African Journal of Business Management Vol. 5(17), pp. XXX-XXX, September, 2011 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.

org/AJBM ISSN 1993-8233 2011 Academic Journals

Please Cite Table 1,2,3 and 9. They were not cited

Full Length Research Paper

Analytic hierarchical process (AHP)-based prediction of stakeholder salience from selected stakeholder groups among firms in Nigeria
Oluwafemi, O. J.1, Balogun, S. K.2* and Adekoya, A.1
1

Business Administration Department, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria. 2 Department of Psychology, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
Accepted 28 June, 2011

Firms that are rational in their approach to stakeholder salience may perform better because they are able to prioritize their socially responsible actions to the various stakeholder groups. However, not many firms adopt rational approach. Therefore, this study investigates relevant environmental factors that are predictive of stakeholders salience among selected firms in Nigeria using analytic hierarchical process (AHP). Cross-sectional research design was used for the study. Quota, simple random and convenient sampling techniques was employed to obtain responses from a sample of 225 corporate affairs personnel in various quoted companies on the Nigeria stock exchange (NSE). Responses were analysed by obtaining the weight estimates of respondents perception of stakeholder salience ordered on a 3 x 3 matrix for the stakeholder groups using expert choice analytical tool. It was found that sociocultural (.250) and economic (.250) stakeholder groups was much lower (half) the priority accorded political constituencies (.500) This result suggest that majority of the socially responsible actions amongst firms in Nigeria were politically motivated. Alternative priorities for the three dimensions of stakeholder salience were also higher for legitimacy (.47311) and power (.46815). The result suggests that firms in Nigeria tend to place greater emphasis on both legitimacy and power of stakeholder groups, and lesser priority on urgency (.05874). The implication is that firms should concentrate their socially responsible effort on stakeholder group that will make the greatest impact on their corporate performance. Concerted effort should be made to provide broad based regulatory framework and benchmark for socially responsible behaviour among firms operating in Nigeria. Mechanisms for reporting, monitoring, auditing, setting standards and enforcing compliance should also be put in place. Key words: Stakeholder salience, analytic hierarchy process, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Nigeria. INTRODUCTION Kochan and Rubinstein (2000) posit that organisation theorists have been challenged about giving greater attention to the role of the corporation in the larger society. However, most of the studies have not dwelt sufficiently on the need for corporations to be designed to sufficiently accommodate and be held accountable for meeting the goals of multiple stakeholders. Stakeholder concepts have been studied increasingly in both the theory literature (Freeman, 1984; Mitroff, 1983) as well as business ethics literature (Carroll, 1989). These studies described the interplay between business ethics, corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory. Dominant themes on corporate governance, in particular, business ethics and corporate social responsibility discourse are centred on the debate surrounding normative stakeholder theory. The normative stakeholder theory is rooted in the moral intuition that a firms

*Corresponding author. E-mail: shyngle61 @yahoo.com Abbreviations: NSE, Nigeria Stock Exchange; AHP, analytic hierarchical process; CSR, corporate social responsibility.

