Small Business Social Responsibility

Abstract

This article seeks to expand business and society research in a number of ways. Its primary purpose is to redraw two core corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories (stakeholder theory and Carroll’s CSR pyramid), enhancing their relevance for small business. This redrawing is done by the application of the ethic of care, informed by the value of feminist perspectives and the extant empirical research on small business social responsibility. It is proposed that the expanded versions of core theory have wider relevance, value, and implications beyond the small firm context. The theorization of small business social responsibility enables engagement with the mainstream of CSR research as well as making a contribution to small business studies in scholarly, policy, and practice terms.

Keywords

corporate social responsibility ethic of care feminist ethics small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)small business social responsibility (SBSR)Carroll’s pyramid stakeholder theory

Small business social responsibility (SBSR)—whether it be in a software engineer, automotive parts manufacturer, small accountants, or delicatessen—offers an empirical context which is not a common starting point for business and society researchers. This condition is somewhat surprising given that small firms are an important part of the economic and social landscape, comprising more than 95% of private business consistently around the globe (Wymenga, Spanikova, Barker, Konings, & Canton, 2012). Their contribution translates to important job provision, for example, in the United States employing half of all private sector employees, generating 65% of net new jobs, and driving innovation with 13 times more patents per employee than large firms (U.S. Small Business Administration, 2012). While such statistics vary across regions and industries, and indeed definitions of firm size are also inconsistent,¹ the importance of small firms is highlighted across the globe. In Europe, for instance, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) provide two thirds of private sector jobs (Wymenga et al., 2012). In developing countries, it is likely that the importance of small business is still more critical, with the focus on entrepreneurship as a crucial contributor to development and poverty alleviation (Jamali, Zanhour, & Keshishian, 2009; Singer, 2006). As governments and intermediaries are seeking to influence small business success and practice in both economic and social terms (Commission of the European Communities [CEC], 2008; World Bank, 2012), credible research that informs policy perspectives is crucial (Gibb, 2000).

Informed by extant empirical studies, core corporate social responsibility (CSR) theory is redrawn in this article to help explain social responsibility in the smaller firm (see Baumann-Pauly, Wickert, Spence, & Scherer, 2013; Lepoutre & Heene, 2006). A feminist perspective, in particular the ethic of care, is presented as a valuable lens through which the relevance of CSR theory can be enhanced beyond the Western multinational corporation (MNC). The core CSR theories addressed are R. Edward Freeman’s stakeholder theory and Archie B. Carroll’s CSR pyramid because of their high profile in the field. It is well known that stakeholder theory was first introduced in the 1980s (Freeman, 1984) and Carroll’s pyramid in the early 1990s (Carroll, 1991). As discussed below, they have both been subject to continued debate over many years, and have offered some early insights to CSR in small business which will be extended here. SBSR contributions using Carroll include Burton and Goldsby (2009) and Visser (2005); and using stakeholder theory include Fisher, Geenen, Jurcevic, McClintock, and Davis (2009); Jenkins (2006); and Tang and Tang (2012).

The article seeks to contribute to research by expanding core theory to the small firm context, theorizing small business social responsibility, and demonstrating the value of feminist perspectives. In addition, there are policy and practice implications for those seeking to promote social responsibility in the wider business community that are noted in the concluding section.

A Feminist Perspective on CSR Theory and Small Business

The family of business and society theories has been, and continues to be, analyzed and critiqued from the perspectives of politics, social contribution, economics, and ethics (Banerjee, 2007; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011; van Oosterhout & Heugens, 2008; Windsor, 2006). The same could be argued of small business and entrepreneurship (Dunham, 2010; Gartner, 2007; Gibb, 2000; Grant & Perren, 2002; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). One, but not the only, critical theory used in both fields is a feminist perspective, and this orientation is adopted here for normative, instrumental, and empirical reasons. First, in small business and entrepreneurship research, feminist perspectives have been particularly pronounced, driven in part by research on female entrepreneurship (Calás, Smircich, & Bourne, 2009; Mirchandani, 2002). Second, a link has already been drawn between entrepreneurship and social change through feminist perspectives (Calás et al., 2009). Third, it has been argued in the business and society literature that a greater engagement with feminist perspectives could be illuminating (Borgerson, 2007; Derry, 1999, 2007; Freeman & Liedtka, 1991; Grosser & Moon, 2005; Hamington & Sander-Staudt, 2011; Liedtka, 1996; Simola, 2003; White, 1992), including specifically in terms of small business (von Weltzien Høivik & Melé, 2009). Fourth, a reinterpretation of stakeholder theory from a feminist perspective has been argued for previously (Engster, 2011; Grosser, 2009; Spiller, Erakovic, Henare, & Pio, 2011; Wicks, Gilbert, & Freeman, 1994). Fifth, observed empirical findings on CSR in small business, the dominant research approach in this subfield, show meaningful correspondence with feminist ethics, as is shown in Table 1. As the small business literature is unfamiliar for many in the business and society field, a summary table of the subfield is presented in the appendix.

