University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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are mostly tailor made for large companies. There is no systematic structure in CSR
that companies can follow. Meanwhile, all of the above studies focus on developed
countries and mostly based on generic surveys. The effective samples of the survey
conducted by Cochius (2006) are too small in numbers. Some questions only receive
four replies. There is a lack of statistical empirical study exploring the correlation
between motivations and CSR implementations.
When facing an increasingly difficult market competition and business environment
as well as a need to maintain trust and satisfaction from the public, SMEs are
expected to respond better to the expectations for CSR in order to upgrade company
profiles and create sustainable niches. The lists of CSR tasks and solutions
mentioned in literature include the development and training of employees,
enhancement of work motivations of employees, protection of health and safety of
employees, provision of equal opportunities to the physically or mentally challenged,
new immigrants and women, reduction of impacts and pollutions to the environment,
submission of environmental reports, moral persuasion to suppliers or downstream
players, suspension of dealing with companies not legally compliant, offering safe
and high-quality products and comprehensive product information, handling of
customers’ complaints, offering fair prices to support local campaigns in culture,
sport, safety or social welfare, donations to charities, and participation of volunteer
workers. Cochius (2006) provided a detailed classification of CSR items and tasks
for SMEs in the Netherlands, and extracted the CSR activities and initiatives in the
questionnaire with factor analysis, in order to ensure the reliability of the
questionnaire. Many researches indicated that the motivations for CSR
implementations include long-term interests, short-term interests, enhancement of
competitive advantages, improvement of corporate image or reputation, cost
reduction and efficiency upgrade, recruitment of valuable employees, consistency
with social needs, compliance with government regulations to avoid breaking the law,
compliance with customers’ needs, pressure from shareholders, pressure from supply
chains, pressure from communities, pressure from NGOs and moral reasons. Table 1
summarizes the factors influencing for CSR initiatives based on literature review.
In this section, the theory of innovations and diffusion will be adopted to construct
the perceptions of factors affecting CSR implementing model. The theory of
diffusion of innovations is first proposed by Rogers (1962), who defined the
diffusion of innovations as a procedure to deliver a new concept through specific
channels over time to the members of a social system. This is a unique
communication format, with a focus on the distribution of new concepts (Rogers,
1983). Rogers (1962) first defined innovations as the adoption of new concepts,
techniques or objects by individuals or organizations. Bradford and Kent (1977)
defined innovations as the successful introduction of new concepts to the internal of
a social organization. As long as the region or social organization concerned believes
that the concept is, in essence, new, it can be qualify as an innovation. According to
this definition, the innovation recognized by the region or social organization in
question may have appeared or existed in other forms in other places. However, as
long as the concept is new for the companies that decide to adopt CSR policies, CSR
can be regarded as an innovative management concept for management decisions.
Therefore, this paper suggests that it is a reasonable approach to apply the idea of
diffusion of innovations as the conceptual foundation for the research.