The Corporate Social Responsibility of companies and its effects on competitive advantage : a comparative analysis of Botswana and South Africa

Abstract

South Africa and Botswana, as developing countries, continue to face various challenges in relation to a respectable and sustainable corporate governance. The multi-faceted objectives of both countries? competition regimes appear to pose grave challenges for the competition authorities, who ought to balance contending public interest considerations in developing a competition friendly character. The essential foundation of competition law, both in South Africa as well as Botswana, lies in the suggestion that competition produces social benefits which are misplaced in a monopoly, and that an effective form of legal regulation ought to decrease, or abolish, any patent injury thus far and improve the wellbeing of society. This suggestion puts forth an amount of intricate difficulties which ought to be tackled if competition law is to be evaluated and understood. These include: what exactly is meant by the word ?competition?? What are the types of societal harm that occur as a result of competition? What legal mechanisms ought to be adopted to reduce such societal harm and ensure sustainable development within competition? Competition is vital to an efficiently functioning market economy. Companies are essentially economic representatives and, tentatively, their decisions are made with competitive factors in mind, but it is also a fact that companies also play a role in society in that their activities have a bearing on environmental and social circumstances. Based on the assumption that the competitive advantage of CSR has been exploited by various companies, I consider whether competition laws are widespread enough to include the regulation of CSR as a competitive tool, I essentially inquire into whether competition and CSR are compatible enough to be linked together. It is apparent that companies aiming to integrate sustainable development goals in their plans and policies essentially face a Catch-22 between the risks tangled in global competition and their wish to behave in socially responsible ways. The analysis of the connection between competition and CSR shines a light on the restrictions of the dominant theoretic agenda regarding CSR.