Abstract:
The objective of the study was to assess the practice of CSR by private commercial banks in
Ethiopia. The research has followed quantitative research approach, survey as a strategy and
structured questionnaire adopted from previous works of Samour (2016), Kesto (2017), &
Mensah (2015) as data collection instrument. The research used census method on the
private commercial banks in Ethiopia since the target population is simple to manage to
collect the data from the target population. The data was collected from staff of marketing
department found at head offices of each private commercial bank. Proportionate stratified
sampling method along with random sampling techniques was applied in order to identify
respondents proportionately from each private commercial bank. Both primary and
secondary data sources were used to gather data. The study has utilized a statistical tool
called SPSS V.25 for doing the analysis. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies,
percentage, mean, and standard deviation were used for summarizing and presenting the
data. The study found that there is modest extent and practice of corporate social
responsibility (CSR) across private commercial banks in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the study
revealed that private commercial banks in Ethiopia are largely familiar with the concept of
CSR. The study concluded that private commercial banks in Ethiopia tends to disclose more
on their contribution to government development plans than any other aspects of CSR
activities. In contrary, the engagement of private commercial banks in Ethiopia in community
development among other CSR activities considered as the least followed by stakeholders’
engagement in planning and implementing CSR activities. The study recommended that
Corporate Social Responsibility requires more for the private commercial banks to pay
special attention towards integration CSR activities in their business operations.
