Link Between Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility

On a wide spectrum of business practices, Corporate Governance (CG) has placed emphasis on issues that go beyond the traditional view of agency theory to focus on business ethics and matters of accountability, transparency etc. The aftermath of WorldCom, Enron and other giant companies has compelled businesses to adopt a stakeholder-friendly CG system that pledges the company's commitment to all stakeholders. In the same way, the increasing social and environmental demands from companies by civil society, customers and other pressure groups has brought to the fore the relevance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR concept has pushed companies to pursue a CG framework that assumes greater responsibilities of taking care of the environment and social needs of the public in addition to the traditional objective of maximizing shareholders wealth. This book draws on questionnaires and interviews to explore the link between CG and CSR using MTN Group as case study. The CG-CSR relationship is examined based on two main theories (agency and stakeholder) that have influenced the development of CG. Accordingly, the study employed three relational models to establish the link.