Multinational corporations (MNCs) have come under pressure to adopt private regulatory initiatives such as supplier codes of conduct in order to address poor working conditions in global supply chain factories. While a well-known literature explores drivers and outcomes of such monitoring schemes, this literature focuses mainly on large firms and has ignored the growing integration of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into global supply chains. Furthermore, the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs primarily emphasizes domestic initiatives and not (...) global challenges. Focusing on the Business for Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), this article examines the positions of private actors, who demand and supply private regulation as well as the positions of those firms, who are the targets of such schemes. As the BSCI has grown its membership, MNCs increasingly request that SMEs meet BSCI requirements in global supply chains even though compliance is a “mission impossible” for many smaller firms. As a result of this development, the private regulatory system is facing growing strain. (shrink)

The business case for social responsibility is one of the most widely studied topics in the business and society literature that focuses on large firms. This attention is understandable because large firms have an obligation to shareholders who, as commonly assumed, seek to maximize returns on their investments, in turn, pressing corporate managers to show that firms’ expenditures in social engagement would pay off. Small firms, on the other hand, rarely face such pressures, yet the BCSR logic is increasingly applied (...) to small firms as well. Our primary objective in this paper is to examine whether and how much do small firm owners’ perceptions of BCSR affect the firm’s social engagement. In finding a fine-grained answer to those questions, we consider BCSR as a two-dimensional construct consisting of tangible and intangible benefits, and also integrate the BCSR perspective with the slack resource perspective to offer a motivation-capacity lens to examine firm’s social engagement. Drawing on a multi-industry sample of 478 small firms in the US, we find that while small firm owners’ perceptions about potential tangible benefits of social engagement are not related to the firm’s social engagement, perceptions about potential intangible are positively related. Firm's financial performance is also positively related to its social engagement, but there is no interaction between potential benefits and financial performance. This study contributes to an improved understanding about small firms’ social engagement, which still remains an understudied area. Our results are in line with studies which argue that firms’ social engagement is a response to institutional factors. (shrink)

The existing analysis of heterogeneous social responsibility in small and medium enterprises has considered the effects of individual factors. However, no holistic analysis has been performed on how different factors of heterogeneity interact and how they collectively affect SR in SMEs. Here, we propose a new systemic approach—employing the social capital concept—with the aim of identifying how and why SR is built diversely in SMEs. In particular, we focus on a positive and holistic perspective that integrates the factors proposed in (...) the literature into the social capital construct. Through a case study of four Spanish SMEs, this article proposes a systemic approach to the study of heterogeneous SR in SMEs. (shrink)

Lifeboat ethics is an anomalous concept that has been applied to many different situations, such as overpopulation. In thispresentation, Lifeboat Ethics is applied to plant closings (Darlington, Amoco/Neodesha, Chrysler/Kenosha) and downsizing (BP Amoco). The power of the decision maker—not the rights of the employees—determines who will remain, who will be forced overboard, and who will be invited in.

In this article, we explore the implicit conceptions of business ethics and social responsibility of owners−managers of small and medium enterprises (SME) in Cameroon. While using a hermeneutical approach, our main objective is to clarify how Sub-Saharan African business people themselves understand and define corporate responsibility in their particular economic and political environment. Our aim is not to deliver an empirical study of business practices and management behavior in SMEs. We wish to discuss which responsibilities they themselves judge to be (...) relevant and which can legitimately be attributed to them by third parties. Secondly, we relate our findings to other empirical work on SMEs, in Africa and elsewhere. It is shown that there are similarities with the way in which SMEs in Europe interpret their responsibility, but also striking differences. Further, we relate our findings to some theoretical controversies around corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs, to questions about evaluation tools for CSR in the SME context, and to the role of CSR with respect to poverty alleviation in developing countries. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of rhetoric and rhetorical strategies that are implicit in the standalone sustainability reporting of the top 24 companies of the Fortune 500 Global. We adopt Bormann’s :396–407, 1972) SCT framework to study the rhetorical situation and how corporate sustainability reporting messages can be communicated to the audience. The SCT concepts in the sustainability reporting’s communication are subject to different types of legitimacy strategies that are used by corporations as a validity (...) and legitimacy claim in the reports. A content analysis has been conducted and structural coding schemes have been developed based on the literature. The schemes are applied to the SCT model which recognizes the symbolic convergent processes of fantasy among communicators in a Society. The study reveals that most of the sample companies communicate fantasy type and rhetorical vision in their corporate sustainability reporting. However, the disclosure or messages are different across locations and other taxonomies of the SCT framework. This study contributes to the current CSR literature about how symbolic or fantasy understandings can be interpreted by the users. It also discusses the persuasion styles that are adopted by the companies for communication purposes. This study is the theoretical extension of the SCT. Researchers may be interested in further investigating other online communication paths, such as human rights reports and director’s reports. (shrink)

Based on the findings of a qualitative empirical study of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Swiss MNCs and SMEs, we suggest that smaller firms are not necessarily less advanced in organizing CSR than large firms. Results according to theoretically derived assessment frameworks illustrate the actual implementation status of CSR in organizational practices. We propose that small firms possess several organizational characteristics that are favorable for promoting the internal implementation of CSR-related practices in core business functions, but constrain external communication and (...) reporting about CSR. In contrast, large firms possess several characteristics that are favorable for promoting external communication and reporting about CSR, but at the same time constrain internal implementation. We sketch a theoretical explanation of these differences in organizing CSR in MNCs and SMEs based on the relationship between firm size and relative organizational costs. (shrink)

The question of what drives corporate social performance has become a vital concern for many managers and researchers of large corporations. This study addresses this question by adopting a multilevel, multistakeholder, and multimethod approach to theorize and estimate the relative influence of macro, meso, and micro factors on CSP. Applying three different methods of variance decomposition analysis to an international sample of 2060 large public companies over a time span of 5 years, our results show that firm-level factors explain the (...) largest proportion of variance in aggregate CSP as well as CSP oriented toward communities, the natural environment, and employees. These results support our hypotheses according to which CSP is not primarily driven by macrolevel or mesolevel factors, except for shareholder-oriented CSP, which is relatively more influenced by country-level factors. As a whole, our findings also point to the value of subdividing CSP into its stakeholder-specific components as this disaggregation allows for a more careful examination of distinct drivers of distinct aspects of CSP. (shrink)

Many scholars have investigated the direct impact of entrepreneurial orientation on performance, but this direct association seems both spurious and ambiguous because many parameters may have an indirect influence on this relationship. The present study thus considers sustainable practices—environmental practices, social practices in the workplace, and social practices in the community —as three probable mediators in the relationship between EO and performance, which is considered in terms of its financial and non-financial dimensions. We seek to show to what extent small- (...) and medium-sized enterprises’ sustainable practices are useful assets, which are supported by EO, to improve performance. Using a structural equation modeling approach, data collected from 406 French SMEs were tested against the model. Our findings reveal that EO has a positive impact on the implementation of sustainable practices and that SPW partially mediate the link between EO and performance. Taken together, these findings suggest that EO plays a role in indirectly promoting performance by enhancing certain human resource management practices. (shrink)