Social Contract: A Factor for Organization and Local Community Relation

Abstract

Organization/community relation continues to gain attention much as people continue to have more awareness of their environment. As well, how to achieve sustained organization/community relation has become an exigent issue to business leaders and policy makers. The objective of the study is to ascertain if social contract has association with the relation of organization and her local community. The independent variable is social contract and the dependent; sustained relation. The study was conducted in Port Harcourt, Rivers State of Nigeria. All the staff of Ciscon Nigeria Limited and all the indigenes of Rumuorianwo community in Rumuokwurusi town, Rivers State, formed the population of study. This study adopted a cross-sectional design. 80 indigenes of the community were systematically selected, whereas, 40 staff of the organization were randomly chosen, to form the sample size. The 4 points likert’s (ordinal) type of scale which was anchored on the continuum of: Strongly agree, to strongly disagree was used to measure respondents’ opinion in the study. Data were collected, organized, presented and analyzed. Formulated hypothesis was tested using Z-test. The result of the study supported the posited hypothesis. Findings indicate that there is association between social contract and relation of organization and her local community. This study recommends that organizations and local communities should work toward maintenance of the union agreement which brought them into being. This is to enable them achieve sustained relation, because to function well, each needs the other.

Keywords: Social contract, Local community, Obligation, Consideration, Offeree, Offeror, Contractarianism.