Identification of Corporate Social Responsibility Challenges and Performance in the Ghanaian Construction Industry

Corporate social responsibility in today’s job environment has become very important that socially conscious clients and the society at large are expecting construction contractors to take on a major role in advancing the well-being of the environment. However, contractors complain of several factors affecting their ability to meet this expectation. Purpose—The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of CSR in the Ghanaian construction industry and to identify challenges militating against their CSR fulfilment. To propose a solution to enable Ghanaian construction companies fulfil their CSR. Design/Methodology/Approach—Two hundred and fifty contractors made up of one hundred and fifty-five (155) building contractors and ninety-five (95) road contractors took part in the survey. The sample size was determined by Yamane’s (1967) formula with stratified simple random sampling technique adopted in selecting the companies for the survey. Findings—The study found 6 CSR challenges in the Ghanaian construction industry, specifically “CSR is associated with avoidable expenses”, “lack of legal framework”, “lack of CSR incorporation in company’s vision and mission statements”, “lack of sufficient financial resources”, “too much corruption in the industry”, and “lack of training for CSR implementation”. The study also found that, Construction Company’s category was found not to be statistically significantly related to their CSR engagement. Originality/Value—CSR studies have been attempted in the Ghanaian construction industry by some researchers, but this is the first time a study has been undertaken to identify CSR challenges confronting construction companies in order to improve CSR in the Ghanaian construction industry.