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The purpose of this study is to understand the driving forces of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in organizations and how these social initiatives influence organizations’ “license to operate” using data from the Ghanaian business environment.

This study used purposive sampling with a well-structured questionnaire as a data collection tool. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used to study the driving forces of CSR initiatives in organizations and how these social initiatives influence their social license.

The findings indicate that CSR initiatives are driven by the normative, mimetic, investors and community pressures. The regulative pressure has no significant effect on CSR initiatives. The authors found no difference between the services and the manufacturing sectors as far as the results are concerned using multi-grouping analysis.

From the results, the importance of normative, mimetic, investors and community pressures as the driving forces of CSR are established. The finding indicates that CSR demands by suppliers, customers the extent to which organizations perceive their competitors have benefited from initiating CSR are benefiting, the willingness of investors to invest in companies whose CSR activities are best and the opinion on the extent to which the District Assembly and the Chief Executive in the district, the Chiefs, the Churches, the Opinion leaders have significant impact on CSR initiatives.

The results indicate the need for suppliers and customers to continually demand from corporations to initiate CSR activities as organizations seem to respond to these pressures, and these initiatives are also likely to be mimicked by other organizations in the same industry to enable this drive the social responsibility agenda. Investors and community members are also encouraged to invest and accept, respectively, organizations with very good CSR records to send a signal to companies who see CSR as a cost instead of performance enhancement.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area of CSR from a developing country’s environment. This is also one of the few works that investigate the driving forces of CSR and social license using the institutional theory based on data from the African business environment.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged over the past 30 years to occupy a significant role in certain aspects of the organizational theory. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of CSR and firm’s operational competitive performance in terms of cost, quality, flexibility and delivery, as well as the overall performance, from a developing country’s environment.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between CSR, competitive operational capabilities and the overall organizational performance using a survey of informants.

Using data from firms in Ghana, the work demonstrates that CSR initiative by firms will have a positive relationship with firm’s operational competitive performance in terms of cost, quality, flexibility and delivery performance, as well as overall performance. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that competitive operational capabilities in terms of cost and flexibility will lead to firms’ overall performance from the Ghanaian business environment, whereas delivery and quality seems to have no positive effect on overall performance.

The results indicate the relevance and the implications of CSR initiatives on firms’ performance in a developing country such as Ghana. Specifically, the results indicate that when organizations invest in CSR initiatives, they are likely to achieve cost reductions, improved quality, flexibility, improved delivery and overall performance.

The research shows how CSR initiatives can enhance firm’s operational competitive performance and overall performance.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area of CSR in a developing country’s environment.

There is an existing relationship among shareholders, boards of directors and management of companies. Corporate governance practices of companies are expected to ensure that this relationship maximises the wealth of shareholders. Differences exist among corporate governance of companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. Companies, for purposes of liquidity, hold cash, but cash holdings also add to the cost of financing, according to working capital theories. The study, thus, sought to examine the relationship between corporate governance practices, ownership structure, cash holdings and firm value.

The study deployed the seemingly unrelated regression to reduce the problem of multicollinearity resulting from the strong relationship between cash reserves and some control variables.

The study found no significant relationship between board size and firm value. Similar findings were also made on the relationship between proportion of non-executive directors on the board and firm value. However, firms audited by the big four audit firms are valued higher by the capital market. Cash holdings of firms negatively affect performance, and this is statistically significant. A positive relationship arises between a firm’s cash holdings and its value as a result of debt financing, even though this is not significant.

The study is the first of its kind that deploys Tobin’s Q as a measure of firms’ value to reflect investors’ valuation of firms in Ghana. The study is also the first of its kind to test the interactive effect of debt financing and cash holdings on firm value in Ghana.

By relying on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this paper aims to understand the relative importance of attitude, subjective norm (SN), behavioral control, self-identity (SI) and past behavior in the prediction of green purchase behavior among Ghanaian consumers.

