Corporate social responsibility and SME's competitiveness

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is both a core and emerging issue in management. Recently, many contributions were developed by scholars and practitioners to better understand the phenomenon and its practical relevance for the corporations. However, defining the phenomenon and the specific characteristics it assumes particular to individual corporations is challenging. Moreover, it is directly linked to the perceptions and values of managerial personal, the specific characteristics of the business, and the size of the corporations. Many contributions have been developed to investigate the relationship between the CSR and the corporate social performance (CSP) of the corporations but inconsistent results were found and very little is known about the phenomenon inside the small and medium sized firms (Spence, 1999, 2007; Thompson and Smith, 1991). This paper tries to investigate this research problem following an empirical approach based on direct interviews to the CEOs of Italian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which developed successful CSR strategies.

[1]  J. K. Thompson,et al.  Social Responsibility and Small Business: Suggestions for Research , 1991 .

[2]  Laura J. Spence,et al.  Small Firm Accountability and Integrity , 2004 .

[3]  H. Jenkins A Critique of Conventional CSR Theory: An SME Perspective , 2004 .

[4]  Laura J. Spence,et al.  Editorial: Responsibility and Small Business , 2006 .

[5]  John L. Campbell Why would corporations behave in socially responsible ways? an institutional theory of corporate social responsibility , 2007 .

[6]  J. Barney,et al.  IS THE RESOURCE-BASED " VIEW " A USEFUL PERSPECTIVE FOR STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH ? , 2001 .

[7]  René Schmidpeter,et al.  Responsibility and social capital : the world of small and medium sized enterprises , 2004 .

[8]  A. Zaheer,et al.  Bridging ties: a source of firm heterogeneity in competitive capabilities , 1999 .

[9]  Bryan W. Husted,et al.  Is It Ethical to Use Ethics as Strategy? , 2000 .

[10]  K. Andrews The Concept of Corporate Strategy , 1971 .

[11]  H. Jenkins Small Business Champions for Corporate Social Responsibility , 2006 .

[12]  D. Melé,et al.  Corporate Social Responsibility Theories: Mapping the Territory , 2004 .

[13]  J. Barney,et al.  Trustworthiness as a Source of Competitive Advantage , 1994 .

[14]  M. Lee A Review of the Theories of Corporate Social Responsibility: Its Evolutionary Path and the Road Ahead , 2008 .

[15]  J. Harrison,et al.  Managing for Stakeholders, Stakeholder Utility Functions, and Competitive Advantage. , 2010 .

[16]  J. D. Margolis,et al.  People and profits? : the search for a link between a company's social and financial performance , 2001 .

[17]  Abagail McWilliams,et al.  Corporate Social Responsibility: a Theory of the Firm Perspective , 2001 .

[18]  Simone de Colle,et al.  Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art , 2010 .

[19]  Paul C. Godfrey,et al.  The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: an empirical test of the risk management hypothesis , 2009 .

[20]  Hillary Anger Elfenbein,et al.  Does it Pay to Be Good...And Does it Matter? A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Corporate Social and Financial Performance , 2009 .

[21]  J. Mahon,et al.  The Corporate Social Performance and Corporate Financial Performance Debate , 1997 .

[22]  J. Coleman,et al.  Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[23]  M. Russo,et al.  A Resource-Based Perspective On Corporate Environmental Performance And Profitability , 1997 .

[24]  Søren Aggebo,et al.  Kenneth R. Andrews, The Concept of Corporate Strategy, Dow Jones-Irwin, Inc. Homewood, Illinois, 1971, 245 s. , 1972 .

[25]  I. Maignan,et al.  Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe and the U.S.: Insights from Businesses’ Self-presentations , 2002 .

[26]  J. Barney Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage , 1991 .

[27]  Laura J. Spence,et al.  Small Business and Empirical Perspectives in Business Ethics: Editorial , 2003 .

[28]  Stefano Pogutz,et al.  New Tools to Foster Corporate Socially Responsible Behavior , 2004 .

[29]  Laura J. Spence,et al.  Communicating about Ethics with Small Firms: Experiences from the U.K. and Spain , 2000 .

[30]  Margaret A. Peteraf The cornerstones of competitive advantage: A resource‐based view , 1993 .

[31]  Stelios C. Zyglidopoulos,et al.  The Social and Environmental Responsibilities of Multinationals: Evidence from the Brent Spar Case , 2002 .

[32]  Fiona Tilley,et al.  Small firm environmental ethics: how deep do they go? , 2000 .

[33]  M. Clarkson A Stakeholder Framework for Analyzing and Evaluating Corporate Social Performance , 1995 .

[34]  T. Kohers,et al.  The Link Between Corporate Social and Financial Performance: Evidence from the Banking Industry , 2002 .

[35]  J. Logsdon,et al.  How corporate social responsibility pays off , 1996 .

[36]  L. Spence CSR and Small Business in a European Policy Context: The Five “C”s of CSR and Small Business Research Agenda 2007 , 2007 .

[37]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage , 1998 .

[38]  Ruth Holliday,et al.  Investigating Small Firms: Nice Work? , 1995 .

[39]  F. Schmidt,et al.  Corporate Social and Financial Performance: A Meta-Analysis , 2003 .

[40]  C. Fombrun,et al.  What's in a Name? Reputation Building and Corporate Strategy , 1990 .

[41]  Issam c.,et al.  A Three-Dimensional Conceptual Model of Corporate Performance,... , 2014 .

[42]  Jeffrey H. Dyer,et al.  The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage , 1998 .

[43]  Laura J. Spence,et al.  Does size matter? The state of the art in small business ethics , 1999 .

[44]  Samuel B. Graves,et al.  The corporate social performance-financial performance link , 1997 .

[45]  L. Hosmer,et al.  Strategic planning as if ethics mattered , 2007 .

[46]  D. Wood Corporate Social Performance Revisited , 1991 .

[47]  D. Wood,et al.  Social Issues in Management: Theory and Research in Corporate Social Performance , 1991 .

[48]  D. Z. Phillips. Does It Pay To Be Good , 1992 .

[49]  Jean-Pascal Gond,et al.  Measuring Corporate Social Performance in France: A Critical and Empirical Analysis of ARESE Data , 2005 .

[50]  D. Turban,et al.  Corporate Social Performance As a Competitive Advantage in Attracting a Quality Workforce , 2000 .

[51]  Steven B. Andrews,et al.  Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition , 1995, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[52]  Abagail McWilliams,et al.  Corporate social responsibility and financial performance: correlation or misspecification? , 2000 .

[53]  David Murillo,et al.  SMEs and CSR: An Approach to CSR in their Own Words , 2006 .

[54]  M. Porter,et al.  The competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy. , 2002, Harvard business review.

[55]  K. Eisenhardt Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[56]  Caterina Tantalo,et al.  Competing for Stakeholders: Three Essays on Business Sustainability , 2011 .

[57]  S. Brammer,et al.  Does it pay to be different? An analysis of the relationship between corporate social and financial performance , 2008 .

[58]  Bryan W. Husted,et al.  Corporate Social Strategy in Multinational Enterprises: Antecedents and Value Creation , 2007 .

[59]  Shelby D. Hunt,et al.  Relationship-Based Competitive Advantage: The Role of Relationship Marketing in Marketing Strategy , 1999 .