Bank employees’ engagement with communities in corporate social responsibility initiatives

M.Com. (Business Management)In the course of firms serving their own interest of securing financial profit, there is a responsibility to take action in protecting and enhancing the interest of the society in which they operate, with the total endeavour and effect of improving the quality of life. This is often done by giving back to the society in the form of community involvement projects. The main objective of this study is: To investigate the extent to which the value chain in employee volunteering - community involvement programmes is understood and fully optimised from these stakeholders‟ perspective. There were three types of respondent groups within the entire population of Choma, involved in this study. Firstly, there was a respondent group of five senior CSR managers at Choma who manage and co-ordinate all CSR activities within the bank. They have full knowledge of the scope of Choma CSR stated objectives and what is happening in the context of Choma CSI projects, and can thus give valuable insight to the Choma CSI projects‟ current state, including successes and challenges. Two CSR projects were selected by these senior CSR managers, where one was really outstanding and one was also completed, but not considered as valuable in attaining Choma CSR objectives as good as the first. The first group of respondents are members who were actively involved in Project 1 from Choma RBB operations, while the second group was involved in Project 2, from RBB Choma personal loans. Three employees were interviewed from each project. These projects were executed in two different communities leading to two additional respondent samples drawn from the two communities. Two community members were interviewed from each community. This provides three views of the research problem and a triangulation from three different sources of CSR value to a community. All interviews were face-to-face in the respective offices of the respondents by scheduled appointments