responsibilities to its various stakeholders should significantly extend beyond acceptable contemporary shareholders/stockholder approaches (Hendry, 2001); rather, it should strike a balance in the distribution of economic, social benefits as well as risks. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that situation occurs where a wide gap exist between what businesses do in practice and what exist in theory. The lack of a clearly articulated theory of the differences between stakeholder and shareholder organizational forms, or sufficient empirical studies of these alternative forms makes it difficult for researcher to contribute more meaningfully to such debate. This current study is concerned with an investigation of relevant socio-cultural, politico-economic factors that are predictive of stakeholders salience among firms in Nigeria. Stakeholder is used within the context of this study to embrace the full range of constituencies that are deemed vital to the survival and success of the corporation. It provides the basis for analysing and managing the numerous and diverse relationships that arise within the enterprise - environment interface that has far reaching implication for corporate governance and strategic management vis-a-vis success and survival of the firm. It posits that stakeholders share benefits and risks arising from a firms operations. At least in the normative sense, it argues that long term business success require a firm to develop and integrate relationships with its multiple stakeholders within a comprehensive management strategy (Post et al., 2002). Consequently there has emerged the concept of stakeholder management. The purpose of stakeholder management is to facilitate a clear understanding of, and thereby ability to manage within an increasingly unpredictable external environment that would foster closely aligned corporate priorities and actions with stakeholders needs (Wolfe and Putler, 2002). Achieving a proper alignment will produce a good fit between the organization and its environment, thus increasing the probability of the organizations success. According to Freeman understanding the priorities of and dealing with identifiable stakeholders - any group that can affect or is affected by, the achievement of an organizations objectives, offers strategic and cognitive efficiency advantages over conceiving of an organizations environment as being composed of innumerable individuals and institutions. This idea inadvertently stimulates the concept of stakeholders salience. Freemans definition of a stakeholder as any group of, or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organizations objectives is widely cited, but it offers an extremely wide field of possibilities as to who or what really is a stakeholder. Thus, Mitchell and Agle (1997) and Mitchell et al. (1997) suggested the need to identify stakeholders by applying sorting criteria to the field of possibilities of a stakeholder group which can be referred to as salient stakeholders. Stakeholder

salience therefore refers to the degree to which managers give priority to competing stakeholder claims on the business. According to Mitchell et al. (1997) extant theories suggest that salient stakeholders are more likely to receive firms attention. The objective of stakeholder salience is to develop an efficient stakeholder management strategy that would harmonize the needs of salient stakeholders with that of the objective of the organization in order to optimize social good to society and benefit to the firm (Mattingly, 2004). It is arguable therefore, that this approach would involve a multiple subjective decision criteria which require complex analytical strategy that would help optimize decisions about efficient management of stakeholder groups. Stakeholder salience is the idea that managers of corporate organisations approach the issue of stakeholder from the point of view of comparative cost advantage in which emphasis and attention is given to those stakeholders that are strategically salient for achieving overall corporate survival. From this point of view, there is an emerging challenge with respect to how to manage competing stakeholders interest (Ansoff, 1984). Review of extant literature indicates that related studies in this area have been limited to corporations in the western world. While it can be argued that managing stakeholders have achieved some measure of progress in the developed countries, such studies are rare in developing countries particularly in Nigeria where it is feared among other concerns that firms attitude towards socially responsible actions is less than desirable due to lack of adequate managerial will by firms to perform social good, and absence of regulatory framework for enforcing socially responsible behaviour among firms. As a result of inadequacy of the legal framework, lack of the political will by government to compel firms to do more than currently obtained, inability of firms to prioritize their social responsibility effort resulting to inadequate strategic response to their salient stakeholders. Mattingly (2004) argued that recent happenings suggest that capitalist societies may be in the midst of accountability crisis. As a matter of fact such crisis has taken a worst toll on Nigeria as manifest by the crisis in the Niger Delta, for instance, which has hitherto been characterized by hostage takings, pipeline vandalization, illegal bunkering, rampant communal clashes, and a host of other sociopolitical upheavals. All of these perhaps points to the fact that firms and government are not doing enough in Nigeria or to say the least a kind of misplaced priority exists in emphasis on relevant stakeholders corporate social action. There is the need to urgently reverse the trend. Problem analysis A major question this study seeks to answer is; how can top executive learn more about the value of prevailing

