The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on the Performance of L’oreal East Africa Limited

Abstract

This study sought to investigate how practicing corporate social responsibility affects organizational performance at L’Oreal East Africa Ltd. The researcher chose a case study research design, because it focuses on understanding the dynamics present in a management situation (Eisenhardt, 1989). The researcher collected primary data through an interview guide that consisted of open-ended. The data were collected from the senior managers within the human resource, marketing, corporate communication, and finance departments who are involved in strategy formulation and implementation programs for corporate social responsibility and afterwards analyzed through the use of content analysis. The results found that corporate social responsibility affects corporate financial performance of the organization to a great extent through creation of demand for the organization’s products, bringing the company closer to the people, increasing sale volumes and making the company socially responsible. It was also established that through engaging in corporate social responsibility activities the company was able to enhance its reputation and that enabled the company to build positive relationships, customers’ trust thereby increasing sales and ultimately attaining a competitive advantage. The study revealed that the challenges L’Oreal East Africa ltd faced in Corporate Social Responsibility were selection of the project which represented the interests of the community and how to involve the their employees in the project implementation.