CSR and Competitiveness European SMEs - KMU Forschung Austria

52 CSR and Competitiveness - European SMEs’ Good Practice - Consolidated European Report
be fully co-ordinated, and a certain degree of intransparency (among these actors, but more
important, towards the envisaged target group) can be pinpointed. Furthermore, at least as far
as public authorities are concerned it is not always completely obvious what they themselves
are doing to operationally implement CSR in their (daily) routines.
At micro level it becomes obvious that companies, and SMEs in particular, are not familiar with
the concept of CSR, even if they are already active in this field and willing to continue their
measures. CSR as such is something “intangible” for them, and they can hardly identify with
and commit to this concept as such. Furthermore, the problem arises that CSR is always related
to an investment in any kind and, therefore, is a burden for a market oriented business entity,
particularly if it disposes only of limited resources. This “mental trap” is even enforced by the
fact that many SMEs are not aware on the potential positive effects of CSR on their economic
performance as they do hardly ever apply any cost-efficiency monitoring and are not informed
about other “Good Practices” illustrating these advantages.
Based on these considerations, the following fields of action can be pinpointed:
• (Public) initiatives to familiarise the general public and enterprises (with a specific
focus on SMEs) with CSR need to be continued or even enforced. CSR issues should
be addressed in a regular, interdisciplinary manner (which might also include the
dissemination of the results/outcome of different initiatives, programmes or research
projects) which is also supposed to result in a high level of general awareness (pinpointing
also the important role of mass media). This is important in order to also
sensitise the end consumers for ethically correct business behaviour as otherwise they
will most probably prefer the cheapest products/services available which in most of the
cases cannot be the ones produced by applying CSR.
• (Public) initiatives should be based on concrete, explicitly mentioned strategic goals.
These goals should be generally agreed upon by the major actors and monitored on a
continuous basis. Furthermore, their individual activities should be co-ordinated (i.e.
co-operative fulfilment of tasks, realisation of synergy effects etc).
• Concerning the design of individual (public) initiatives the specific characteristics of
SMEs need to be kept in mind. So, for example, governmental subsidies for staff
training should not be granted only above a certain threshold in absolute terms, or
eligibility criteria of support instruments should be oriented on SMEs.
• (Public) authorities should themselves adopt CSR activities (e.g. gender equality at
work (particularly at higher positions), environmental responsible acting etc) to act as a
role model for the private sector.
• Furthermore, particularly governments could set incentives to make SMEs deal with
CSR. These may range from considering ethically correct behaviour in tendering
procedures 54 to (financially) support the implementation of CSR activities in the enterprise
(including, for example, tax deductions for donations, providing information on
available award programmes favouring the enterprises’ publicity or actively advise them
which activities could be taken).
• Very important seems to be to find ways and possibilities to approach SMEs in a way
that “cures” them from their sceptical attitude towards the concept of CSR. Due to their
underlying principal willingness to behave ethically correct there would be a potential for
increased involvement of SMEs in CSR. Such may, on the one hand, be reached by
using a “better suited terminology” which is, however, rather difficult having in mind the
vague character of CSR as such. Consequently, it may be advantageous to base
communications on illustrative company case studies showing that also the smallest
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If, however, CSR becomes an obligatory precondition for being selected the question arises in how far the claim to
CSR as being a voluntary business action can still be fulfilled.