As part of efforts to create awareness on sustainable corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the country, the Centre for CSR, West Africa, will organise a series of CSR training programmes for organisations.
Scheduled for April this year, the centre will hold similar trainings in other West African countries including Nigeria.
This was contained in a statement issued by the centre yesterday in Accra.
The statement noted that although, there were still a number of militating misconceptions about CSR in Ghana and West Africa, many business players in the sub-region have gradually embraced the concept and its sustainability dimension.
It explained that due to specific expectations from beneficiaries of CSR interventions, the type of CSR activity companies implement varies with companies, especially multinationals, torn between implementing sustainable interventions that meet international best practices and responds directly to need-specific requests from stakeholders.
It said a number of indigenous African organisations were following CSR examples of Western multinationals that operate in the same market adding that there still exists skepticism that some multinationals were in danger of applying a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to CSR to their operations in developing economies.
The centre, the statement said was acknowledged by the University of Cambridge, UK’s Judge Business School for its new model for CSR and contributed to an extensive CSR research conducted by Prof. Peter Williamson, International Management Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
In an abstract published on its popular Cambridge Network website, the university cited contributions from the Centre for CSR, West Africa and quoted the co-founder of the centre in many instances.
The research, with a working title: ‘A new model for CSR’, the statement studied more than 400 firms in five developing nations including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa with an overview of CSR in West Africa provided by the Centre for CSR.
The research reveals that successful corporate social responsibility activity was based on the context of where it was delivered, not just where a business is based and emphasised why business’ CSR activity must adapt to the market where they operate.
Additionally, it noted that for some companies trading only in their home market, social responsibility appears not to be a priority, but it becomes a necessity when they start to trade in America, Europe or in developing countries and showed the different expectations for CSR interventions in different parts of the world.
The statement noted that Prof. Williamson was convinced the New CSR model was hinged on the principle that companies must adapt their CSR activities to the market where they operate.
CAPTION: Mr. John Kojo Bode Williams, Lead Project Manager, Centre for CSR
By Times Reporter
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