Factors influencing discretionary ICT corporate social responsibility decisions made by financial services organisations

Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) promotes the use of technology in development. Business organisations are realising that ICT solutions can be used to solve certain developmental issues and businesses are deciding to invest into these kinds of technology solutions as part of its Corporate social responsibility (CSR). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this intersection of these two concepts (ICT4D and CSR) by identifying the factors that influence ICT4D CSR decisions made by South African financial services organisations. This evaluation is performed by interviewing representatives of financial services organisations that participate in CSR projects as well as by analysing corporate websites and documentation on these organisations’ CSR strategy and activities to identify major factors that influence ICT CSR decisions. These factors when grouped into categories highlight that businesses are searching for the projects that align with the business organisation’s corporate strategy, projects that make use of solutions that the business consider the most appropriate and projects where businesses can partner with the correct partner. This research paper proposes a new theoretical framework that combines elements of the Strategic IT decision making (SITDM) model with the Technological organisational and environmental (TOE) model with which to identify the factors that influence ICT CSR projects.