Corporate Social Responsibility

1034 Words3 Pages

In this article, I will be summarising and reviewing Jenkins’s (2006) article on small business champions for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sweeney’s (2007) article on the barriers and opportunities experienced by Small Medium Enterprise (SME) when undertaking CSR. The articles described the role of CSR in SMEs and filled the gap on CSR in SME; some of the arguments presented by the authors are questionable. The main arguments will be developed by critically analysing similarities and differences in the articles and a thorough analysis of the findings.

Jenkins’s (2006) argued that using CSR-oriented SME as examples, barriers and opportunities of CSR can be identified. Research method was an in-depth semi-structured interview of 24 UK SME that had 25-120 employees. SMEs chosen were referred to as ‘exemplars’ because they had prior experience in CSR activities (Jenkins, 2006:244).

Jenkins (2006:241) researched “CSR terminology, nature of SME CSR activities”. Jenkins (2006:253) discovered and concluded that stakeholder theory was used by SME to define CSR terminology.

Sweeney (2007) argued there was a lack of focus on CSR in Irish firms especially SME. For the research method, qualitative strategy was used in the form of an ‘in-depth semi-structured interview’ of 13 Irish firms; 6 large firms and 7 SMEs (Sweeney, 2007:517-518).

Sweeney (2007:516) focused on four distinct objectives that included “understanding CSR definitions by firms, management of CSR, CSR activities carried out by firms and opportunities and limitations faced by SMEs”. Sweeney (2007:518) discovered the definition of CSR by large Irish firm differs from the definition of CSR by SMEs; also, the existence of a positive correlation between firm size...

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...06:249-250) commented on the dissatisfaction of services provided by external organisations like the government, Business Link and Business in the Community aimed at SMEs in relation to CSR. A lack of in-depth information on CSR, exclusion of financially healthy firms from supports and grants, lack of communication regarding the benefits of CSR to SMEs and the neglect of SMEs not involved in the CSR program (Jenkins, 2006), on the other hand, Sweeney (2007) has no research information on this issue.

In conclusion, Jenkins (2006) and Sweeney (2007) have tried to fill the gap with regards to the role of CSR in SME. Convincing arguments were made to define CSR terminology using stakeholder theory and to emphasise the role of leadership in implementing CSR agenda. In order to increase the accuracy of the results, further research is advised using quantitative survey.

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