Corporate Social Engagement in South Africa

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Ethics, Corporate Ethics, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Dortmund, course: Business English - Social Engagement, language: English, abstract: The best motivational basis for writing an insightful and useful thesis is indisputably personal interest. Therefore, I have chosen this topic, as there are several reasons why I regard this to be an interesting field of research.

Firstly, I myself have developed an interest for the country of South Africa, as I have spent my semester abroad at the DUT in Durban. This results in deeper insight into the society at hand and the people who having to deal with the social problems. As an international business student one consequently questions the way business is done in this country and the means of corporate engagement. Resulting from our Business Ethics class, in which we were given the assignment to write about an ethical issue in a foreign country, I have already acquired knowledge about the ethical landscape in South Africa. I realized that this field is especially difficult and broad regarding the Apartheid stricken country. Discussions and meetings with South African locals in Durban who have a certain insight into the governmental and/or business practices underlying the theory have then further deepened my desire to pursuit further research in this direction.

As to the scientific relevance, corporate engagement still constitutes an immensely important role and even more so in emerging economies. So companies are constantly looking for ways of improving their responsible behavior in society. Companies seldom have the desire to analyze all the concepts available in the pool of corporate social engagement approaches. This thesis is supposed to give companies a guideline on how to successfully integrate one of these concepts and thereby generate social and economic leverage in the environment of a developing economy that is South Africa.