A critical and notoriously elusive issue in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research is the impact of Corporate Social Performance (CSP) on the bottom line. Instead of looking for direct correlations between social and financial performance, we hypothesize that the first result of CSR activities is the creation of trust among the stakeholders. A survey conducted on consumers of organic products provided support for our hypothesis, showing that CSP influences consumer trust and that that trust in turn influences consumers' subsequent actions. The findings further suggest that intermediate variables between CSP and Corporate Financial Performance (CFP) may best support a business case for CSR.

While corporate social responsibility\ud (CSR) is becoming a mainstream issue for many organizations,\ud most of the research to date addresses CSR in\ud large businesses rather than in small- and medium-sized\ud enterprises (SMEs), because it is too often considered a\ud prerogative of large businesses only. The role of SMEs in\ud an increasingly dynamic context is now being questioned,\ud including what factors might affect their socially responsible\ud behaviour. The goal of this paper is to make a\ud comparison of SME and large firm CSR strategies.\ud Furthermore, size of the firm is analyzed as a factor that\ud influences specific choices in the CSR field, and studied\ud by means of a sample of 3,680 Italian firms. Based on a\ud multi-stakeholder framework, the analysis provides\ud evidence that large firms are more likely to identify\ud relevant stakeholders and meet their requirements\ud through specific and formal CSR strategies

This paper investigates the link between the\ud consumer perception that a company is socially oriented\ud and the consumer intention to buy products marketed by\ud that company. We suggest that this link exists when at least\ud two conditions prevail: (1) the products sold by that company\ud comply with ethical and social requirements; (2) the\ud company has an acknowledged commitment to protect\ud consumer rights and interests. To test these hypotheses, we\ud conducted a survey among the clients of retail chains\ud offering Fair Trade products. The results show that socially\ud oriented companies can successfully leverage their reputation\ud to market products with high symbolic values

CSR strategies, Italy, large firms, micro firms, multi-stakeholder approach, small and medium-sized enterprises,

Corporate sustainability, that is the capacity of a firm to continue operating over a long period of time, depends on the sustainability of its stakeholder relationships. This new stakeholder view of the firm goes beyond previous work on the triple bottom line and balanced scorecard. Companies need appropriate systems to measure and control their own behaviour in order to assess whether they are responding to stakeholder concerns in an effective way and to communicate the results achieved. These sustainability accounting systems should have the purpose of broadening and integrating the traditional financial approaches to corporate performance measurement, taking stakeholder needs into due account. This article presents the sustainability evaluation and reporting system (SERS), an integrated methodology aimed at monitoring and tracking from a qualitative and quantitative viewpoint the overall corporate performance according to a stakeholder framework, in line with small and medium-sized enterprises' managerial requirements.