous Businesses and Practice of Corporate Social Responsibility in Nigeria: The First Bank Experience in Upholding Entrepreneurial and Economic Development

Abstract

This review article aimed to present profile of a well known First Bank (Nigeria) Public Limited Company (PLC) as a socially responsible corporate citizen. However, corporate Nigeria would do well to take its cue from the international corporate world, as it’s clear by comparison to world standards, there has been a near total collapse of governance in Nigeria. As a result, corporate social responsibility initiatives in Nigeria are targeted at ameliorating the socio-economic development challenges of the country the like of infrastructure development, which is informed by socio-cultural influences like communalism and charity. Research shows that Nigerian organizations perceived and practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) as corporate philanthropy aimed at addressing socio-economic development challenges in Nigeria. This finding confirms the CSR is a localized and socially embedded construct, as the ‘waves’, ‘issues’ and ‘modes’ of CSR practices identified amongst indigenous firms in Nigeria reflect the responses of the firms to their socio-economic context. As a result of this philanthropic focus, corporate contributions in Nigeria have remained largely unregulated, unsupervised and unguided, depending entirely on the whims, caprices and generosity or otherwise of particular corporate executives in office. As such ad-hoc and unstructured corporate going patterns do little in the light of the tremendous challenges facing the country, this review article therefore believes that there is the need for indigenous businesses to be mindful of how their operations impact on the society, the environment and the lives of the people as being very imperative to socio-economic development. The article recommended that, even though, CSR is an expensive function and duty of businesses to society and to the community they operate in, hence indigenous business entities should also have social and ethical responsibilities besides their traditional economic roles to dispense to society and their host communities. Also, corporate firms should intensify efforts to educate the public on their primary responsibilities, various commitments to other stakeholders and operational financial limitations.