Harnessing impact investing: a transformative strategy for CSR in Namibia
Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town
How they used Delve
A Master of Philosophy candidate at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business used Delve to break 11 CSR manager interviews into excerpts, build codes iteratively during fieldwork, and write memos, reporting excerpt counts per participant and a code-overlap matrix in a study of impact investing as a CSR strategy in Namibia.
“Using the Delve software, the researcher initially broke down the interview transcripts into excerpts ‘slices-of-Data’ and the researcher repetitively read through all the excerpts to establish the initial codes evident in the excerpts. [...] Furthermore, memo writing was used during data analysis on Delve to capture the reflection on thoughts and ambiguities within the data, which served as analytic notes through which categories during coding could be explicated (Charmaz, 2006).”
- Field
- Corporate social responsibility and impact investing; entrepreneurship support by Namibian corporates
- Data
- Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 11 CSR managers or equivalents across 11 different Namibian organisations, run in two parts, with a published participant profile table
- Approach
- General inductive approach (Thomas, 2006) with grounded-theory technique: transcripts broken into excerpts, repeated reading to establish initial codes, excerpts of shared properties grouped into conceptual categories (Urquhart et al., 2010), coding run iteratively and simultaneously with fieldwork, and memo-writing (Charmaz, 2006) to record reflections and ambiguities; code frequency per participant and code overlap counts were tabulated
- Data types
- Interviews
Abstract
Impact investing is a powerful tool for amplifying positive social and environmental impact that Namibian companies can use as a transformative avenue to fulfil their CSR commitments. This innovative strategy empowers companies to drive positive social impact, strengthen brand equity, and foster stakeholder engagement, all while addressing critical socio-economic challenges such as inequality, unemployment, and poverty. However, the intersection between CSR and impact investments in Namibia remains unexplored. This study utilised an inductive qualitative research approach to understand the existing CSR practice with a particular focus on entrepreneurship support in Namibia. Thereafter, understanding the extent to which the participants engage in impact investing strategies for CSR spending while examining the challenges and barriers to the adoption of these strategies. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 CSR managers or equivalents across 11 different organisations in Namibia, revealing several key findings. The findings revealed national priorities as a prime driving factor for entrepreneurship development and support in CSR practice, being the third most CSR-supported area. The findings also exposed a limited understanding of impact investing in corporate Namibia despite the keen interest strongly displayed by most research participants. Additionally, the most frequently cited barriers to engaging in an impact investing strategy included the lack of bona fide and proper entrepreneurs, collaboration, and appropriate expertise within the organisation. This study contributes to impact investing and CSR in practice and theory by providing a theoretical praxis model that envisages the relationship between these constructs in practice in a meaningful way. The attempt at a praxis model outlines practical steps to effectively mobilise CSR funds towards national priorities while bridging the funding gap in the impact investing market in Namibia.
Citation
Nguvitjita Kamenjono (2025). Harnessing impact investing: a transformative strategy for CSR in Namibia. OpenUCT (University of Cape Town).