Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Multilevel Review, Synthesis and Research Agenda

Abstract

Small business social responsibility (SBSR) related research is rapidly increasing in quantity but is found in divergent literatures and disciplines. It is time to offer a comprehensive review that identifies, synthesises, and integrates previous research, and highlights the knowledge gaps and the way forward. Our methodical search of the literature helped identify 115 multidisciplinary peer-reviewed academic articles appearing in high quality journals over the 1970-2016 period. Using a systematic and in-depth content analysis technique, we reviewed the articles and identified the theories used, the national contextual focus, and the methodological orientations in these articles. We also identified the predictors, outcomes, mediators, and moderators of SBSR at the institutional, organisational, and individual levels of analysis. Our review helps identify significant knowledge gaps in terms of the theoretical orientation, the national contextual focus, the core content under study, and the methods used. We offer numerous suggestions across these topics to help address the knowledge gaps and raise important questions for future research. The primary contributions of this paper are: delineating and summarising a multilevel analysis of an emerging literature on SBSR; integrating contributions from a wide range of management disciplines and geographical contexts; extracting the potential theoretical contributions in this field; and informing directions for future research. We propose a research agenda that is theoretically relevant and innovative, and calls for context-and size-aware research on SBSR using small businessspecific methodologies and measurements.

Corporate social responsibility strategies: Past research and future challenges

“…As a recommendation we point out that companies should consider developing CSR strategies and promoting its implementation with the support of their chief officer of CSR or CSO once the importance of their functions is recognized beyond the tools presented previously based on literature, once it is considered that in CSR terms respond to social, and environmental issues are needed in developing and emerging economies (Soundararajan, Jamali, & Spence, ).…”

There is no need to shout to be heard! The paradoxical nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in a Latin American family small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)

“…Recent studies differentiate between socially responsible activities engaged in by SME owners and CSR activities, previously perceived to be poorly translated in the SME context (Soundararajan et al, 2018). This study focuses on the latter, as integrating CSR (i.e., introducing codes of conduct, standards, reporting) is perceived to be problematic (Baden et al, 2011).…”

“…There is a growing interest in knowing how deep socially responsible activities run in smalland medium-sized family businesses (Baden, Harwood and Woodward, 2011;Soundararajan, Jamali and Spence, 2018). Family SMEs represent the largest share of businesses worldwide (Howorth, Rose, Hamilton and Westhead, 2010) and their socially responsible engagement, progressively reported under a corporate social responsibility (CSR) label, has not gone unnoticed (Van Gils, Dibrell, Neubaum and Craig, 2014;Spence, 2016).…”

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and small and medium sized enterprises: The governmentality dilemma of explicit and implicit CSR communication

“…Again, although we acknowledge that explicit and implicit CSR communication co-exist in large as well as in small and medium firms, prior research has pointed to how explicit communication has primarily been salient in large firms and implicit communication been salient in small and-medium sized enterprises. A review of research has indicated how this balance is currently changing for SMEs (Soundararajan et al, 2017); our interest is in exploring the implications thereof.…”