Table 1.

Summary of Key Features of an Ethic of Care and Reflection of Small Business Social Responsibility.

Feature and reasoning	Correspondence of SBSR
Meeting the needs of others for whom we take responsibility Caring for a child at the forefront of moral concerns. Recognition that human beings are dependent on others, especially as children, and for the vulnerable and elderly. The claims of particular others can be compelling regardless of universal principles.	Caring for family members (literally as a family firm) and dependents of the business (such as employees).
Valuing emotions Sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness are seen as the kinds of moral emotions that are valuable for implementing reason and to ascertain what morality recommends.	Informal, personalized communication mechanisms. Business and personal reasoning combined.
Accepts partiality The compelling moral claim of the particular other may be valid even when it conflicts with the requirement usually made by moral theories that moral judgments be universalizable.	Partisan perspective in relation to those close to the business. Leadership of the owner-manager/ founder.
The private sphere as a territory for morality Focus of dominant theories has been on public life while overlooking the private domains of family and friendship, where women are often economically dependent and subject to a highly inequitable division of labor.	Informal relationships and flat hierarchy. Inclusion of family in business life, conflation of public and private reputation. Use of family labor.
People are relational and interdependent People start out as morally and epistemologically relational and interdependent. This view contrasts to traditional conceptualizations of fully autonomous and rational individual agents.	Relationship based, dependence on personal integrity, reputation, and trust with business partners.

Source. Developed from Held (2006).

Note. See the appendix for a summary of the background literature on small business social responsibility.

Feminist ethics² is concerned with contextualized reflections on responsibility, relationships, and experience and tends to value connections over autonomy (Borgerson, 2007). It is sometimes positioned in contrast to the more familiar principle-based and justice-based ethical perspectives (Nunner-Winkler, 1993; Simola, 2003), although others argue that feminist ethics focuses on the social and political systems that perpetuate the oppression and subordination of women and thus incorporate justice perspectives (Grosser, 2009). It should be noted that feminist ethics and the ethic of care (or feminine ethics) are not interchangeable, and indeed there are a range of approaches to both, just as there are with other ethical theories. Freeman and Liedtka (1991), in their critique of CSR, argued strongly for the proposition that:

corporations are places in which both individual human beings and human communities engage in caring activities that are aimed at mutual support and unparalleled human achievement . . . This proposition pushes us beyond the language of rights and responsibilities to a focus on the ethic of care, which recognizes needs and affirms the self and its linkage with others. (p. 96)

In the current article, this recommendation is followed systematically, and the ethic of care, as the dominant approach within feminist ethics, is adopted (Liedtka, 1996).

Virginia Held, one of the leading philosophers working on the ethic of care, notes that it emerges in contrast to justice-based theories when women’s experiences of morality are included as well as men’s (Held, 2006). This approach draws from Carol Gilligan’s (1982) research in the 1970s and 1980s in which she perceived “a different voice” in moral development when girls were included in research studies. Held has helpfully identified key features of the ethic of care, and these features have been summarized in Table 1. In addition, the righthand column shows a mapping of these features to empirical CSR perspectives of small business, as informed by the literature overview in the appendix. It is not suggested that there is an exact match, but that it can reasonably be observed that the features of an ethic of care are broadly recognizable in the empirical descriptions of CSR in small business. Thus, it is proposed that the ethic of care is a suitable lens through which to extend CSR theory in a way that is relevant to small firms.

