| dc.description.abstract | Corporate social responsibility, CSR, is a core issue for any organization committed to sustainable development. However, it is uncommon for small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, to engage in corporate social responsibility. This study attempts to evaluate the feasibility of SMEs’ engagement in CSR. Because of its global acceptance, the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines Version 3.0 proposed by the Global Reporting Initiative are adopted in this research.
Questionnaires are designed based on the performance indicators of economic, environmental, labor practices, decent work, human rights, society, and product responsibility. To provide sufficient background information to respondents, respective aspects of each performance indicator are also included in the questionnaire. Applicability of the questionnaires is refined through an experts review process. This study only considers employees as the primary stakeholders. This is due to the fact that external stakeholders of a small and medium-sized company are relatively reluctant to engage in the CSR reporting process. To collect as many returned questionnaires as possible, social media is utilized in addition to in-house surveys.
Sophisticated statistical analysis methods are used to analyze 1,087 returned questionnaires. Results of the survey indicate that personal background such as gender, age, education, tenure, etc. strongly affect the respondents’ perception on CSR. Secondly, employees’ preference on the ranking of the performance indicators can be used to prioritize an organization’s social responsibility programs and to allocate limited resources. Approaches proposed in this study can also be used by a SME to engage other stakeholders other than its own employees.
Keywords : Corporate social responsibility, Stakeholders, Global reporting initiative, Stakeholders engagement | en_US |