Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Firm’s Financial Performance: The Tanzanian Perspective

Abstract

There has been a significant growth of interest in the field of corporate social responsibilityand the debate is still hot. There are however very few studies done in the least developedcountries on the subject matter.The main objective of the study was to investigate the impact ofCSR on Firm Financial Performance in the least developed countries, Tanzania being the countryin question. The aim of this paper is to find out if there is a significant difference in financialperformance of firms that engage in CSR relative to those that do not practice CSR. Independentsample t-test was used to test hypotheses. The data set included randomly selected 101 firmsoperating in Tanzania using accounting based measures of financial performance namely Returnon Asset, Return on Equity.The findings presented revealed that there is a significance differencein financial performance favoring those firms that do Corporate Social Responsibility, implyingthat CSR has a positive influence on firm financial performance. Firms should then engage incorporate social responsibility so as to improve their financial performance and managers shouldnot underestimate the contribution they make by committing their time and resources to makesure their CSR programs are effective in order to achieve the competitive advantage.