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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between economic performance in terms of labour productivity of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their corporate sustainability in association with the driving forces of internationalization process and enterprise networks.Design/methodology/approachThe paper develops an innovative theoretical–conceptual approach and applied unique empirical survey to investigate the simultaneous causalities between labour productivity and corporate sustainability, in the context of the set of relationships controlled with two other set of variables for mediating role of the internationalization process and enterprise networks focusing on business collaborations between SMEs. Four hypotheses are tested by the developed structural equation model for the unique in-depth survey data of Slovenian SMEs.FindingsThe results highlight significant positive correlations between the studied variables and their constructs, which indicate scientific justification to variables as factors. The results confirmed that internationalization process and enterprise networks are positively associated in improving corporate sustainability, which drives labour productivity.Practical implicationsThe implications of this research are for managers regarding strategies and approaches aiming at sustainable development of SMEs, and for policy-makers regarding appropriate policies for practices encouraging internalization processes and enterprise networks as important drivers of corporate sustainability and labour productivity of SMEs.Originality/valueThe main scientific value added of this research is that combines and empirically examines driving forces of corporate sustainability in SMEs based on related studies, to develop more comprehensive structural equation model for better understanding of the corporate sustainability behaviour in SMEs.

V prispevku prikazujemo rezultate raziskave, v okviru katere smo proučevali vpliv dejavnikov voditeljstva vrhnjih menedžerjev na uvajanje okoljske sestavine trajnostnega razvoja -standarda ISO 14001:2004 v velikih slovenskih organizacijah. Kvantitativna raziskava temelji na 96 pravilno izpolnjenih vprašalnikih. Ugotovili smo, da so prevladujoči dejavniki voditeljstva, ki pozitivno vplivajo na uvajanje okoljske sestavine trajnostnega razvoja v organizacijo in na katere morajo biti vrhnji menedžerji še bolj pozorni, naslednji: vizija, kredibilnost, sodelovanje, odgovornost in usmerjenost k dejanjem. 1 Uvod V zadnjih dveh desetletjih se je popularnost koncepta trajnostnega razvoja intenzivno povečevala. Verjetno je prvi razlog za to vse večja ozaveščenost ljudi o nevarnostih, ki pretijo naravnemu in s tem tudi družbenemu okolju. Drugi razlog je širitev paradigme trajnostnega razvoja onkraj okoljskih tematik (vključitev različnih socialnih in gospodarskih dejavnikov), tretji razlog pa je ugotovitev, da je paradigma vedno bolj prevladujoče delničarske vrednosti pri korporativnem obvladovanju (upravljanju in menedžmentu) neustrezna za soočenje s trenutnimi