Corporate Social Responsibility in Challenging Times: A Consideration of How Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Attempt to Deal with CSR Challenges in Nigeria

There is now a growing recognition of the importance of socially and environmentally responsible enterprises. Businesses are increasingly seen to address and inculcate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives into their business models/strategies. In-spite of associated benefits of CSR, businesses encounter challenges in their quest to engage in CSR activities and in some circumstance prevented from active CSR engagement. The study focuses on challenges experienced by male and female SME owner/managers when undertaking CSR related activities and explores the perception of SME owner/managers on how to overcome these challenges. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in African countries from a Nigerian perspective. The literature review draws on the CSR and entrepreneurship literature in arriving at a working theoretical base for the study. The study adopts a mixed method approach in order to collect data. The first stage of the data collection involved the use of face-to-face questionnaires with SME owner/managers. In total 371 entrepreneurs in Lagos Nigeria took part in the questionnaire survey. The second stage of the data collection involved the use of semi-structured interviews with 64 SME owner/managers who took part in the questionnaire survey. The finding obtained shows mixed responses from the male and female SME owner/managers about the challenges experienced and their perception on strategies to overcome CSR related challenges. The study makes useful contributions to the growing body of literature in this area in Nigeria, by filling gaps in the literature on SME CSR practices, challenges experienced and strategies adopted in overcoming such challenges. The study therefore contributes a theoretical perspective on which future research and policy initiative can be developed.