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The purpose of this study is to understand the driving forces of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in organizations and how these social initiatives influence organizations’ “license to operate” using data from the Ghanaian business environment.

This study used purposive sampling with a well-structured questionnaire as a data collection tool. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used to study the driving forces of CSR initiatives in organizations and how these social initiatives influence their social license.

The findings indicate that CSR initiatives are driven by the normative, mimetic, investors and community pressures. The regulative pressure has no significant effect on CSR initiatives. The authors found no difference between the services and the manufacturing sectors as far as the results are concerned using multi-grouping analysis.

From the results, the importance of normative, mimetic, investors and community pressures as the driving forces of CSR are established. The finding indicates that CSR demands by suppliers, customers the extent to which organizations perceive their competitors have benefited from initiating CSR are benefiting, the willingness of investors to invest in companies whose CSR activities are best and the opinion on the extent to which the District Assembly and the Chief Executive in the district, the Chiefs, the Churches, the Opinion leaders have significant impact on CSR initiatives.

The results indicate the need for suppliers and customers to continually demand from corporations to initiate CSR activities as organizations seem to respond to these pressures, and these initiatives are also likely to be mimicked by other organizations in the same industry to enable this drive the social responsibility agenda. Investors and community members are also encouraged to invest and accept, respectively, organizations with very good CSR records to send a signal to companies who see CSR as a cost instead of performance enhancement.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area of CSR from a developing country’s environment. This is also one of the few works that investigate the driving forces of CSR and social license using the institutional theory based on data from the African business environment.

There is an existing relationship among shareholders, boards of directors and management of companies. Corporate governance practices of companies are expected to ensure that this relationship maximises the wealth of shareholders. Differences exist among corporate governance of companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. Companies, for purposes of liquidity, hold cash, but cash holdings also add to the cost of financing, according to working capital theories. The study, thus, sought to examine the relationship between corporate governance practices, ownership structure, cash holdings and firm value.

The study deployed the seemingly unrelated regression to reduce the problem of multicollinearity resulting from the strong relationship between cash reserves and some control variables.

The study found no significant relationship between board size and firm value. Similar findings were also made on the relationship between proportion of non-executive directors on the board and firm value. However, firms audited by the big four audit firms are valued higher by the capital market. Cash holdings of firms negatively affect performance, and this is statistically significant. A positive relationship arises between a firm’s cash holdings and its value as a result of debt financing, even though this is not significant.

The study is the first of its kind that deploys Tobin’s Q as a measure of firms’ value to reflect investors’ valuation of firms in Ghana. The study is also the first of its kind to test the interactive effect of debt financing and cash holdings on firm value in Ghana.

By relying on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this paper aims to understand the relative importance of attitude, subjective norm (SN), behavioral control, self-identity (SI) and past behavior in the prediction of green purchase behavior among Ghanaian consumers.

In total, 306 graduate students were surveyed on the environmental considerations in their purchase behavior using hierarchical multiple regression analysis.

The results of the study indicate that, in general, attitude and SI are more important than SN in influencing green purchase intention in a collectivistic country, such as Ghana. Yet, most respondents were neutral in their responses to questions as to whether they are green consumers and/or if they consider themselves to be concerned about environmental issues.

This is the first attempt to study environmental consideration in purchase decisions in Ghana, a resource-rich, emerging and one of the strongest economies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as reputation on overall performance from a developing country’s environment.

The partial lest squares structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between CSR and firm’s reputation as well as the overall organizational performance using a survey of informants from Ghana.

Using data from firms in Ghana, the study demonstrates that CSR initiative by firms will have a positive relationship with firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as overall performance. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that enhanced reputation by firms through social responsibility initiatives will lead to firms’ overall performance from the Ghanaian business environment.

The main limitation of this work is the source of the data originating from only executives from Ghana where managers are sometimes skeptical giving out such information; this might have some influence on the results. In addition, there could be potential endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity issues. It is therefore recommended that future studies should consider these issues to check as to whether the same results could be achieved. Specifically, results indicate that when organizations invest in CSR initiatives, they are likely to achieve product quality, improved management performance and an attractiveness as well as overall performance.

The research shows how CSR initiatives can enhance firm’s reputation and overall performance of a firm.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area CSR and reputation from a developing country’s environment.

The purpose of the work is to use a systematic process to identify the environmental and social impacts of small-scale alluvial gold mining projects using data from Ghana.

In this work, we used survey data collected from experts in the mining sector. This was followed by the use of a risk analysis approach to identify the significant and non-significant environmental and social impacts.

Seven key impacts associated with typical alluvial mining operations were identified. The first two are the loss of vegetation and the issue of airborne diseases from dust as a result of vegetation losses during the clearing of vegetation in the block out area. The third and fourth issues were loss of vegetation and airborne diseases as a result of vegetation losses during the removal of overburden. The fifth, sixth and seventh, most significant issues identified were the pollution from smoke fumes from the processing machines; and wastewater from the washing process. The last issue of significance was the dust pollution from the transportation of the washed gravel back to the mined pit.

One main limitation is that the data for this study were collected from Ghana.

The results indicate the need for proper and systematic measures to identify the environmental and social impacts of mining activities.

The work provides some insights into the strategies of identifying environmental and social impacts of mining activities. It is also one of the key works that systematically identify environmental and social impacts of small-scale alluvial gold projects.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the moderating role of organizational culture in the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty in the banking sector using data from the Ghanaian banking sector. The idea is to understand the relative importance of the various service dimensions to customers patronizing banking services in Ghana and to ascertain what drives customer satisfaction and whether this satisfaction has implication on their loyalty.

