CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background of the Study

Corporate social responsibility can be defined as the “economic legal, ethical and discretionary expectations that society expect from organization at a given point in time (Carroll and Bucholtz 2003, p. 36).

The concept of corporate social responsibility means that organization have moral, ethical and philanthropic responsibility to earn a fair return for investors and comply with the law.

Corporate social responsibility also called corporate conscience, co-operate citizenship, social performance or sustainable responsible for a business to focus on the moral judgments and behavior of individuals and groups with the organizations.

Thus, the study of business ethics maybe regarded as a building, self regulating mechanism whereby business monitors and law, ethical standard and international norm.

The goal of corporate social responsibility is to embrace responsibility for the company’s action and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employee’s communities, stakeholders and all the members of the public sphere.

According to D. Wood, corporate social responsibility performance revisited (1991) 16 (4), the term “corporate social responsibility” came into common use in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after many multination corporations were formed.

Corporate social responsibility is title to aid an organization mission as well as a guide to  what the company stands for and will uphold to its  consumers and providing social amenities like portable water, education, electricity, environmental protection, sponsoring of social event, provision to health facilities, employment of socially handicap person or deprived person, provide environmental protection and pollution control, provision of clean water and good roads, construction of  parks and lots more to their host communities and the stakeholders as well as giving fair treatment to the staff.

With the help of corporate social responsibility counsel, corporations are beginning to target their philanthropic contributions, becoming more committed through environmentally sound products and programmes for plant location communities and teaming with local agencies and government to improve schools, employment training for the needy.

The continuous survival of company depends to a great, on us demonstrating not only an awareness of the problem of the society, but also a willingness and capacity to do some thiny positives about solving these problems. Corporate social responsibility focuses that business would proactively promote the public interest (PI) by encouraging community growth and development and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless  of legality (Seather, Kimt, Ruth V. Aguilera (2008).

The development business ethics is one of the forms of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. According to (Garriga and Mele 2004), it is stated that in 1960s and 1970s the civil right movement, consumerism and  environmentalism affected society’s expectations of business based on the general ides  that those with world to be more proactive in:

1. Ceasing to cause societal problems and
2. Staring to participate in solving societal problems

Many legal employment opportunities, product safety, worker safety and the environment.

Furthermore, society began to expect business to voluntarily participate in solving societal problems whether they had caused the problem or not. This was beyond their economic and legal responsibilities and accept responsibilities related to the betterment of society. This view of corporate social responsibility in the prevailing view in much of the world today. Therefore, this study seeks to examine the assessment of Exxon Mobil corporate social responsibility in Ibeno Local Government Area.

1.2       STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

Exxonmobil has come to age and as such competition has altered them to look for corporate social responsibilities that will sustain the community they are working on.

Exxonmobil work and are committed to conducting business in a manner that is computable with the environment and economics needs of the communities in which they operate they also conduct research and engage with local expert to develop a thorough understanding of current conditions from a safety, social and environmental perspectives.

Exxonmobil activity promotes respects for human rights anywhere they work, but sometimes when they operate in some challenging environment where human right issues such as security, land and water access, and forced labour, the treatment of indigenous peoples are a key understanding and tradition

Nevertheless they Exxonmobil faces extraction as a result of community crises that sometime may occur because of uncompansation to community. Therefore social responsibility is often expected of any business organization or company operating any community.

It is social responsibility effort to contribute to the development of its host community, the observation as been that theses organization Exxonmobil are not mostly concern, even when  their operations negatively attract their host community.

Therefore, this work seek to evaluate the assessment of ExxonMobil corporate social responsibility in Ibeno community.