In the remainder of this article, an ethic of care approach is applied to Carroll’s CSR pyramid and stakeholder theory as previously explained. The two parts will be treated separately to a degree, though there are crossovers, and the analysis is drawn together at the end of the article in the “Discussion” and “Conclusion” sections. The starting point is stakeholder theory, as it has previously been assessed from a feminist perspective in the extant literature.

Stakeholder Theory From the Perspective of an Ethic of Care

Stakeholder theory is arguably the business and society framework that has had most impact both within the scholarly CSR literature and in practice. Rob Phillips (2003) suggested that the value of the approach may be due to its conceptual breadth.³ The power of the core idea that corporations have a responsibility to all those who affect or are affected by their actions—including and in addition to a fiduciary duty to their shareholders—has retained remarkable traction. The initial model (Freeman, 1984) is a familiar wheel and spoke structure wit the firm in the central hub connected to its stakeholders. While some have sought to propose a generic list of stakeholders, it is clearly not the intention of stakeholder theory to predetermine stakeholder groups. Nevertheless, stakeholder theory is embodied by the notion that “(a)t a minimum, understanding business means thinking about customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and financiers. Other groups are at least important, as R. Phillips (2003) has argued, in so far as they affect these definitional stakeholders” (Agle et al., 2008, p. 164). Stakeholder theory is intended to be applicable to any organization, because in each application the stakeholders should be calculated anew.

The emphasis in small businesses on relationships and networks makes stakeholder theory intuitively appealing for this empirical group (Jenkins, 2006). Indeed, Tang and Tang (2012) have used stakeholder theory in relation to small business in China, and Fisher et al. (2009) have developed a version of the stakeholder perspective focused on communities. However, the generic version of stakeholder theory is not immediately transferable to small businesses for a range of reasons that will be developed in this section. Most useful, as a starting point, is a previously published feminist perspective of stakeholder theory by Wicks et al. (1994).

With a particular focus on the descriptive language used, Wicks et al. (1994) argued that it is helpful to reinterpret the stakeholder concept from the point of view of feminist ethical theory, seeking to challenge five key masculinist assumptions as shown in Table 2. Underlying the feminist interpretation of stakeholder theory is the assessment that people are inextricably embedded in context. It could be argued that the Wicks et al. approach—even when seeking to be feminist—retains a masculinist lens, by focusing on the particular organizational type of the corporation and defining the categories used in terms of the masculinist view first, from which the feminist view is suggested to deviate. Hence, the feminist perspective is allocated the status of the “other.” For example, no reference is made to the inclusion of the private sphere as a relevant landscape in the Wicks et al. analysis, but it is important from a feminist and an ethic of care perspective (Held, 2006). Thus, in the critique presented here in Table 2, a new category, Arena of Activity, has been added to the Wicks et al. study and suggestions made as to how these five categories would be viewed from masculinist and feminist standpoints. Hence, the work here extends the Wicks et al. feminist interpretation to the more explicit care perspective. The final column of Table 2 shows the ethic of care interpretation of stakeholder theory for small business, which the remainder of the section goes on to discuss in more detail.

Table 2.

Masculinist/Feminist/Ethic of Care Interpretations of Stakeholder Theory.

	Masculinist interpretation	Feminist interpretation	Ethic of care interpretation	Ethic of care stakeholder application to small business
ARENA	Corporations in the public arena	Corporations should acknowledge public and private spheres	Organizations as arenas of the public and the private sphere	A different generalized set of stakeholders
MEDIUM	The language of competition and conflict best describes the character of managing a firm	Communication and collective action should describe the character of managing a firm	Informal personalized language reflecting partiality describes the character of managing the firm	The center-point is the owner-manager as legitimate lead decision maker
CONNECTEDNESS	Corporations as autonomous entities are bounded off from their external environment	Corporations as webs of relations among stakeholders	Organizations as embedded in their local environment	Defined by being a stakeholder to others (rather than at the central hub of a stakeholder network)
CONNECTEDNESS	Corporations control their external environment	Corporations should thrive on chaos and embrace environmental change	Organizations defined by the actions of others
DRIVERS	Objective thinking is needed to generate strategy	Strategy as solidarity with decisions based on responsibilities and relationships	Strategy guided by sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and partiality meeting the needs of others for whom we take responsibility	The influence of proximity on stakeholder salience
POWER	Public sphere of power: Corporations structure power and authority within strict hierarchies	Flattening of hierarchies: Structure power and authority through decentralization and empowerment	Power encompassed in caring relationships in the public and private spheres of the organization	The influence of proximity on stakeholder salience

Source. Sections in italics derived from Wicks, Gilbert, and Freeman (1994).

