Appraisal of Corporate Social Responsibility Practices of Selected Medium Size Contracting Firms in South-South Nigeria

Construction project abandonment, delay in completion time, huge variation between contract sum and final account figure, etc. is gradually becoming a norm in the South-South region of Nigeria compared to other regions. These anomalies have been linked to consequential effect of communal agitations resulting from economic, political and environmental neglect. This study therefore seeks to appraise the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of medium size contracting firms in the zone with a view to explore the relationship between CSR practices and project delivery in the region. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 12 contracting firms operating within the region for 10 years (2008-2017). Structured questionnaire was used to obtain quantitative data used for the study. Data analysis was carried out using percentile, frequency, mean item score and correlation analysis. The findings revealed that 27.5% of the contracting firms have CSR policy, 17.5% of the firms have CSR as core mandate in their company vision statement. Importantly, the finding also revealed that most of the contracting firms within the region incorporate local content policy of employing indigenes of the host community (MIS=3.73) as their most important CSR practice. The study recommends that there should be an enactment and enforcement of enabling laws that make it compulsory for business owners to have CSR policy and entrench CSR as a core mandate in their vision statement as a criterion for business registration for all categories of construction companies in Nigeria.