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

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.