IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ssi/jouesi/v7y2020i3p1887-1901.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Responsible entrepreneurship: is there scope for its adoption by immigrant-owned businesses in South African townships?

Author

Listed:
  • Silas Mukwarami

    (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa)

  • Robertson K. Tengeh

    (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa)

  • Josephat Mukwarami

    (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa)

Abstract

Concerns about their business practices have precipitated the recent wave of attacks on immigrants in South African Townships. Besides claims that they take away jobs, business opportunities, the locals accuse the immigrants of unfair and irresponsible business practices. All this speaks powerfully to the issue of social legitimacy. Against this backdrop, this paper gauged the business practices of immigrant-owned spaza shops in the hope that the adoption of responsible business practices could act as an intervention strategy for easing the tension between natives and foreign immigrants. The paper followed a quantitative research approach that made use of questionnaires to solicit data from subjects that were purposively selected. The study suggests that immigrant entrepreneurs are treating CSR programmes selectively as issues like training and education, donating to the local communities and employment of natives failed to gain a significant acknowledgement. This, further proves that the CSR ideology has been partially received by the immigrant entrepreneur in the local Townships and thus making it challenging to manage multi-dimensional stakeholder relationships, as issues around credence remain pending. Leaning on the stakeholders and legitimacy theories, this paper advances the case for adoption of CSR by informal businesses and particularly as a possible antidote to the xenophobia that is driven by unfair competitive advantage and unfair business practices by South African township entrepreneurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Silas Mukwarami & Robertson K. Tengeh & Josephat Mukwarami, 2020. "Responsible entrepreneurship: is there scope for its adoption by immigrant-owned businesses in South African townships?," Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, vol. 7(3), pages 1887-1901, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssi:jouesi:v:7:y:2020:i:3:p:1887-1901
    DOI: 10.9770/jesi.2020.7.3(30)
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://jssidoi.org/jesi/uploads/articles/27/Mukwarami_Responsible_entrepreneurship_is_there_scope_for_its_adoption_by_immigrantowned_businesses_in_South_African_townships.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/496
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.9770/jesi.2020.7.3(30)?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael C. Jensen, 2010. "Value Maximization, Stakeholder Theory, and the Corporate Objective Function," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 32-42, January.
    2. Lawrence Edwards & Rhys Jenkins, 2015. "The Impact of Chinese Import Penetration on the South African Manufacturing Sector," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 447-463, April.
    3. Nicky J. Welton & Howard H. Z. Thom, 2015. "Value of Information," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 35(5), pages 564-566, July.
    4. Prno, Jason & Scott Slocombe, D., 2012. "Exploring the origins of ‘social license to operate’ in the mining sector: Perspectives from governance and sustainability theories," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 346-357.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Danny Zhao‐Xiang Huang, 2022. "An integrated theory of the firm approach to environmental, social and governance performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1567-1598, April.
    2. Sliman S. Alsoboa, 2017. "The Influence of Economic Value Added and Return on Assets on Created Shareholders Value: A Comparative Study in Jordanian Public Industrial Firms," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(4), pages 63-78, April.
    3. Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2018. "The Role of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance: A View from Accounting Research," CEPR Discussion Papers 12775, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Lee, Alice J. & Ames, Daniel R., 2017. "“I can’t pay more” versus “It’s not worth more”: Divergent effects of constraint and disparagement rationales in negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 16-28.
    5. Hussain, Hadia & Murtaza, Murtaza & Ajmal, Areeb & Ahmed, Afreen & Khan, Muhammad Ovais Khalid, 2020. "A study on the effects of social media advertisement on consumer’s attitude and customer response," MPRA Paper 104675, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. A. G. Fatullayev & Nizami A. Gasilov & Şahin Emrah Amrahov, 2019. "Numerical solution of linear inhomogeneous fuzzy delay differential equations," Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 315-326, September.
    7. Arun Advani & William Elming & Jonathan Shaw, 2023. "The Dynamic Effects of Tax Audits," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(3), pages 545-561, May.
    8. Mara Del Baldo, 2012. "Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Italian SMEs: the experience of some “spirited businesses”," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 16(1), pages 1-36, February.
    9. Scholtens, Bert, 2008. "A note on the interaction between corporate social responsibility and financial performance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1-2), pages 46-55, December.
    10. Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Matthieu Lequien & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2017. "Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning," CEP Discussion Papers dp1516, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Marie Bjørneby & Annette Alstadsæter & Kjetil Telle, 2018. "Collusive tax evasion by employers and employees. Evidence from a randomized fi eld experiment in Norway," Discussion Papers 891, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    12. Chuangen Gao & Shuyang Gu & Jiguo Yu & Hai Du & Weili Wu, 2022. "Adaptive seeding for profit maximization in social networks," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 82(2), pages 413-432, February.
    13. Koessler, Frederic & Laclau, Marie & Renault, Jérôme & Tomala, Tristan, 2022. "Long information design," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(2), May.
    14. Marc Bollecker & Pierre Mathieu & Claude Clementz, 2006. "Le Comportement Socialement Responsable Des Entreprises : Une Lecture Des Travaux En Comptabilite Et Contrôle De Gestion Dans Une Perspective Neo-Institutionnaliste," Post-Print halshs-00769052, HAL.
    15. Annette Alstadsæter & Wojciech Kopczuk & Kjetil Telle, 2019. "Social networks and tax avoidance: evidence from a well-defined Norwegian tax shelter," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(6), pages 1291-1328, December.
    16. Erik G. Hansen & Stefan Schaltegger, 2018. "Sustainability Balanced Scorecards and their Architectures: Irrelevant or Misunderstood?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 150(4), pages 937-952, July.
    17. Sebastian Kaumanns, 2019. "“Some fuzzy math”: relational information on debt value adjustments by managers and the financial press," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(2), pages 755-794, December.
    18. Ferrell, Allen & Liang, Hao & Renneboog, Luc, 2016. "Socially responsible firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 585-606.
    19. Samuel J Gershman, 2015. "A Unifying Probabilistic View of Associative Learning," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-20, November.
    20. Arun Advani, 2022. "Who does and doesn't pay taxes?," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 5-22, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    township economy; immigrant entrepreneurship; corporate social responsibility; stakeholders; immigrants; xenophobia; spaza shops;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - General
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • M38 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ssi:jouesi:v:7:y:2020:i:3:p:1887-1901. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Manuela Tvaronaviciene (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.