Organizations as arenas of the public and the private sphere

The inclusion of the private sphere as a territory for morality is an important aspect of the ethic of care and one which has been largely absent from applications of stakeholder theory. In contrast, there has long been acknowledgment of the role of the family and personal life in small business and entrepreneurship research (Kitching, 1994; Quinn, 1997; Uhlaner, van Goor-Balk, & Masurel, 2004). Aldrich and Cliff (2003) have argued persuasively for the pervasive effects of family on entrepreneurship. Hence, when considering “generic” stakeholders for small business, there is likely to be much more emphasis on family and stakeholders led by personal relationships than is the case for large firms. It is proposed that core stakeholders of employees, family, small local competitors, suppliers, local community, and customers as shown in Figure 1 would be appropriate for smaller firms.

Figure 1.

Stakeholders for the small firm owner-manager.

In addition to the family as a stakeholder, owner-managers rely on their employees (who may also be family members) closely and may exhibit a caring relationship toward them (Uhlaner et al., 2004), and can be regarded to be the foremost stakeholder. Financiers could of course be relevant, whether they take the form of the local bank, investors, or family members, but the critical element of the owner-as-manager is that the senior manager is the key financier. There may of course be more than one owner and/or manager, and this multiplicity can result in a differentiated central core to the diagram. Community is relevant to both large and small firm stakeholder models, though the fact that small firms may be integrated with residential areas emphasizes their role as neighbors. It should be noted that many firms operate increasingly on a virtual basis, and this virtuality has the potential to dilute the importance of the community stakeholder leading perhaps to the redefinition of community in terms of virtual rather than physical groupings.

Informal personalized language reflecting partiality describes the character of managing the firm

Despite their vulnerability to competitive environments, research has found a sense of camaraderie between small firms which are competitors, with associated feelings of moral responsibility to competitors-as-stakeholders (Spence, Coles, & Harris, 2001). This camaraderie is directly in keeping with a feminist ethics perspective that emphasizes collaboration and “co-opetition” (Brandenburger & Nalebuff, 1996) over conflicting competition (Wicks et al., 1994). Such collaborative approaches are based on the informal and personalized relationships running through the practices of small business. To the extent that they have their own stakeholder map, small firms are led, importantly, by the owner-manager who, by virtue of being both principal and agent, is the legitimate decision maker (Quinn, 1997) and sits at the center-point of the stakeholder map as indicated in Figure 1 (Fassin, 2008). The pivotal role of the owner-manager and the blueprint the founder leaves on the small firm (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011) is important as ownership and control are not normally separated in the small firm, unlike the usual case in MNCs (Quinn, 1997). It is for this reason that the owner-manager should be depicted as the default central character in a stakeholder graphic for a small firm.

Organizations as embedded in their local environment and defined by the actions of others

Wicks et al. (1994) highlighted the autonomy element of the masculinist view of stakeholder theory. In contrast, it is argued here that organizations such as small businesses are embedded in their local environment. There is some dispute over this point in the entrepreneurship literature, with the entrepreneur positioned in some studies as the leader acting in isolation and creating a “fortress enterprise” (Curran & Blackburn, 1994, p. 113), but this view has been robustly countered (Drakopoulou Dodd & Anderson, 2007). The small business literature is replete with work that draws on social capital theory, emphasizing the interconnectedness of small firms, and their reliance on their social capital to achieve success (for an overview, see De Carolis & Saparito, 2006). As noted above, responsibility to the family (and as I will go on to show, the self) is of the highest order for the small firm owner-manager.

