Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in transnational spaces: an institutionalist deconstruction of MNC's CSR practices in the Nigerian oil and gas sector

Drawing from the varieties of capitalism theoretical framework, the study explores the home country influences of MNCs on their CSR practices when they operate outside their national/regional institutional contexts. The study focuses on a particular CSR practice (i.e. corporate code of conducts) of seven MNCs from Europe (4) and the USA (3) operating in the oil and gas sector of the Nigerian economy. The study concludes that the corporate codes of conduct of these MNCs operating in Nigeria, to a large extent, reflect the characteristics of their home countries model of capitalism, respectively. The home countries model of capitalism is also found to have implications for the degree of adaptability of these MNCs CSR practices to the Nigerian institutional context. It is anticipated that the study will contribute to the emerging literature on the institutional embeddedness of CSR practices in trans-national spaces and that of CSR in developing economies.