Corporate Social Responsibility: The case of Mobile Telephone Service Providers in Uganda

The economy of Uganda has increasingly been taken over by the private sector. In turn the private sector is expected to fulfil the corporate social responsibilities to the stakeholders. In a bid to understand whether companies do fulfil their CSR, the research was carrying out in the MTS companies. The research used the CSR pyramid produced by that was designed by Visser (2005) to explore economic, philanthropic, legal and ethical responsibilities. The methodology that was employed during the study was through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The analytical framework focussed on four stakeholder categories which included government, employees, community and customers or clients. The MTS companies in questions are the three dominant ones; Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN), ZAIN and Uganda Telecommunications Limited (UTL). After analysing both the findings and the literature, this paper points out some areas where MTS companies have done well in fulfilling CSR agenda, notably in philanthropy and also in abiding to legal regulations but also reveals that some companies do not fulfil their economic responsibilities owed to government.