An Adaptive Approach to Reconceptualizing Corporate Social Responsibility and Corruption in Nigeria’s Oil-Rich Niger Delta

Signaling the fundamental tensions in the conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corruption has simply lost its capacity to inspire. Like an emperor without clothes, both concepts are estranged from comprehension. This paper therefore examines these deeply contested conceptions of corruption and CSR frameworks as they relate to Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta. It seeks to test the competing notions within institutional and operational corruption on the one hand and CSR frameworks on the other hand. The idea is to establish a fundamental nexus between the inconsistent narrative conception of the above forms of corruption and the incoherent framing of CSR within institutional settings in Nigeria. This paper maintains the view against the voluntarist conception that sees corruption as the offshoot of cultural disposition wrapped into the logical frames of CSR. As a result, the study seeks to resolve the question of whether corruption is incidental to or a function of framework and systems design. The aspects of relativist, nonrelativist, and communalist analytical methods provide a context for an examination of the competing notions of corruption and its relationship with the incoherent CSR framework in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. It argues that the intentionality of gaps created within the CSR framework provides the basis for corrupt activities. Initial findings reveal a strong connection between defective systems design and a high tendency for institutional and operational corruption within the CSR framework in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. This has implications for associated and connected institutional systems in Nigeria, Africa, and across the world.