An Outlook on corporate social responsiblity in small medium entreprises
In order to fully understand corporate social responsibility within a small – medium size entreprise (SMEs) it is essential to provide some general context. Firstly, SMEs are generally managed by their owners, who in many cases are actually the founders of the organization. The reason why I mention this at the start is that it can actually lead to subtle differences in the engagement of the company main purpose. I believe that this underlines the SMEs main competitive advantage as the close involvement between owners – founders with their employees together with the relatively small number of staff members means that they are able to execute the commitment to their purpose and take important decisions in a quicker and easier manner than large corporation. Further along these lines, SMEs have the advantage of being smaller but also very dynamique, where personal relationship are often the key to their success ! In other words, the term « family » is often used to refer to the relationship between employees and their management in a SME context.
We have seen that SMEs differ substantially than MNEs in terms of organizational principles, characteristics and behavioral. However it is crucial to highlight that SMEs play a major role in the world economy and contribute to a large extent in terms of input, output and employment. Put in another way, they represent the core of the economy.
Reflecting back on this and according to certain of the literatures, these organizational characteristics actually creates a favorable environment for SMEs to promote and implement CSR related initiatives but at the end of the day I believe it comes down to the manager’s individual values. We can quote « the manager’s personal values or ethical orientation and level of morality play a major role in determining his level of commitment to the implementation of social responsibility programs in the enterprise”. (Hsu & Cheng, 2011)
To the contrary, they may face certain challenges compared to larger enterprises with regards to their financial resources (World Bank 2005). This may discourage them to invest in various CSR initiatives. Time constraint may also affect their commitment to CSR action, as they may be more preoccupied with their daily enterprises bigger issues. Additionally to some extent smaller enterprises may have limited knowledge about the advantages of implementing corporate social responsibility within their business model however this was relevant a few years back. Nowadays, we have seen a real change in the business world, where social businesses that are a cause driven business have gained in momentum and are changing the companies do business.
Edouard Leonet
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20 Mar 2016
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ledouard
IMSD /
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