Proactive environmental strategies in small businesses: resources, institutions and dynamic capabilities
Year: 2008
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The impact of smaller firm size on corporate social responsibility is ambiguous. Some contend that small businesses are socially responsible by nature, while others argue that a smaller firm size imposes barriers on small firms that constrain their ability to take responsible action. This paper critically analyzes recent theoretical and empirical contributions on the size – social responsibility relationship among small businesses. More specifically, it reviews the impact of firm size on four antecedents of business behaviour: issue characteristics, personal characteristics, organizational characteristics and context characteristics. It concludes that the small business context does impose barriers on social responsibility taking, but that the impact of the smaller firm size on social responsibility should be nuanced depending on a number of conditions. From a critical analysis of these conditions, opportunities for small businesses and their constituents to overcome the constraining barriers are suggested. 2 This chapter was published as “Lepoutre, J. & Heene, A. 2006. Investigating the impact of firm size on small business social responsibility: A critical review. Journal of Business Ethics, 67(3): 257-273.” It was presented in an earlier version at the EABIS Conference on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and Corporate Social Responsibility: Identifying the knowledge gaps, 15-16 December 2005, Durham Business School, UK.We wish to thank the participants of this conference, Bart Nooteboom, Mirjam Knockaert, Annick Willem, Geoff Moore, Laura Spence and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions to improve this paper. The Policy Research Centre for Sustainable Agriculture is gratefully acknowledged for the opportunity to carry out this research.
Author: Jan Lepoutre
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2207449911