Social Responsibility and the Legitimisation of Capitalism In Africa

The importance of assessing the social ramifications of economic activities has become an increasingly prominent issue in modern society. The negative impact of the profit-focussed and economic growth driven model of modern capitalism on the social fabric as well as physical environment has raised serious concerns about its sustainability as well as pragmatism. This has created calls for the non-economic elements of economic activity to be taken as seriously as the economic elements. It is in this context that social responsibility is increasingly becoming a concept used by capitalists and social movements to try and make the global economic system respond to these calls for increased social accountability. This dynamic however is complicated by the fact that different sectors that pursue the implementation of social responsibility have different relationships with capitalism. Thus, each sector has different motivations to be involved with the issue of social responsibility. This makes involvement in this issue a multi-layered complex affair in which the different motivations often contradict and conflict with each other.