University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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followed by lack of resources and expertise (27%) and scarce
knowledge of the instruments (25%), elements always closely
linked to educational and informational factors. From these
indications, therefore, emerge the need of developing methods
capable of supporting SMEs to overcome these difficulties,
with a commitment to the spread of a new managerial culture
among the SMEs themselves.
• On different ways to support the adoption of CSR tools for
SMEs operating in clusters that could be developed, there has
been a particular focus on the issue of administrative and/or
normative simplifying (24%), and towards the development of
"cluster" tools (27%) in support of corporate actions and
interventions, in a framework of cooperation and sharing of
experiences and approaches. Again, therefore, the definition of
collective instruments seems to be a major road, alongside of
initiatives to public decision makers that enable SMEs to
receive short-term benefits related to the development of
certain instruments. Just local institutions (with 34% of the
vote) are identified by the stakeholders who participated in the
initiative as those who should do more to support SMEs at the
cluster level in the development of CSR practices, followed by
associations (20%). The firm representatives gave these strong
indications.
Moving Towards a "Formalised Cluster Approach to CSR"?
This paper, relying on the experience of the aforementioned research, aims at
showing that the proposed cluster approach enables to achieve sustainability
objectives and CSR-related tools adoption by SMEs, thanks to the set up of specific
“collective” tools such as: local multi-stakeholder working groups, communication
tools to disseminate know-how and best practices, operational models (procedures,
for instance) and guidelines to support organizations towards CSR, audits at the local
level, etc. This approach is based on a methodology according to which the CSR
tools are developed by a local productive system as a whole and not simply by the
enterprises it is made up of; in other terms, we can say that the traditional approach
to CSR at the local level among SMEs proposes the promotion of sustainability
management “within” the productive system, while our “cluster” approach promotes
CSR “by” the productive system.
The experience of the COOPERATE project showed that the results of the proposed
cluster approach are strictly connected with the above described characteristics of
the cluster “relational environment”, and first of all with a number of synergies that
can be obtained at the management and technological level to promote the inclusion
and diffusion of innovative elements based on the partnership between the different
firms operating within a cluster. More in detail, some results of a “cluster approach”
can be identified with reference to different levels of analysis: the macro one,
connected with the relations outside the cluster; the meso one, referred to the