In total, 306 graduate students were surveyed on the environmental considerations in their purchase behavior using hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

The results of the study indicate that, in general, attitude and SI are more important than SN in influencing green purchase intention in a collectivistic country, such as Ghana. Yet, most respondents were neutral in their responses to questions as to whether they are green consumers and/or if they consider themselves to be concerned about environmental issues.

This is the first attempt to study environmental consideration in purchase decisions in Ghana, a resource-rich, emerging and one of the strongest economies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of the work is to use a systematic process to identify the environmental and social impacts of small-scale alluvial gold mining projects using data from Ghana.

In this work, we used survey data collected from experts in the mining sector. This was followed by the use of a risk analysis approach to identify the significant and non-significant environmental and social impacts.

Seven key impacts associated with typical alluvial mining operations were identified. The first two are the loss of vegetation and the issue of airborne diseases from dust as a result of vegetation losses during the clearing of vegetation in the block out area. The third and fourth issues were loss of vegetation and airborne diseases as a result of vegetation losses during the removal of overburden. The fifth, sixth and seventh, most significant issues identified were the pollution from smoke fumes from the processing machines; and wastewater from the washing process. The last issue of significance was the dust pollution from the transportation of the washed gravel back to the mined pit.

One main limitation is that the data for this study were collected from Ghana.

The results indicate the need for proper and systematic measures to identify the environmental and social impacts of mining activities.

The work provides some insights into the strategies of identifying environmental and social impacts of mining activities. It is also one of the key works that systematically identify environmental and social impacts of small-scale alluvial gold projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as reputation on overall performance from a developing country’s environment.

The partial lest squares structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between CSR and firm’s reputation as well as the overall organizational performance using a survey of informants from Ghana.

Using data from firms in Ghana, the study demonstrates that CSR initiative by firms will have a positive relationship with firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as overall performance. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that enhanced reputation by firms through social responsibility initiatives will lead to firms’ overall performance from the Ghanaian business environment.

The main limitation of this work is the source of the data originating from only executives from Ghana where managers are sometimes skeptical giving out such information; this might have some influence on the results. In addition, there could be potential endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity issues. It is therefore recommended that future studies should consider these issues to check as to whether the same results could be achieved. Specifically, results indicate that when organizations invest in CSR initiatives, they are likely to achieve product quality, improved management performance and an attractiveness as well as overall performance.

The research shows how CSR initiatives can enhance firm’s reputation and overall performance of a firm.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area CSR and reputation from a developing country’s environment.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the impact of sustainability as measured by the triple bottom line constructs on the competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana.

To understand the impact of sustainability on competitive advantage, a survey was conducted where managers were asked about their engagement in the sustainability issues and how it affects their competitive advantage. The study uses the structural equation modelling (SEM) and, in particular, the partial least square (PLS) approaches to SEM.

The results of this study indicate that economic and social have a positive impact on the corporate image but not the environment. In addition, corporate image and social have positive impact on corporate performance, whilst economic and environment seem not to have any impact on corporate performance.

The study is limited to only manufacturing firms operating in the Ghanaian environment. It is important, therefore, for firms in Ghana to invest in social sustainability initiatives, as it will ultimately affect their bottom line performance. This study provides policy implications to Ghana and other developing countries to implement the necessary policies and provide incentives to improve environmental awareness.

There have been just a few studies that tried to find out the impact of sustainability constructs and performance and how corporate image mediates this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding on social media brand engagement (SMBE) practices by exploring the impact of consumer brand knowledge, perceived social pressure, perceived social relatedness (PSR) and the role of brand trust.

A model is proposed to suggest the influence of consumer-level antecedents and moderators of SMBE. Following a survey design approach, data collected from 687 respondents on Facebook are examined through structural equation modelling using AMOS 23.0.