This embedded circumstance for small businesses means that they indeed are not autonomous and are subject to the actions of others. While small firms are often congratulated for their flexibility (Gibb, 2000), they have little choice but to be responsive in order to survive (Piperopoulos, 2010). The relatively less powerful nature of the individual small firm means that there is little or no assumption that they can have individual impact or control. Instead, they tend to be depicted as the victim, particularly to bureaucratic red tape and burdensome regulation, market pressure of domineering large competitors and the whim and control of powerful large customer suppliers, being powerless in comparison (Johannson, 1997). In keeping with the ethic of care perspective which argues against abstraction of universal approaches (Held, 2006), innovation and flexibility in response to a changing environment are commonly noted as differentiating strengths of the small firm, and means by which they can prosper in a challenging environment. Thus, small firms can—and indeed must—internalize the changing needs of their stakeholders, blurring the internal and external boundaries of the firm.

An outcome of the ethic of care perspective on stakeholder theory is that the role and identity of the small enterprise, called here “Supplier A,” is defined by its relationship to other larger and more powerful stakeholders, such as “Large Firm X” which is a customer of Supplier A, as shown in Figure 2 (Boyd, Spekman, Kamauff, & Werhane, 2007). Indeed, this relationship is a fairly standard pattern, with the prosperity and stability of small organizations commonly being determined by their relationship with a key (sometimes the only) powerful customer (Cox, Sanderson, & Watson, 2001). Other stakeholders could also be the group by which the small firm is defined. For a family firm, the spouse and family are most likely to be the defining group, not least because of the importance of the family legacy that is bound so closely to the performance of the firm (Mitchell, Agle, Chrisman, & Spence, 2011; Uhlaner et al., 2004). In some cases, the supplier could be the defining stakeholder. In the case of retail franchises like the Body Shop, for example, the individual retail outlet is defined by its role as a franchisee of the Body Shop products and brand. Finally, in small firms which are embedded into their local community such as a micro-brewery where all other stakeholders are also drawn from that same local community, “the community” may be at the center of the stakeholder map of which the small firm is a satellite. The crucial implication here is that the small firm (Supplier A in Figure 2) is subject by proxy to externalities affecting the key stakeholder (e.g., a customer to Supplier A, Large Firm X in Figure 2) rather than principal of its own destiny as is implied by the central position of the firm in stakeholder theory. The small business is thus not at the center of its own stakeholder map.

Figure 2.

The small business: Defined by being a stakeholder of others.

Strategy guided by sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and partiality meeting the needs of others for whom we take responsibility; power encompassed in caring relationships in the public and private spheres of the organization

An important counterpoint to the masculinist approach is the unlikelihood of the generation of any explicit strategy, let alone a so-called objective one. Small firms are routinely criticized for failing to be objective and strategic in their thinking and planning, and failure to use strategic management tools (Stonehouse & Pemberton, 2002). Yet their advantage has been argued to lie in the emotional intelligence and tacit knowledge embedded in the organization (Piperopoulos, 2010). The ethic of care embraces the inclusion of “nonrational” emotional perspectives in decision making though noting that not all emotion is valued. The ethic of care promotes the embracing of emotions such as sympathy, empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness as enhancing moral reflection (Held, 2006).

While small firms are necessarily led by one or two key individuals, their very size generally means that there is little opportunity for strict demarcation of roles, and each person has to do whatever is necessary on an ad hoc basis. This reality is nicely illustrated by a British small business owner pointing out the multitude of tasks he gets involved in beyond leadership and management:

There is a balance of time on idea creation and then just being a straightforward managing director, to changing light bulbs. None of us small businesses have janitors. Or if a lady client is coming, checking that there is loo paper in the ladies loo. Literally it is as basic as that. (Small Business Research Centre, 1997, p. 8)

Here we see the importance of relational rather than hierarchical issues in the small firm—looking after the lady client trumps any hierarchical advantages that might be presumed to be part of the owner-manager’s role. As Gilligan (1982) argued, “We know ourselves as separate only insofar as we live in connection with others, and that we experience relationship only insofar as we differentiate other from self” (p. 63). Here we are drawn to an understanding of the role of the self for the small firm owner-manager and founder at the center of his or her firm, and the common identification of the self with the organization and vice versa (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011).