Table 1. AHP values for respondent one for economic stakeholder group

Legitimacy Power Urgency

Legitimacy 1 1/7

Power 2 1 1/6

Urgency 7 6 1

Table 2. AHP values for respondent one for socio-cultural stakeholder group

Legitimacy Power Urgency

Legitimacy 1 1/9

Power 2 1 1/7

Urgency 9 7 1

economic, socio-cultural and political attributes in determining stakeholder salience in order to identify and adopt more effective strategic response to the needs of salient stakeholder groups in Nigeria? It appears there is an emerging general consensus in literature that corporations have obligations to constituent groups in the society other than stockholders; and beyond what the law prescribed. According to Harrison and Freeman (1999), heightened ethical sensitivity, increasing competition and the surveillance of the media have combined to create difficult management situation which require firms to respond to at least their salient stakeholder. To what extent does corporate organization in Nigeria meet these criteria? The assumption here is that corporations have obligations to constituent groups in the society other than the stockholders and beyond that prescribed by the law or union contract. The study also assert that there are numerous other stakeholders to the firms in Nigeria for which these companies have either neglected their interests or have not actually measured up in the extent to which their interests are satisfied. Also, the criteria for determining allocation of resources to alternative stakeholder constituencies have either been essentially non-existent, lopsided, or subjective (Fourie and Morris, 1987). The problem, it is reckoned, could be the absence of suitable quantitative decision making measures for prioritizing these criteria. Furthermore, social responsibility issues are value laden and susceptible to particular ideological and emotional interpretation. More importantly there is the widespread belief that businesses are merely pursuing short term profit with little or no consideration given to the wider social and environmental needs (Brice and Wenger, 1989). However, there is no unanimous agreement in the literature on what constitutes or what factor should be taken into consideration when executing social responsibility programs. Studies have indicated that socio-politico-cultural pressures emanating from a firms operating environment can oftentimes help to

explain a firms actions, whilst others have indicated a link between executive scanning of the economic, sociocultural and political environment and the overall performance of the firm. Scanty research efforts exists with respect to objective determination of the relative importance, ranking and ordering of forces and factors within the socio-politico-economic and cultural environments that top executive puts into consideration when determining their stakeholders salience. To this end, corporate executives in their strategic response to their salient stakeholders may be described as performing less than optimal socially responsible actions for the relevant stakeholder groups of the firm. As an alternative to the traditional neoclassical economic theory, Brenner and Cochran (1990; 1991) proposed a theory of the firm based on stakeholders concepts which is aimed at maximizing firms strategic response to stakeholder through a comparison of multiple values and multiple choice processes. In Nigeria as in many other nations of the world a dirge of inadequate response by firms to stakeholders needs exist. Most firms motivated by need to make the best choice the relative importance of the strategic policy guidelines for selecting salient stakeholders must be carefully gauged or objectively evaluated. Purpose of the study A useful technique for achieving this aim is the AHP. In its basic form the analytic hierarchy process is a multidimensional decision making tool which provides a ranking of alternatives that is by constructing a preference as well as importance weights of the attributes and sub attributes that could be used to select a decision priority (Saaty, 1988, 1990) such as salient stakeholders. The analytic hierarchy process involves three basic elements: i. Describing a complex multi attribute problem as

Table 3. AHP values for respondent one for political stakeholder group

Legitimacy Power Urgency

Legitimacy 1 2 1/8

Power 1/2 1 1/9

Urgency 8 9 1

hierarchy; ii. Estimating the relative weights for importance (or preference, influence, likelihood, etc.) of various criteria (or sub criteria, decision makers, alternatives, state of nature, etc.) on each level of the hierarchy; iii. Integrating the relative weights to develop an evaluation of the hierarchy with respect to the overall objectives of the problem. The basic assumption of the AHP is the fact that hierarchies are basic to human way of breaking down realities into levels or categories. There are reasons to suggest that differences exist amongst indigenous and multinational firms in Nigeria with respect to choice of multiple values in their strategic response to salient stakeholders for which there is no reliable empirical data; hence a need to fill the gap. This study in addition to establishing the relevance of AHP to multiple value decisions in corporate governance aims at filling the gap in prioritizing multiple stakeholders for social responsibility effort. In order to validate the conceptual framework for the study, the following research hypothesis is proposed for the study. Attributes of the economic, socio-cultural and political environment among selected firms in Nigeria will significantly predict their stakeholder salience.