The findings reveal significant relationship between the examined antecedents (brand knowledge, perceived social pressure and brand trust) and SMBE. Examination of the moderation role of PSR revealed significant interaction effects on the relationship between brand knowledge and SMBE, as well as perceived social pressure and SMBE. The findings also suggest a lack of interaction effect of PSR on the relationship between brand trust and SMBE.

This research provides empirical evidence in support of understanding SMBE practices by testing theoretically grounded hypotheses. The study focussed on technologically savvy respondents and only Facebook users in Ghana, which could limit the generalisation of the findings reported.

This study illustrates a need for managers to integrate multi-communication channels to enhance brand interactions and engagements. Firms must also adopt strategies that would enhance the sharing of interesting information about their brands on their social media platforms to attract others through customer networks.

The conceptualization of SMBE in this study zooms out our understanding of online SMBE by examining pertinent variables that drive or moderate consumer participation in SMBE activities. The integration of these variables brings out new empirical understanding and extends our knowledge on SMBE.

Manufacturing organizations have begun to implement green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in response to customer demand for products and services that are environmentally sustainable and that are created through environmentally sustainable practices and in response to governmental environmental regulations. Despite rising concerns about green management, there seem to be few studies investigating GSCM and its impacts on the operational competitive capabilities from a developing economy. The purpose of this paper is to understand the extent of GSCM practices’ implementation in Ghana and how such practices impact firms’ operational competitive capabilities.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between GSCM practices and firm operational competitive performance in terms of cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery time using a survey of informants.

Using data from Ghana, the work demonstrates that GSCM practices such as environmental management systems (EMSs) and green purchasing (GP) practices will have a positive relationship with firm’s operational competitive performance in terms of cost, quality, and flexibility, but seems to have no positive relationship with delivery time. Further moderation analysis indicates that the paths from environmental management practices to reduced cost and flexibility were significant, indicating that the effect of environmental management practices on operational efficiency differs among services, manufacturing, construction and mining. The paths from Green purchase to improved quality, delivery time, flexibility, and reduced cost were insignificant.

The results indicate the relevance and the implications of GSCM practices such as implementing comprehensive EMSs and GP on operational competitive performance on firms from a developing country such as Ghana. Specifically, the results indicate that when organizations invest in GSCM practices, they are likely to achieve cost reductions, improved quality, and flexibility. The relationship between GSCM practices is moderated by various industrial sectors.

The research shows how GSCM practices such as EMSs implementation and GP practices can enhance firm’s operational competitive performance.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and build on the literature in the area of green supply chain and firms’ operational competitiveness from a developing country’s environment.

The aim of this paper is to conduct an initial exploratory investigation to systematically identify and classify the stakeholders associated with the mining sector in West Africa into key and non-key stakeholders through the use of the comprehensive project stakeholder management tools and processes. The results can be used as an initial identification and classification of stakeholders associated with a typical mining project and can also be used as a basis for confirmation analysis to develop further knowledge and an improved understanding of the management of multiple stakeholders in mining sector projects.

This exploratory work used mine managers from West Africa, asking them to identify stakeholders that are of importance to a typical open pit mining project and also to make some objective assessments of their attitudes and influence of the stakeholders identified. From this, a stakeholder power/interest grid was developed to classify stakeholders into key and non-key stakeholders.

The findings present an initial exploratory result indicating that the key stakeholders for a mining project are the Environmental Protection Agency, Minerals Commission, Geological Survey Department, Member of Parliament, the Ministry in charge of mining, Forestry Commission, farmers, Lands Commission, non-governmental organizations, Department of Feeder Roads, traditional chiefs, district or municipal assembly and youth associations within the concession area.

The research was limited to only respondents working in the mining sector in three West African countries.

Practically, this study highlights for mining companies and operators, some preliminary understanding of stakeholders that are critical for engagements to be successful in their operations.

This study, essentially, reveals the importance of the various stakeholder groups interested in a mining project and the level of influence.

This study contributes to the debate on project stakeholder management in the mining sector, especially from a developing country’s point of view.