University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

Features of CSR in SMEs
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CSR was originally developed for large enterprises. Thus, applying the notion to
SMEs in a consistent requires considering all of the three components of CSR
(Jenkins 2004: 39).
As a rule, „corporate“ refers to large-scale enterprises featuring characteristics not
typical of SMEs (like stockholders or a wide stakeholder spectrum). Even initiatives
directed at SMEs focusing at implementing CSR in SMEs fall short of their goal if
and when they are driven by experiences from large-scale enterprises.
„Social“ implies a relationship between enterprise and society (Swanson 1995: 54)
that within SMEs is usually limited to the place or region where it is located – even if
they serve international markets. CSR can help enterprises enhance their reputation
whenever they attend to local or regional societal or social issues. There is, however,
no close relationship between SMEs and their regional environment if e.g. they are
located in industrial areas and lack public perception (Spence 1999: 168).
The term “responsibility” initially also relates to multinational corporations’
benefiting from the power society concedes to them in a responsible way (Wood
1991: 694 et seq.). The implications of their misconduct can affect the economies of
whole countries, as the consequences of the collapses of major American banks
currently prove. Eventually the influence of large-scale enterprises can be considered
greater and with respect to ecological innovations more important than that of SMEs.
Thus it must be questioned whether the influences of CSR as to stakeholders,
employee motivation, risk factors, reputation, customer behaviour, and eventually the
financial performance of SME equal those of large enterprises (Jenkins 2004: 43 et
seq.). Quite often SMEs are family businesses with loyalty, commitment and
involvement being stressed much more than in large enterprises (Vallejo 2008: 273):
Quite usually even the level of participation is higher, which is a consequence of the
central personality of the owner-manager, the entrepreneur. Due to the close
relationship between him or her and his or her employees there will always be a close
connection between his or her personal motives and the ethical conduct of the
enterprise (Fuller & Tian 2006: 287).
Altogether these factors effectuate socially responsible enterprise conduct without
the implementation of specific CSR efforts. Then again managers in SMEs are
usually responsible of more than one business domain. This implies that SME
manager can address less time and less commitment to matters beyond day-to-daybusiness
(Spence 1999: 167, Tilley 2000: 35). Furthermore the entrepreneur usually
does not dispose of much formal management know-how and applies intuition
instead of common management tools. Eventually managers in SME s are rather
sceptical about self-regimentation, quite disrelish things they think are bureaucratic
and react reluctantly to influences arising from outside their enterprise (e.g. from
NGOs) (Dex & Scheibl 2001: 420). Thus it proves difficult to implement CSR as a
voluntary concept, which in addition and from their point of view does not appear to
be a definite part of an enterprise’s strategy system and cannot be measured distinctly
(Mendibil et al. 2007: 6).