Socio-Economic implications of Multinational Corporations on Corporate social responsibility: a case of Tanzania Portland Cement Company Limited

This study investigates socio-economic implications of MNCs' corporate social responsibility and particularly addresses the question on the extent to which MNCs abide by their corporate social responsibility and its socio-economic implications in Tanzania using Tanzania Portland Cement Company Limited as a case study. The study adopts stakeholder's theory which assumes that business corporations need to be responsible not only to shareholders but also to all those affected in one way or another by the activities of the organizations. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews, questionnaires, documentary reviews, observations and focus group discussions. To generate the information for the study, 83 randomly selected local communities were involved in the study and the descriptive statistics was used to assess the socio-economic impacts of corporate social responsibility within the study area. The findings from the study revealed that 63.3 percent of the respondents reported that, there was no MoU of corporate social responsibility between local community and TPCCL; hence, the extent to which they abide by their corporate social responsibility within the local areas is very small due to poor knowledge of CSR among the member of the community. It was further revealed that, no monitoring and evaluation of few projects aided by TPCCL with in the local community due to lack of documentary evidence indicating the cost and benefit analysis of these CSR projects to the community. The study recommends that, since the concept of CSR is new in the field of business in Tanzania, special interventions by the government and CSOs are needed to address specific challenges posed by MNCs especially extractive (cement manufacturing) industry in order to ensure that those MNCs abide by their corporate social responsibility around the local communities in which they operate.