‘CIVIL REGULATION’ AND CORPORATE SOCIAL PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT

Abstract

Just as human beings want to live and operate in an environment free from state’s regulations or control or, at least, with minimum of it, companies wish to operate in a nation or environment with barest degree of state’s control. They prefer an environment where they will pursue their corporate economic goals or objectives with little or no state’s intervention. Such a state’s control-free environment, they believe, will aid them in accomplishing their quest to maximise their corporate profit. Undoubtedly, having a corporate environment totally free from state’s control or legislative intervention is hardly obtainable in any country in the world. Some states, however, have very well-entrenched and stiff mandatory regulatory control of the corporations operating within their jurisdictions with severe sanctions or penalties for non-compliance. Oftentimes, these state’s regulation or control have a stifling or choking effects on the corporations. This, therefore, cause some corporations to seek a country with minimum state’s control of its activities. In the companies’ quest to reduce or minimise state’s intervention or control of their corporate activities with their attendant hardships and negative effects on the companies’ purse, some companies have, on their own, devised some means to self-regulate or coregulate itself or themselves knowing that state’s conventional regulation may prove tough and difficult to be complied with. Some ‘wise’ or ‘smart’ companies have, thus, voluntarily given themselves certain benchmarks of social behaviour in the form of codes of acceptable corporate conduct and other self-regulatory or voluntary frameworks. The researchers set out to see whether this corporate self-regulation and co-regulation, otherwise generally referred to as ‘civil regulation’, has the tendency or capacity to trigger companies to be socially and ethically responsible, responsive and integrative of the interests of the corporate stakeholders. This the researchers did through the adoption of doctrinal research methodology. The researchers are of the view that where these self-imposed corporate regulations are religiously adhered to by the companies concerned, it will help to curb or reduce state’s legal regulatory interventions as well as improve the reputational image of the company concerned with its attendant positive impact on the economies of the company. It will also help the company to eschew corporate behaviours, policies and decisions that are irresponsible, unfriendly and inimical to the environment, local communities and other corporate stakeholders.