and Enterprise Success: The Role of Government Policy 1. Introduction Globally SMEs plays a major role in most economies, and are considered the backbone of countries such as the United States, United Kingdom SMEs and a host of others (World Bank, 2019). SMEs are considered vital to the economy as employers and are a major contributors to economic growth; they are significant drivers of job creation, and new innovation (Roland 2018). Despite the crucial role SMEs play as employers of labour, SMEs productivity across the globe continues to be disappointing (Nesta, 2017). Two obstacles that hamper SME growth are access to finance and poor management practices (Roland 2018). SMEs have recorded unsatisfactory performance as regards contribution to GDP and employment generation in countries such as Greece, Iran, Vietnam, Nigeria and Romania. Despite this progress, the phenomenon of jobless growth combined with the world's youngest population threatens sustainability (Igwe, Onjewu, & Nwibo, 2018).In many African countries, SMEs, find it difficult to do business due to unfavourable business environment arising from hostile legal requirements, high taxes, inflation, fluctuating and unreliable exchange rates, all making it difficult to make significant profits to survive (Beck & Cull, 2014). According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics/Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (NBS/SMEDAN) 2012 National MSMEs collaborative study revealed that there are 17, 284,671 MSMEs in Nigeria. Oyelaran (2010) revealed that SMEs contribute approximately 1% of the country's GDP compared to 40% in Asia and 50% in the USA. This implies that there are some forces behind their low profitability in Nigeria. In Nigeria, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been identified as the backbone of the economy and thus key drivers of economic growth. Despite their prevalence, SMEs are more vulnerable to external influences than larger companies, as they lack market power, compete on domestic markets and are often subcontractors to larger companies (Leithy, 2017). A major challenge for SMEs is to constantly improving performance in the long term in this highly competitive environment. Several SMEs have been characterized by poor performance and shutdown before their fifth year anniversary (Anichebe & Agu, 2013).
IntroductionCorporate social responsibility (CSR) is to a great extent a topic that has been on the increase and has become a very important topic that organizations and scholars are recently engaging in. though CSR has been very prevalent, scholars are yet arrive at a universally accepted definition for CSR. Glavas (2016) opined that most of the major corporate organizations are engaged in CSR in one form or the other even though according to him that scholars are yet to come up with one definition of CSR that is accepted globally. Various authors have attempted to define CSR among whom are Safarzad, Farahnaki, and Farahbakhsh (2017) who defined CSR concept as a requirement for a company that is legal and includes the continued commitment of the company towards the community. Carroll (2016) further stated in his pyramid that CSR is of four parts which represents the expectation of the society towards the firms and they are the economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic obligations which should be taken in sequence from the bottom to the top.CSR over the years has gained traction significantly as shown by the number of published research studies on the relationship between CSR and performance of companies (Demetraides & Auret, 2014;Oh &Park, 2015 andTaiwo &Adeniran 2014). According to Safarzad, et al (2017) the main goal of most corporate entities is often to increase the efficiency and productivity of their operations which will enable them to maximize profit for their shareholders which must be achieved by integrating the community's ethical and environmental expectations into the economic processes of the company. Attempts by authors to find out how CSR aids in the creation of value or destruction of businesses can be categorized according to their outcomes showed that there are positive, negative, or no significant relationships (Fomukong, 2014).
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