Determinants of Nigerian managers’ environmental attitude: Africa's Ubuntu ethics versus global capitalism

• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Author: Olusegun Vincent,Chukwumerije Okereke,Chima Mordi
• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21974

EMERGING MARKET PERSPECTIVES: AFRICA

Determinants of Nigerian managers’environmental attitude:

Africa’sUbuntu ethics versus global capitalism

Chukwumerije Okereke

1

| Olusegun Vincent

2

| Chima Mordi

3

1

Department of Geography and

Environmental Science, University of Reading,

Reading, United Kingdom

2

School of Management & Social Sciences,

Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, Nigeria

3

Brunel Business School, Brunel University,

London, United Kingdom

Correspondence

Professor Chukwumerije Okereke, University

of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, P.O. Box

233, RG6 6AB, London, United Kingdom.

Email: c.okereke@reading.ac.uk

We investigate the impact of economic, institutional, and ethical pressures on African man-

agers' corporate social and environmental attitude based on a survey involving 377 Nigerian

executives in the extractive industry. We find that environmental orientation and behavior are

mostly induced by instrumental economic motives, while ethical considerations exert a weak

impact. This finding is significant because it contradicts mainstream corporate social responsi-

bility (CSR) literature in Africa, which suggests the dominance of the culturally based, altruistic

African Ubuntu philosophy. Based on this research finding, we suggest that economic globaliza-

tion has spurned a transnational capitalist cadre of managers whose values are shaped far more

by global capitalist instincts than any putative cultural philosophy. The findings also undercut

the fundamental logic underpinning the numerous global initiatives to promote environmental

responsibility by multinational corporations in developing countries, which assumes that man-

agers will pursue environmental sustainability voluntarily in the absence of robust regulations

and strict enforcement.

1|INTRODUCTION

This study explores the relative impact of economic, institutional and

ethical factors as determinants of managers' attitudes toward proac-

tive environmental strategies in Nigerian multinational companies

(MNCs). More specifically, the study investigates the relative impact

of the cultural-based Ubuntu philosophy (with its emphasis on

humanness, compassion, and solidarity) and the profit maximization

instinct associated with global capitalism on Nigerian managers' envi-

ronmental management attitudes. The focus here is on senior man-

agers in the extractive industry, of which 377 from 52 companies

completed our survey questionnaire, making our study probably the

most extensive sample-size analysis on corporate social and environ-

mental responsibility (CSER) attitudes of MNC managers in Africa

so far.

Researchers have long explored the incentives that cause compa-

nies to behave in a proactive socially and environmentally responsible

manner, based on studies involving business managers in advanced

democracies in the West (Coleman, 2011; Orlitzky, 2008). More

recently, these studies have been increasingly replicated in emerging

economies and other less developed countries around the world

(Amaeshi, & Amao, 2009; Ben Brik, Mellahi, & Rettab, 2013; Doh,

Husted, & Yang, 2016; Nyuur, Ofori, & Debrah, 2016). The growing

focus on developing countries reflects at least three trends. First,

there is an appreciation of the rapid economic development taking

place in these countries in the context of globalization and the associ-

ated widespread negative environmental impact of MNCs' activities

(Achua & Utume, 2015; Yusuf & Omoteso, 2015). Second, there is a

recognition of “the potential for MNCs' involvement in (co)creating

sustainable economies”(Kolk & Lenfant, 2009, p. 241; cf. He & Chen,

2009) and the need to better understand “the mechanisms that foster

environmentally sustainable organizations”(Bansal & Kendall, 2000,

p. 717; cf. Kolk, 2016). Third, there is bourgeoning literature stressing

that CSR is largely “nationally contingent”(Matten & Moon, 2008,

p. 404) and that the unique cultural and institutional conditions in

developing countries offer settings for gleaning unique insights

(Adegbite, 2015). For Jamali and Karam (2016):

The importance of exploring the context dependence

of CSR has been accentuated in recent years with

calls for closer attention to the peculiar institutional

constellations, or national business system configura-

tions of developing countries, which may ultimately

lead to different expressions of CSR. (p.1)

Interestingly, while most studies of drivers of CSR in the West

indicate that economic and institutional factors are the most impor-

tant drivers (Coleman, 2011; Goering, 2014; Kaul & Luo, 2015), the

bulk of studies in developing countries, in particular, African coun-

tries, identify ethical incentives as the key drivers (Amaeshi, Adi,

DOI: 10.1002/tie.21974

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is

properly cited.

© 2018 The Authors. Thunderbird International Business Review published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2018;60:577–590. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie 577