The study used a survey and relied on partial least squares structural equation modeling to study the relationship between service quality and its impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

The result indicates that the reliability, ambiance and social factors all have a significant positive relationship with the satisfaction of customers doing business with these banks. However, assurance and responsiveness of the employees seem to have no significant relationship with the satisfaction of customers. It is also important to indicate that organizational culture seems to strengthen the positive relationship between the service quality dimensions and customer satisfaction. The results further indicate that customer satisfaction has a direct positive relationship with customer loyalty.

Reliability, ambiance and social factors remain the three most important drivers of customer satisfaction in the banking sector in Ghana. It is, therefore, important for bankers to consistently undergo training and education in order to deliver more reliable services to customers. Managers should also make efforts to groom employees, provide attractive promotion materials, provide directions to the banks, make sure the banking halls are neat for customers while waiting and the provision of enough parking spaces for customers. One limitation of this work is that the data focused on only the Ghanaian banking environment.

The research shows the importance of the service quality constructs such as reliability, ambiance and the social factors on customer satisfaction and loyalty in the banking sector. The organizational culture seems to strengthen the positive relationship between empathy, reliability, tangibles and customer satisfaction. It is therefore important for banks to continue to build cultures that will commit employees to their work, so that they feel the sense of ownership of quality in order to contribute meaningfully.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area of service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty from a developing country’s environment using the stimulus-organism-response model. In addition, this work further highlights the importance of the moderating role of organizational culture in the relationship between the service quality dimensions and customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the various supplier selections construct impacts on firm’s operational competitive capability as well as an overall performance from a developing country’s environment.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between supplier selection criteria, competitive operational capabilities and overall organizational performance using survey of informants.

In this work, the authors demonstrate that an effective supplier selection will lead to an enhanced competitive capability of the buying firm. Specifically, the authors show that selecting suppliers based on quality will lead to an improved quality of the buying firm, service will lead to improved delivery time and supplier strategic fit will lead to reduced cost, improved delivery time and improved flexibility of the buying firm. Furthermore, the buying firm competitive operational capabilities in terms of improved delivery time will lead overall performance from the Ghanaian business environment. The results indicate no significant difference between the manufacturing and service sectors.

The results indicate the relevance and the implications of the various supplier selection criteria from a developing country’s environment such as Ghana.

The research shows how supplier selection criteria should be structured to enhance operational competitive capabilities and overall performance of the buying firm.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and build on the literature in the area of supply selection strategies from a developing country’s environment.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine whether firms in Ghana allocate resources through the use of budgetary planning principles.

A survey was conducted using top business executive and budget holders of the firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. The data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM) and, in particular, the PLS-SEM approach.

The study demonstrates that there is a statistically significant relationship between budgeting, performance management, and resource allocation constructs. The results indicate that performance management partially mediates the relations between budget planning and resource allocation. This indicates that firms in Ghana behave optimally by allocating resource using budgetary planning principles.

The study is limited to the firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. As a policy implication, this study has established that efficiency revolves around making the possible use of a given set of resources and as such firms in Ghana allocate resources through the use of budget.

There have been just a few studies that tried to integrate budgeting, performance management, and resource allocation in a comprehensive framework to deal with agency problems.

The study aims to empirically examine the impact of organizational culture on accounting information system and corporate performance of firms in Ghana.

A survey was conducted using top corporate executives of diverse firms from different industrial sectors. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and a further post hoc test was done using analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The study demonstrates that there is a statistically significant relationship between organizational culture on accounting information system and corporate performance. The results indicate that mission, adaptability and consistency dimensions of organizational culture were significant and also accounting information system influences corporate performance. Moreover, there are significant differences in the means of accounting information system on different industrial sectors.

The study is limited to the extent that only overall profitability was used to measure performance. In addition, the study did not control for leadership style and organizational structure in the relationships. The implication of the study is that ethical culture-shaped accounting information system and financial reporting practice which ultimately leads to corporate performance.

Ghana is a developing country where structures and institutions are not well developed. Businesses and organizational forms are now beginning to pick up; therefore, organizational culture, accounting information systems and their impact on corporate performance are not well documented. These are all new phenomena in this part of the globe. The context of Ghana in terms of national culture that feeds into organizational culture, institutions, quality and application of accounting information is entirely different from that of advanced countries. The study therefore contributes to the extant literature by applying the constructs of organizational culture, accounting information system and corporate performance within a developing country perspective.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the impact of sustainability as measured by the triple bottom line constructs on the competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana.

To understand the impact of sustainability on competitive advantage, a survey was conducted where managers were asked about their engagement in the sustainability issues and how it affects their competitive advantage. The study uses the structural equation modelling (SEM) and, in particular, the partial least square (PLS) approaches to SEM.

The results of this study indicate that economic and social have a positive impact on the corporate image but not the environment. In addition, corporate image and social have positive impact on corporate performance, whilst economic and environment seem not to have any impact on corporate performance.

The study is limited to only manufacturing firms operating in the Ghanaian environment. It is important, therefore, for firms in Ghana to invest in social sustainability initiatives, as it will ultimately affect their bottom line performance. This study provides policy implications to Ghana and other developing countries to implement the necessary policies and provide incentives to improve environmental awareness.

There have been just a few studies that tried to find out the impact of sustainability constructs and performance and how corporate image mediates this relationship.