McVea and Freeman (2005) acknowledged the influence of perceiving of stakeholders as individuals with “names and faces” rather than faceless groupings. These faces and names are individuals with whom there is some relationship and a degree of closeness. The importance of proximity to everyday operations has been alluded to above, and is threaded through much of the foregoing discussion (Jones, 1991). It is proposed that proximity is important to understanding the analysis of stakeholder salience for the small firm. Mitchell, Agle, and Wood’s (1997) formulation of stakeholder salience as comprising power (coercive/utilitarian/normative), legitimacy, and urgency (temporality and criticality) remains largely intact despite critique and analysis (e.g., de Bakker & den Hond, 2008). Proximity, which has been found to be important to CSR in small firms (Courrent & Gundolf, 2009; Lähdesmäki & Suutari, 2012; Spence, 2004), is not fully accounted for by extant stakeholder salience theory (Sen & Cowley, 2013). In particular, it is proposed that proximity is influential in terms of urgency. For the small firm case, a third aspect of urgency could be added to time sensitivity and criticality, that of proximity (the degree of social nearness to the stakeholder). The difficulty of separating from local mores, norms, and values, not least as all key stakeholders are likely to be from that local region, is pertinent.

In summary, there are four key elements from an ethic of care perspective that can enhance the use of stakeholder theory for understanding small business social responsible. The points to note are as follows:

The inside of the black box of the firm is best represented by the owner-manager(s) of the business.

The small business is more likely to be defined by their role as a stakeholder of other organizations than as a central organization in its own right.

The key stakeholders for small businesses are likely to be employees, small local competitors, suppliers, local community, family, and customers.

Stakeholder salience is influenced by proximity, which adds a new dimension to the “urgency” perspective.

Building on this assessment, the article goes on to show how the second core CSR theory, Carroll’s pyramid of CSR, can be enhanced in a similar way.

Carroll’s Pyramid of CSR From the Perspective of an Ethic of Care

The pyramid of CSR has enjoyed enduring popularity (Burton & Goldsby, 2009) and remains “a leading paradigm of CSR” (Schwartz & Carroll, 2003, p. 504). As Windsor (2006) described it, more recent formulations of the original concept have not surpassed the

still canonical set of defined cumulative responsibilities, not tradeoffs, depicted classically as a subdivided “pyramid” cross-walked to stakeholder categories. The pyramid is a vertical triangle with four internal subdivisions for economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities in that order from foundation to apex. (p. 98)

It seems appropriate to expand on the description with Carroll’s (1991) own words:

It portrays the four components of CSR, beginning with the basic building block notion that economic performance undergirds all else. At the same time, business is expected to obey the law because the law is society’s codification of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Next is business’s responsibility to be ethical. At its most fundamental level, this is the obligation to do what is right, just, and fair, and to avoid or minimize harm to stakeholders (employees, consumers, the environment, and others). Finally, business is expected to be a good corporate citizen. This is captured in the philanthropic responsibility, wherein business is expected to contribute financial and human resources to the community and to improve the quality of life. (p. 42)

In later formulations, Carroll (1999) suggested different shapes for the pyramid and argued that it does not depict a sequential approach, rather that firms should strive to meet all of these perspectives simultaneously. Nevertheless, some purpose seems to sit behind the pyramid shape and the ordering of the four components.

Here the ideas behind the pyramid are reconsidered to expand the concept’s relevance for small firms. In doing so, the concept’s applicability is enhanced beyond large U.S. firms in a developed economy (Burton & Goldsby, 2009; Visser, 2005). Referring back to the foregoing discussion of stakeholder theory and the ethic of care, two avenues for reflection can be identified. The first relates to the content of the four domains within the pyramid. The second relates to the generalized focus on society that Carroll proposes.

Relevant domains for the CSR pyramid from an ethic of care perspective

Taking the domains from the bottom of the pyramid first, the elements of economic and legal responsibilities have echoes in the masculinist interpretation of stakeholder theory, suggesting autonomy, power, and control of the firm in relation to its environment. The underlying implication is that the corporation has the freedom to meet the required external regulatory and financial constraints, and can do so on its own terms. In the case of the small firm, security of position is more fragile and dependent on other stakeholders as has been argued. Accordingly, in place of “economic” and “legal” responsibilities, the author proposes the more evidently partisan and vulnerable notion of a responsibility for survival.⁴ This proposal is done on the basis of the firm needing to be economically viable and sufficiently in line with minimum legal requirements to continue to have a license to operate. It is also worth noting that small businesses are not generally profit maximizers but profit satisficers, tending to seek sufficient financial return to continue trading (Baumann-Pauly et al., 2013; Spence & Rutherfoord, 2001). Full legal compliance is unlikely in a small firm where there are insufficient resources to fund a dedicated lawyer or compliance manager (Jenkins, 2004).