Population The population of study include randomly selected large multinational and indigenous corporation who are quoted on the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE). The objective is to obtain responses from all relevant actors and personnel particularly with respect to their roles in the corporate social responsibility to identify for their respective organization. The respondents are made up of and limited to lower and middle level cadre employees in the community/government relations department, corporate services divisions, labour relations managers and consists of the employees, consumers and the general public units of these organisations. Participants and Setting The study participants include corporate affairs personnel in the corporate affairs divisions of both indigenous and multinational firms were randomly identified and sampled for the study using the snowballing approach. Using the snowball approach, sampled organizations were selected by quota from various sectors of the economy and their corporate affairs officers were targeted accordingly. On the whole 125 companies participated in the study. The respective sampling frame for the study includes employees of the corporate affairs offices. There is need to point out here that the various units handling corporate affair functions were given different organizational nomenclature in the different organisations that were included in the study. The researcher recognizes these differences in assigning questionnaires to the respective organization for responses. Participants include only corporate affairs employees from both lower and middle management levels in the organisations of study. The choice of corporate employees is informed by, first, the fact that only these categories of employees are very knowledgeable about corporate social responsibility efforts of their respective organization. Secondly, they are essentially responsible for implementation of the policies with respect to stakeholders from time to time. Thirdly, they constitute the operational staffs that have direct working relationship with the company stakeholders in their respective corporate social responsibility areas. It is believed that accurate account of their perception of organizational response to stakeholders would be more useful in gaining an insight into factors that could determine their relationship (recognition of, attitude to, and responsibilities to salient stakeholders) with their companies. Top management are excluded based on the fact that they essentially represent the policy formulation and decision making organ (employer) of the organisation with respect to stakeholders. As such the study considers their view may not be as valid as that of the actual operators of the policy they have passed down. Thus, they are not included in the sampling frame.

METHODOLOGY The methodology adopted for the study is enumerated here, and also the design of the study, characteristics of the population, the sample size and sampling procedure, description of the instrument used for the data collection and the analytical procedure employed are clearly outlined.

Design The study design is cross sectional and survey questionnaire, designed to tap key constructs of the study was used to collect the relevant data from participants. Also, the weight estimates of stakeholder salience in the form of 3 x 3 matrixes for the respondents were generated for adoption into the AHP using the expert choice analytical tool. The study constructs are naturally occurring concepts, in other words no effort is made to neither manipulate nor control for any variable in the study. Survey questionnaire consisting of measures of these study constructs included on a 5 point Likert type scales were constructed and validated from a pilot study was administered physically and through electronic mail to corporate/public affairs officers of the sampled companies.

Study instrument The study employ survey questionnaire specifically designed for the purpose of teasing out participant perception of social responsibility efforts of their organizations in three domains of interest; sociocultural, economic, and political-legal environments of the

organization. Carroll (1979), sample checklist of responsibility was adapted into test questions. Questions were constructed based on the researches familiarity with the attributes of the social, economic, political, cultural and legal attributes of a firms general environment which can be use to predict corporate affairs officer judgement of their relevant stakeholder salience. In addition their ratings on the stakeholder salience were obtained using three criteria for stakeholder salience; power of stakeholder, urgency of required corporate action and legitimacy of stakeholders claim were employed to construct evaluation matrix for the criterion variable of interest. Procedure The study was conducted in two stages, the pilot study, and the main study. The pilot is an exploratory approach using the interview technique to investigate key problems and issues surrounding the corporate social responsibility and stakeholders salience and to validate the scales that were finally included in the main study. The main study entails survey of the study population using the snowballing technique. Convenient sampling was then used to select the participants for the study after approval has been obtained from relevant authorities for the purpose. The objective is to capture the appropriate segment of the population in a manner that would justify participants inclusion criteria and external validity. Questionnaires were distributed to participants for the study using multistage and snowballing sampling techniques to select the particular organisations. Using the snowballing approach responses were drawn from several multinational and indigenous companies. A total of 245 respondents were obtained and 225 were considered usable for analysis. Statistical analysis The study employs a methodology for estimating the weights in form of subjective value matrix for the companys approach to their respective stakeholder. The resulting data was fed into the statistical analysis tool called expert choice. The expert choice statistical tool is a robust multi-parameters decision making optimisation process which accepts subjective rankings of preference responses for decision integration. In particular the statistical tool makes use of AHP. The AHP is a utility-generation technique which was developed by Saaty (1980) to provide a systematic means to quantify decision makers perception in situations involving primarily qualitative criteria. Decision making with respect to stakeholders salience typically follows a complex procedures in which diverse stakeholder groups are treated with socially responsible actions in difference subjective manners in order to arrive at a decision which meets a predetermined objective. AHP seeks to translate subjective value judgements of corporate affairs officers into quantitative measures that can be used to optimize decisions on salient stakeholders in other to achieve the best corporate social responsibility objectives using the least possible cost requirements. See Uzoka (2006) for a review of the algorithm steps of the AHP.

