Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility and Performance of Textile Industry in Eldoret Town, Kenya

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to find out the influence of strategic corporate social responsibility on performance of textile industry in Eldoret Town. The study specifically centered on establishing the influence environmental responsibility, ethical responsibility, economic responsibility and philanthropic responsibility on performance of textile industry in Eldoret Town. The study was guided by the Stakeholder Theory, Resource-Based Theory, Legitimacy Theory and Institutional Theory. Methodology: A descriptive research design was employed in the study. The target population for this study consisted of 10 textile firms operating in Eldoret town. The unit of observation comprised of employees from occupying managerial positions in the respective firms. A total of 90 respondents were targeted in the study. The researcher used questionnaires to collect primary data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the collected data. SPSS statistical software was utilized in generating the statistics. Findings: The results of the study were displayed in form of tables and figure. The study established that environmental responsibility, ethical responsibility and economic responsibility bears a positive and significant influence on performance of textile industry in Eldoret Town. This is shown by beta values of 0.395, 0.316 and 0.246 and significance values of 0.000, 0.005 and 0.018 respectively. The results implies that increasing either of the independent variables with one unit increases the performance of textile industry in Eldoret Town with the respective beta unit.  The study also revealed that philanthropic responsibility bears a positive but insignificant influence on performance of textile industry in Eldoret Town. This implies that enhancing philanthropic responsibility in the operations of textile industry results to insignificant influence on performance. Unique Contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommended the management of the textile firms operating in Eldoret town to enhance strategic CSR comprising of environmental responsibility, ethical responsibility, and economic responsibility since the practices positively and significantly influences performance of the firms.