From the point of view of ethical responsibilities, there is again a masculinist interpretation which is less suitable from a small firm perspective. Carroll uses an archetypal masculinist interpretation of “ethical” (Nunner-Winkler, 1993) by referring to “an obligation to do what is right, just and fair.” He does add the idea of “doing no harm” which is more in keeping with a care perspective, but for this category it is logical to be explicit that the ethic in question is an ethic of care, particularly in relation to those in close proximity. Thus, whereas Carroll’s (1991) version of ethics is based in rights, justice, and fairness, here the author proposes an ethic based in care.

As shown in Table 3, one domain from Carroll’s pyramid remains unchanged, that of philanthropic. While I have some sympathy with Schwartz and Carroll’s (2003) suggestion that philanthropic can be incorporated in the ethical domain, it is retained as a separate dimension here for reasons as follows. Ethical has been defined in this article as relating to care. This definition is only likely to refer to those with whom the organizational members have an existing personal relationship. Philanthropy, however, can occur outside of the close networks in the form of donations of time and money, though admittedly they may be facilitated by members of the organizational network (e.g., fundraising for an employee’s local sports club). Hence, the author retains Carroll’s philanthropy category as it offers something distinctive to an ethic of care.

Table 3.

Redrawing the CSR Pyramid Domains.

Masculinist perspective	Ethic of care perspective
Economic	Survival
Legal	Survival
Ethical (rights, justice, fairness)	Ethic of care
Philanthropic	Philanthropic
New category	Personal integrity

There is a key element of a care approach and a small firm perspective still unacknowledged in the revisions of Carroll’s pyramid thus far. That element is the personal integrity and reputation of the owner-manager. This element is a decisive factor in the small firm’s approach to social responsibility as noted above (Quinn, 1997). Thus, from an ethic of care perspective, the author argues that the four domains should be redrawn as indicated in Table 3.

Disaggregating the CSR pyramid with an ethic of care perspective

Having redefined some of the domains, a masculinist perspective of Carroll’s work would simply assess what order they should appear in to reflect responsibilities to society. However, drawing from the discussion on the application of stakeholder theory to small business, and applying the specific, contextualized nature of the ethic of care perspective leads to a fairly radical departure from Carroll’s generalized pyramid. Given the key importance of particular relationships from a care perspective, and the acceptance of a partisan approach to organization and practice, there is a fundamental conflict between an ethic of care perspective and the single, generalized approach depicted by Carroll’s pyramid. Hence, I propose a disaggregation of the pyramid from the general—societal—perspective to the specific—key relationships—perspective. It is proposed that close relationships warrant individual reflections of accountability and social responsibility from an ethic of care perspective. The individuals or groups toward whom the owner-manager at the center of this discussion is most accountable and responsible are those with whom they are in close proximity, that is, owner-managers are answerable to themselves, their families, their employees, their business partners, and their local communities. Accordingly a new “small business” version of Carroll’s model for each of these instances is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Small business social responsibility pyramids.

Carroll (1991) claimed that the four components in his pyramid are all required to achieve CSR, and it is likewise contended that all the (slightly different) components presented here are important. Nevertheless, the order in which they are presented is relevant, such that responsibilities are accumulated as one ascends the pyramid. The base of each pyramid shown in Figure 3 is the starting point for responsible behavior. At the apex are those aspects that are desirable but not essential. In addition, this departure from Carroll’s unitary approach to responsibility may necessitate that a range of pyramids is needed to understand the actor in question, rather than seeing one without the context of others. The ordering of the domains is evidently different according to the party to whom the owner-manager is responsible. Clearly this differentiation may cause some conflict for the owner-manager. However, it seems likely that this differentiation is a level of complexity which is also there for chief executive officers of MNCs but which is not accommodated by Carroll’s pyramid. The components of the four-part model shown in Figure 3 are further explained below:

