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Investigating the Impact of Firm Size on Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Review

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Abstract

The impact of smaller firm size on corporate social responsibility (CSR) 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 analyses 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.

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Abbreviations

SMEs:

small and medium-sized enterprises

CSR:

Corporate Social Responsibility

SBSR:

small business social responsibility

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Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the 2005 Durham University conference on “Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and Corporate Social Responsibility: Identifying the knowledge gaps”. We wish to thank the participants of this conference, Bart Nooteboom, Mirjam Knockaert, Annick Willem 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.

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  1. Department of Management and Entrepreneurshipm, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Hoveniersberg 24, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Jan Lepoutre & Aimé Heene

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  1. Jan Lepoutre
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Correspondence to Jan Lepoutre.

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Jan Lepoutre is a PhD candidate in Applied Economics at Ghent University, Belgium. His dissertation focuses on the competences associated with small business social responsibility.

Aimé Heene is a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Ghent University, Belgium. He teaches strategic management for private and for public organizations and currently focuses his research on (competence-based) management in public and social profit organizations.

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Lepoutre, J., Heene, A. Investigating the Impact of Firm Size on Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Review. J Bus Ethics 67, 257–273 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9183-5

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