sectors. The study sample is made up of 144 (63%) males and 81 females; (80%) Christians and 40 (18%) were Muslims, 200 (93%) of the respondents lie within age range of 25 40 years. Specifically, the demographic dimensions of designation and status were also surveyed. Participants range from corporate affair managers, officers, supervisors, company secretary, senior brand manager, project director, business monitoring analyst etc. The mean and standard deviation for the three stakeholders constituencies were obtained. The AHP deals with dependence among variables or clusters of a decision structure to combine statistical and judgemental information. The evaluation process involves criteria which are related to one another in a hierarchical form. The data generated from the study questionnaire in the form of trade-off matrix of responses obtained from the corporate social responsibility manager and supervisors and allied designations. The matrix was formulated by arranging various stakeholders from each of the three stakeholder constituencies along the three salience criteria on a scale of 0 9 in a hierarchical order with the overall goal of stakeholder salience. The resulting matrix were thus fed into the computer and analysed using the AHP software of the expert choice. Measurement of preferences involves a pairwise comparison of evaluation variables, which are rated on the relative strength of importance of an item on one variable over another, represented on an absolute scale. Comparison is done from the top level of the hierarchy to the bottom level (three levels) in order to establish the overall priority index. The sum of AHP values for the total number of the study sample were obtained in similar manner. Level one analysis The pairwise comparison matrices for level one criterion for the three stakeholder constituencies are as shown in Table 4. The AHP deals with dependence among variables or clusters of a decision structure to combine statistical and judgemental information. The evaluation process involves criteria which are related to one another in a hierarchical form. The data generated from the study questionnaire in the form of trade-off matrix of responses obtained from the corporate social responsibility manager and supervisors and allied functions. With zero missing judgments

RESULT AND ANALYSIS Demographic description of participants in the study A total of 225 participants were involved in the study. Participants cut across organizations from major sectors of the Nigerian economy namely; oil and gas, financial institutions, telecommunication and manufacturing In the same manner the relative importance of the each stakeholder salience along the three criteria can be evaluated. Table 5 is the summary of the utility values for the salience criteria for each of the stakeholder constituency economic, socio-cultural and political, as well as the aggregate. For each constituency the utility values sum up to unity. Result indicates that for the

Table 4. Goal: stakeholder salience.

Economic Socio-cultural Political

Economic 1 1 2

Socio-cultural 1 1 2

Political 1

Tables 5. Priorities for economic, socio-cultural and political stakeholders salience, the three salience contingencies.

Stakeholder Salience 1 2 3 Legitimacy Power Urgency Inconsistency

Economic Weight .582 .348 .070 0.03

Socio-cultural Weight .597 .346 .057 0.02

Political Weight .357 .589 .054 0.04

Tables 6. Priorities for economic, socio-cultural, and political stakeholders salience, the three salience contingencies.

