Drawing on the 'ISO 26000: 2010-Guidance on social responsibility' handbook, this paper is aimed at investigating the extent to which Bangladeshi small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) are incorporating social responsibility (SR)/sustainability into their regular business activities. It is also aimed at providing insights into how Bangladeshi SME owner-managers perceive the concept of SR, and exploring the key drivers of and barriers to socially responsible and sustainable business practices. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-method research was carried out in two sequential phases. During the first phase, 110 printed questionnaires (59 of which were eventually used) were distributed among the owner-managers of the selected SMEs. The second phase involved seven in-depth semi-structured interviews. Findings The findings reconfirm the existence of the so called 'attitude-behaviour' gap. The barriers that hinder the sustainable engagement of SMEs include corruption, a weak regulatory environment, inefficient or ill-suited government and external support, and a lack of awareness of the environmental aspects of SR. In addition, this research reveals that Bangladeshi manufacturing SMEs do, to a certain degree, implement SR; only those few issues that suit the owner-managers' personal motives are addressed, while many others (e.g. environmental issues) are neglected. Finally, it has been found that the business type and size, and the owner-managers' educational attainments have no significant influence on the degree of adoption of socially responsible business practices by Bangladeshi manufacturing SMEs. Originality/value This paper develops a tool suited to meaningfully assess the socially responsible and sustainable business activities of SMEs. By utilising the four key elements identified in ISO 26000-namely, labour practices, the environment, consumer issues, and community involvement and development-and by employing an innovative and effective technique, a sustainability score and implementation level were calculated quantitatively for the selected SMEs. The tool developed here can be used to study the sustainability related issues faced by SMEs based in other low-income developing countries.

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In this paper we explore the environmental attitudes of polluting SMEs (small-scale firms that produce or deal with environmentally sensitive goods) from the perspective of owner/managers in a low-income developing country context. Utilising extensive qualitative data from SMEs operating in two of the most polluting industries in Bangladesh-leather tanning and textile dyeing, we provide a qualitative understanding of how the owner/managers formulate, interpret, and judge the environmental issues related to their business operations. Our analysis indicates that the owner/ managers hold four types of distinct environmental attitudes towards the environmental issues relevant to their businesses: conscious, instrumental, resentful, and complacent. We differentiate these attitudes based on three salient dimensions: owner/managers' general interest in environmental issues, their commitment to act in environmentally responsible ways, and key stakeholder focus. Our study contributes to the small business literature by identifying complexity in the owner/managers' responses to relevant environmental issues and offering a nuanced understanding of the environmental attitudes of polluting SMEs in a low-income developing country context. In addition, our findings inform policies designed with the practical needs of small-scale polluting firms in mind.

This paper investigates how and under what conditions polluting SMEs (small-scale firms that produce or deal with environmentally sensitive goods such as plastics, hazardous chemicals, textiles, and rawhides) in developing countries address the environmental issues related to their activities-a broadly neglected and under-studied research agenda. Utilising extensive qualitative data drawn from SMEs operating in two of the most polluting industries in Bangladesh-leather tanning and textile dyeing-and a contextual lens from a developing country perspective, this paper provides insights into the construction of the environmental behaviours enacted by polluting SMEs. The analysis suggests that such behaviours are constructed under a number of micro-, meso-, and macro-level socio-economic conditions that act as either enablers of or barriers to responsible environmental behaviours, depending on the circumstances. The overall findings show that SMEs address the relevant environmental issues in a complex fashion, and may provide policymakers with support in the design of environmental policies tailored to the practical needs of small-scale polluting firms.

For over a decade, pandemics have been on the UK National Risk Register as both the likeliest and most severe of threats. Non-infectious 'lifestyle' diseases were already crippling our healthcare services and our economy. COVID-19 has exposed two critical vulnerabilities: firstly, the UK's failure to adequately assess and communicate the severity of non-communicable disease; secondly, the health inequalities across our society, due not least to the poor quality of our urban environments. This suggests a potentially disastrous lack of preventative action and risk management more generally, notably with regards to the existential risks from the climate and ecological crises.