Developing Competitive Advantage through Ethical and SR Practices: The Case of SME in Australia and Malaysia

Ahmad, Noor Hazlina; Seet, Pi-Shen

doi:10.5539/ibr.v2n4p116

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Strategies may also include consideration of environmental implications of operations [24][25][26]. Ethical and socially responsible practices are perceived as important by the entrepreneurs as well as conveying a firm's good citizenship [27,28]. Cultural values of post-materialism have a significant effect on the types of value creation corroborated by entrepreneurs [29].…”

Section: Coupling Between Strategy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Development Goals in Strategy and Practice: Businesses in Colombia and Egypt

et al. 2021

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Businesses may adopt strategies and practices that support sustainable development goals. Such strategies include considering social and environmental impacts as well as prioritizing socio-environmental benefits at a higher level than profits. Supportive practices comprise enhancing social benefits and limiting environmental harm. What SDG-related strategies and practices are businesses pursuing? Are businesses implementing practices and strategies? Do the practices and strategies differ across societies? A survey of representative samples of 399 businesses in Colombia and 413 businesses in Egypt was conducted in 2021, by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The owner-managers reported that they frequently had strategies that considered social and environmental impacts of business operations, and they prioritized socio-environmental considerations over financial goals. In Columbia, there were more frequent practices that enhanced social benefits and limited environmental harm than in Egypt. In addition, strategies were implemented in practices supporting the SDGs more in Colombia than in Egypt. Our findings contribute to understanding business strategies that consider SDGs and their implementation in practices that are embedded in society.

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Section: Coupling Between Strategy and Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Development Goals in Strategy and Practice: Businesses in Colombia and Egypt

et al. 2021

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“…They prefer a sunken, internal and proactive approach that is synonymous with voluntary involvement (Matten and Moon, 2008; Jenkins, 2009; Lynch-Wood et al , 2009). Scholars have focused on lexical analysis, discovering that the preferred terms are “tell the truth” (Ahmad and Seet, 2009), “doing the right things” (Petts et al , 1999) and “say sorry” (Surbutts, 2003). Regarding external transactions, SMEs face the competitive pressure exerted by the economic environment through limited resources in terms of cash flow, knowledge and human resources.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small business social responsibility: the CSR4UTOOL web application

Corazza

2018

JAAR

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Purpose Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) positively represent the backbone of the European economic system and, negatively, they make a significant contribution to environmental pollution and social impacts. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how a new tool for supporting the adoption of small business social responsibility (SBSR) can be tailored in order to be more effective. Design/methodology/approach Theoretical framework – a literature analysis of how SMEs address sustainability issues will be discussed, especially the need for SME tools with the following features: quality, materiality, free of charge, anonymous, easy-to-use and easy to understand. This need has been confirmed by the literature of SBSR and also social accounting doctrine. Methodology – this paper analyzes CSR4UTOOL, an applied research project of a web-based application dedicated to SMEs in order to provide a self-assessment on sustainability performances. A technical paper aims to describe a specific development, technique or procedure that is capable of presenting a software tool or an experimental or computational method that should be well-tested and should preferably provide a solution to a problem and have some demonstrable practical values. Findings The recent studies over SBSR sustain the need of sustainability management tool for SMEs. A web-based tool co-designed and co-created with SMEs reveals the importance of new tools to support SBSR, especially for the global process of CSR downstreaming using a bottom-up perspective. Research limitations/implications Alongside the development of tailored, efficient tools to implement, manage, control and account for such social responsibilities, several authors have described organizational implications, managerial adaptations and practical features of such tools. As a technical paper, the aim of this research is to shed light on the new technology that has been adopted to solve a gap in both the literature and the real economy, and it answers to the specific call for SBSR tools. Practical implications CSR4UTOOL is based on a decision tree structure presenting several questions and indicators given by a profound benchmark of the most internationally well-known accountability standards. It translates accounting and non-accounting data as well as qualitative and quantitative data to a powerful source of information for entrepreneurs regarding their ethical and moral managerial conduct. A report on the performance of the company will be generated at the end of each session. Social implications This study has a practical social implication as it may concretely help entrepreneurs to self-assess their SBSR. IT technologies may represent a useful way to overcome the specific constraints on SMEs that when they are on track, they may also be more aware of the existent power of formalization in their social and environmental management practices. This kind of tool may help small entrepreneurs to be more aware of the fact that formalization may represent a strategic asset rather than a guarantee of morality. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating how data collection over SBSR may be engineered and tailored using web application and ICT, even in a context of small businesses. This paper further responds to a call from Spence (2016) and Johnson et al. (2016) for interdisciplinary approaches to investigating sustainability in SMEs, the validation and application of existent theories on CSR within the context of SMEs, through foregrounding use of innovative software and web applications.

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“…Dimitriadis et al (2017) discuss the impact of social contexts on reinforcing or disrupting cultural beliefs about gender, describing the “gender identities” of occupations and activities. They state that beliefs associating women with personal qualities such as caring, selflessness and other-interest, and men with competitiveness, agency and self-interest, influence the nature of female entrepreneurial behaviour, encouraging women to self-stereotype themselves as unsuited to commercial activity, as well as potentially experiencing social backlash for undertaking activities associated with a masculine identity (Ahmad and Seet, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transforming self-perceived self-employability and entrepreneurship among mothers through mobile digital sharing economy platforms: an exploratory case study

Seet

Jogulu

Cripps

et al. 2022

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PurposeThis research focuses on the extent sharing economy transforms employability for women impacted by domestic and reproductive work. The authors explore the experience of mothers, of how digital peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms can affect their self-perceived employability and skills deterioration by unlocking human capital through technology acceptance.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a pragmatism-based approach incorporating using a single-case study research design with the Gioia methodology. It utilised a semi-structured telephone survey to collect data to explore the decisions around usage of a newly developed mobile P2P app, aiming to support employability among mothers. Analysis was conducted inductively using thematic analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe study finds that mothers experience high rates of continued labour market attachment on a casual or part-time basis, difficulty in juggling family and work, and high levels of concern both about future employment/entrepreneurial opportunities and expected stress in balancing dual roles of carer and earner. While mothers are interested in using new sharing economy technologies to reduce skills deterioration and improve signalling, the authors find that there were both technology and non-technology related barriers. These included trust and security, life-stage mismatch, time poverty and limitation of service offerings.Research limitations/implicationsThis research was limited to mothers in one state in Australia and by the case study research design, the measurement model and the self-report nature of the data collection. Hence, the findings may lack generalisability in other contexts. It also limits the ability to make conclusions regarding causality.Originality/valueThis exploratory study contributes to research in the intersection between human resources (HR) and entrepreneurship by illustrating how sharing economy platforms can offer women a means to overcome the issues of signalling and skills deterioration in relation to aspects of human capital theory by developing new skills that may act as positive signals signal to potential employers or investors. Additionally, the social interactions between mothers, through technology adoption, can provide a basis for improving future self-employment or entrepreneurship and employability.

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Developing Competitive Advantage through Ethical and SR Practices: The Case of SME in Australia and Malaysia

Cited by 9 publications

References 23 publications

Sustainable Development Goals in Strategy and Practice: Businesses in Colombia and Egypt

Sustainable Development Goals in Strategy and Practice: Businesses in Colombia and Egypt

Small business social responsibility: the CSR4UTOOL web application

Transforming self-perceived self-employability and entrepreneurship among mothers through mobile digital sharing economy platforms: an exploratory case study

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