Stakeholder Salience 1 2 3 Legitimacy Power Urgency Inconsistency

Economic Weight .582 .367 .051 0.03

Socio-cultural Weight .582 .367 .051 0.05

Political Weight .796 .125 .079 0.05

economic stakeholder constituency corporate organization, respondents perceived that economic issues are viewed as salient priorities and within the salient economic stakeholders (.582), power of the stakeholder (.348) also determine the priority for socially responsible action. Similar results was obtained for the socio-cultural factors, however, the political constituencies show slight variation in the priority and utility values (.597). Also, the power of the political stakeholder (.589) determines the extent to which corporate organizations consider the political stakeholders constituency as salient. The inconsistency index measures the degree of inconsistency in the judgement of the respondents with respect to the data for stakeholder salience in the respective stakeholder constituencies. The value of inconsistency index for economic (.003), socio-cultural (.002) and political stakeholders (.004) are within the acceptable range of (0.10) or less, indicating that the results generated are reliable in terms of the sample data obtained Level two analysis The pairwise comparison matrices for level two criteria for

the three stakeholder constituencies are as shown in Table 6. The second stage of the AHP analysis performed for this study establishes the relative importance of the stakeholder constituencies to be given support. The survey data was aggregated for each of the stakeholder constituencies. With zero missing judgments Result reveals synthesis of the computation of the eigenvalues and the eigenvector. This synthesis when multiplied by 100 yields the percentage of relative priorities expressed in a linear form to give the eigenvector. The implication of the eigenvector is that it expresses the relative importance of one attribute over another in the judgements made by respondents. Level three analysis The pairwise comparison matrices for level three criteria for the three stakeholder constituencies are as shown in Table 7. The third stage of the AHP analysis performed for this study establishes the relative importance of the stakeholder constituencies to be given support. The

Tables 7. Priorities for economic, socio-cultural, and political stakeholders salience, the three salience contingencies.

Stakeholder Salience 1 2 3 Legitimacy Power Urgency Inconsistency

Economic Weight .606 .333 .06. 0.01

Socio-cultural Weight .309 .582 .109 0.00

Political Weight .342 .577 .081 0.03

Table 8. Priorities for aggregate stakeholders salience the three salience contingencies.

Stakeholder 1 2 3 Economic Socio-cultural Political Inconsistency

Level 1 Weight .250 .250 .500 0.00

Level 2 Weight .143 .286 .571 0.00

Level 3 Weight .400 .200 .400 0.00

Table 9. Alternative priorities for the three salience contingencies.

Stakeholder Salience 1 2 3 Legitimacy Power Urgency

Level 1 Weight .4731114000 .4681515000 .0587371500

Level 2 Weight .6875378000 .2474980000 .0649641800

Level 3 Weight .4378635000 .4830618000 .0790747000

survey data was aggregated for each of the stakeholder constituencies and the result reveals: With zero missing judgments Following the synthesis is the rating of the stakeholder salience based on each stakeholder constituencies. The sum of these is derived as basis for ranking stakeholder salience. The aggregate of the three salience dimensions were also obtained for the three stakeholder constituencies. The result obtained is quite revealing corporate social responsibility actions for socio-cultural (.250) and economic (.250) constituencies at the first level of synthesis appears much lower (half) the priority accorded political constituencies (.500). These results suggest that corporate social responsibility (CSR) action amongst corporate organizations in Nigeria has significant political undertone than economic and sociocultural considerations. With zero missing judgments As shown in Table 8 alternative priorities for the three dimensions of salience is higher for legitimacy (.47311)

and power (.46815) whereas it is low (.05874) for urgency. This implies that, corporate organizations in Nigeria tend to place moderate emphasis on stakeholders legitimacy and power but not on urgency. DISCUSSIONS The study set out to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field of corporate governance, in particular, top management attitude towards corporate social responsibility in Nigeria. The study approached this issue purely from salient stakeholder viewpoint. Specifically, it investigated the extent to which corporate affairs personnel perceived factors in the economic, socio-cultural and political stakeholder groups as determining stakeholder salience among selected corporate organizations in Nigeria. The concept of stakeholder is deceptively simple in the sense that it is quite easy to identify individuals and groups that are affected by or affect corporate action and achievement of an organization purpose and objectives. However, in terms of managing relationship with them, it is quite complex. The result of the analysis, on the aggregate,

