ABSTRACT
One of the greatest impediments to sustainable development in Africa is formal institutional weakness. An exemplar of this weakness, and perhaps Africa’s most notable characteristic, is corruption. While CSR has the potential to alleviate the diverse challenges that plague Africa, this potential could be limited by systemic public sector corruption. Therefore, this chapter explores the complicity and role of business in corruption. It also critiques the private sector’s response as an array of superficial, transactional, and symbolic efforts that gloss over the fundamental causes of the corruption problem. Consequently, this chapter invokes the untapped promise of CSR to strengthen anti-corruption institutions through de-institutionalization, disembeddedness and buffering. It presents a RARE model to show how CSR can foster institutional change and promote anti-corruption through regulatory, archetypal, reinforcement and enforcement channels.
