DONATIONS AND NET PROFIT MARGIN OF LISTED MANUFACTURING COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Recent developments in strategic thinking support the need to add activities that expand out from the company into society. Scholars have identified these activities as corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities (Carroll 1979; Margolis and Walsh, 2001). Further, CSR scholars, managers and authors have recognized the actions of cause marketing, donation, society improvement, disaster relief, protection, peace initiatives and pollution reduction as companies ‘social responsibility activities. Among the many reasons identified to persuade companies to implement CSR are popularity (Fernando, 2007), business strategy (Dentchev, 2004) and stakeholder pressures (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). However, there are some direct benefits that have been recognized by many scholars of implementing CSR from the companies ‘point of view (Margolis and Walsh, 2001; Porter and Kramer, 2002). As a result, studies are used to examine the relationship between CSR performance and company performance to identify the above benefits.