Doughty Centre Occasional Papers are designed to stimulate debate on topical issues of Responsible Business and Sustainability.
TIME TO REVIEW HOW BEST TO ENCOURAGE SMALLER ENTERPRISES TO BE SUSTAINABLE
Policy-makers and business development agencies are today encouraged to re-think their approach to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for smaller firms, in a new Occasional Paper from the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management, entitled: Small is sustainable (and beautiful!) encouraging European smaller enterprises to be sustainable.
The Doughty Centre director David Grayson and co-author Tom Dodd argue that many of the factors making CSR more important for big business, are affecting smaller firms just as much. They particularly emphasise the competition for skilled workers; the importance of trust, reputation and relationships in the networked economy; and the rise of ethical and green consumers and employees.
Grayson and Dodd also highlight the growing number of initiatives across Europe from chambers of commerce, local authorities and trade associations, to help small firms to make sense of CSR.
They review what is now known from academic studies and pilot projects across the EU about small firms and corporate responsibility; and suggest a number of critical issues for further efforts to promote CSR amongst small firms. They suggest a change of language from CSR to sustainability or sustainable enterprise.
As well as changing the message, Grayson and Dodd argue for care in selecting the messengers. It matters who delivers the message, they argue. Credibility in the eyes of the SME owner-manager is crucial. Governments and politicians are generally not the most credible messengers for SMEs. They go on to suggest that the most credible messengers are other SMEs businesses like us and call for some innovative thinking about how to facilitate peer-to-peer learning and influence between small businesses.
They also suggest that better targeting of messages is needed, and a more sophisticated understanding of the journey and the behaviours that owner-managers and small firms might typically take in embedding ideas of responsible business practice and sustainability in the way that they run their businesses.
Finally, they predict that supply-chain pressures for more sustainable business practice will intensify but that this needs more sharing of know-how and know-who and more facilitated learning within supply-chains.
Please click on the link below for a pdf of the paper
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