ranked political motive higher than economic and sociocultural motives respectively in terms of power dimension. It also ranked legitimacy attribute of salience high for economic stakeholder group. Overall, the analyses ranked urgency least for the three stakeholder groups. By implication, managers do not consider themselves under undue pressure to attend to corporate social responsibility except for those issues that are politically imperative. From the above it follows that this study tilts more in favour of political, economic and scoiocultural stakeholder constituencies in order of importance. These finding suggests that stakeholders in the political constituencies tend to enforce corporate organization compliance with corporate social responsibility in the political domain. Or, that organization tends to respond better in the political constituency for fear of being sanctioned. For instance, the regime of Governor Raji Fashola of Lagos State stepped up campaign for corporate tax increase by firms operating in Lagos. The truth is that manager tends to perform desirable social responsibility to avoid sanction. A similar incidence is the subtle lure of corporate organization in Nigeria to donate to the presidential library and police equipment fund under Obasanjo regime. These are pointers to the fact that corporate organization investment on corporate social action by firms in Nigeria is not immune to political influence and as such cannot be free from subjective attribution of stakeholder salience. Thus, the high priority in the power and legitimacy dimension of salience in this study is not unlikely to be a response to the need to avoid sanction or being stigmatized by stakeholders in the political constituency. In sum, firms response to stakeholders in Nigeria may be generally described as less than desirable, at least from the viewpoint of priority given to the stakeholder groups. Therefore, there is need for concerted effort improve upon the present conditions and practices among companies in Nigeria. The effort to legalize and regulate firms response to specific stakeholders group is receiving attention through the establishment of a commission that will be charged with providing standards, integration of social responsibility activities, research and investigation of the needs of stakeholder groups, and rankings of organizations. Also, the result of the analysis reveals higher priority values for legitimacy and power criterion. This result lends credence to the argument about whether managers can successfully balance the competing demands among stakeholders. In practice managers do pay attention certain kinds of stakeholders in order to achieve certain ends or because of perceptual factors (Frooman, 1999). A good knowledge of what types of stakeholders actually exist and why managers respond to them the way they do will specify how and under what circumstances managers can and should respond to various stakeholder types. Nevertheless, the need to make objective decisions in prioritizing and optimize corporate social

responsibility could not be overemphasized. Conclusion There are many incidence of companies disregarding their stakeholders interests either out of the belief that the stakeholder is wrong or out of arrogance reflected that one unhappy customer, employees, or regulator does not matter (Post et al., 1999). Such attitude will often proof costly to the company involved. In Nigeria the 1990s witnessed an era in which corporate social responsibility agenda focused essentially on corporate self regulation and voluntary initiatives. An approach that relied solely on corporate actions geared towards making greater investment priority that will achieve greater returns to the organization. However, finding of this study suggest that nothing much has changed; corporate organizations in Nigeria to a large extent still place greater emphasis and reliance on the practices of the 1990s. The quantitative analysis of emphasis on different stakeholder groups had a viable potential and revealing that Nigeria managers in many companies are involved in corporate social responsibility activities that relate only to the values and cultures of their companies at the expense of other areas. Currently the voluntary nature of corporate social responsibility in Nigeria seems to be at the philanthropic level. Such attitude is devoid of strategic approach to embrace comprehensively relevant stakeholders interest. In other words, most corporate organizations in Nigeria do not only engage in a narrow scope of stakeholder definition, they probably spend/invest lesser than what they ought to invest in socially desirable activities. Business cannot be done in a social and political vacuum and good management must take into account and prioritize the web of stakeholder considerations. Limitation of study This study tends to overlook the specific generic stakeholder differentiation as well as the possibility of heterogeneity of interest within stakeholder groups. This also leads to implicit assumption that members within a stakeholder group share homogenous priorities with respect to a focal organization, whereas, the contrary may hold true. For instance no distinction was made between employees - union association as well as suppliers who are both categorized within economic stakeholder constituencies. Further, due to the difficulty of obtaining data from corporate organization on the actual expenditure made on corporate social responsibility, the study relied on self reported estimate of importance or priority placed on social responsibility actions and investments, rather than actual naira/dollar investment made in each of the three stakeholder groups

considered. Future studies should explore avenue for such historical data.
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