ABSTRACT

Social Responsibility has been described in various ways by various scholars. It is an important management tool today in various human endeavours, It aims to supplement elements of the public welfare system that are failing to serve the society and the Universities should not be exempted from this very important aspect of community development. The Study examined the Impact of Social Responsibility around Universities and their host communities in South-eastern Nigeria. The evaluation made use of purposive and random sampling techniques in the selection of Universities and host communities. Focus Group Discussion was applied to validate the data collected in the areas. Data generated were analyzed using descriptive statistics, logistic regression, Likert rating and the discriminant model. The results indicated evidence of social responsibilities among the selected universities. It was observed that all the activities/projects undertaken by the universities had no impact on the host communities. The result further showed that the number of indigenes of host communities employed, number of children of the host communities admitted in the universities and cordial relationship determined the universities social responsibilities. Five variables were significantly found to discriminate between responsible universities and non-responsible universities. They are sell-worth, Attitudes towards SR, subjective norms, political climate and reciprocal relationship. The implication of self worth is that the degrees to which the universities view their contributions to the host communities affect their social responsibility. The second variable was attitude towards social responsibility, that is, the more positive the attitude towards social responsibility, the higher they would embark on social responsible projects. The third variable is subjective norms indicating the degree to which the universities believe that host communities who bear pressure on their actions get less from them. Fourth variable, was also significant because the extent to which the climate is perceived to be lair enhances social responsibility of the universities. The filth variable reciprocal relationship was also significant. The implication was that the higher (lie reciprocal relationship perceived by the universities, (lie higher they will be socially responsible. There is therefore, need to design policy framework for SR among (lie Universities by governments in order to ensure compliance, this is necessary for any university that needs to excel and have its vision and mission met.