Influence of corporate social responsibility on sustainable growth of large supermarkets in Kenya

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a strategy where an organization engages in programs and executes organization mandate in such a way that it addresses all the responsibilities it has to all stakeholders. It goes over and above the profit-making goals with aim of impacting organization and voluntary contribute to better societies. It gives organizations opportunities to demonstrate their good corporate citizenship in their products or services and is propositioned that it must incorporate the economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic expectancies of the society. Supermarkets in Kenya are faced with problem of sustainable growth by expanding in the first five to ten years of their operations, then unfortunately facing eminent closure Therefore the study conceptualized that CSR may influence the sustainable growth of large supermarkets in Kenya. The general objective of this study was to assess the influence of corporate social responsibility on sustainable growth of Large Supermarkets. Specific objectives were; to assess the influence of economic responsibility on sustainable growth of Large Supermarkets in Kenya, to examine the influence of legal responsibility on sustainable growth of Large Supermarkets in Kenya ,to examine the influence of ethical responsibility on sustainable growth of Large Supermarkets in Kenya ,to determine the influence of philanthropic responsibility on sustainable growth of Large Supermarkets in Kenya and to assess the combine effect of economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility on sustainable growth of Large Supermarkets in Kenya. This study was anchored on three theories, instrumental theory, stakeholders’ theory and ethical theory which spoke to the responsibilities of a business to all her stakeholders. The study used descriptive research design. Target population was25 branches of the three Large Supermarkets as registered by the registrar of companies. Semi-structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Respondents were branch managers and the staff in charge CSR at the branch for 25 branches for Large Supermarkets, which translated to 50 respondents in total. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to test existence and strength of relation between CSR and Sustainable growth of large supermarkets. The findings revealed that all four CSR operationalization had a strong positive and significant correlation with sustainable growth of large supermarkets in Kenya. The linear regression analysis indicated that all the predictor variables influenced sustainable growth leading to the conclusion that the four need to be exercised and granted considerable weight so as to contribute to sustainable growth of large supermarkets in Kenya. The study recommends adoption of the CSR as one way of enhances sustainable growth in the long term. Further studies can be comparative across industries and different sectors to enable comparisons and generalization.