Responsibility to self and family: Responsibility to the owner-manager himself or herself and to the family is a primary locus of accountability. This locus may also be the case for managers in large firms, but they are unlikely to feel such a close association of the self with the business in the way that small firm owner-managers do and associated discretion in business decision making (Burton & Goldsby, 2009; Quinn, 1997). In the small firm, the business is personal (Kitching, 1994) and linked very much to the person of the founder in particular (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011; Schein, 1983) as was noted in relation to stakeholder theory. Hence, the base of the components of responsibility, unlike in large firms, is the personal integrity of the owner-manager. Furthermore, survival of the business is of course a further requirement. Failure to ensure the survival of the business (encompassing dealing with economic and legal constraints) would result in personal loss of status and livelihood and indeed represent a failure for the owner-manager (Janjuha-Jivraj & Spence, 2009). Nevertheless, in some instances, businesses come and go but the reputation of the entrepreneur can remain intact, as in the phenomena of serial and portfolio entrepreneurs (Carland, Carland, & Stewart, 2000). The ethic of care perspective reflects the importance of the owner-manager to be accountable to - and for - those closest to him or her. Finally, the philanthropic approach is a desirable component from the point of view of the owner-manager, but will be limited by available resources. Where the owner-manager has a very strong personal commitment to some charitable cause, this philanthropic component might be closer to the base than the apex of the pyramid, and take on a greater importance.

Responsibility to employees: The close proximity of the working environment in most small firms, noted in the discussion on stakeholders, means that employees are extremely important to how the organization is run, including in terms of social responsibility (Jenkins, 2006). For the employees, the key perspective is the survival of the organization and the assurance for them of their livelihood (Spence, 1999). They are concerned that employees are properly looked after, with the ethical component coming next on the pyramid. This concern is particularly important in small firms as they are less likely be unionized and unlikely to have individuals responsible for human resource management issues who are familiar with legal requirements (Kotey & Slade, 2005). The personal integrity of the owner-manager is part of his or her leadership credibility in gaining the loyalty of the employees (Spence, 2004). Finally, philanthropic generosity is desirable for employees, especially where the owner-manager may be persuaded to donate some money from the business to causes which the employee supports. Employees have been found to be a common source of ideas for philanthropic projects, including resulting in donations across religious denominations (Spence & Schmidpeter, 2003).

Responsibility to the local community: From the point of view of the local community, the primary concern is that they are treated with fairness and respect, in an ethical manner (Russo & Tencati, 2009). This concern might mean ensuring that delivery trucks do not block roads, or that noise levels are kept to a minimum. Philanthropic contributions to community initiatives will be an important measure of the business’ social responsibility for community members (Besser & Miller, 2001). This responsibility has been found to be particularly pronounced in developing countries (Muthuri, Chapple, & Moon, 2009). The survival of the firm will be of interest because of the secondary investment of employees back into other local businesses and the avoidance of local unemployment. Finally, the personal integrity of the owner-manager will be a discretionary bonus to those community members in contact with him or her, but will only have an indirect impact in terms of the wider community.

Responsibility to business partners (suppliers, customers, competitors): To business partners, the primary responsibility is an economic one, ensuring that payments are made in a timely fashion, quality products delivered, and the sector prospers (Spence & Schmidpeter, 2003). In some cases, competitors are not necessarily seeking to put others in the sector out of business but rather to collaborate (Brown & Butler, 1995), seeing prosperity for all as the most beneficial way forward (Spence et al., 2001). In dealing with business partners on a one-to-one basis, the integrity of the owner-manager is key in acting as a means of social capital between business partners, and can be a source of trust in which business transactions are embedded (Casson & Della Giusta, 2007; Fuller & Tian, 2006; Russo & Perrini, 2009). Understanding the relational interdependence of business partners also extends to the ethic of care domain, with it being particularly important that business partners can communicate and collaborate with a view to mutual support. Finally, philanthropic perspectives may have a role to play in terms of supporting each other’s activities, for example, sponsoring a customer’s pet charity.

In summary, Archie Carroll’s CSR pyramid is useful for understanding social responsibility in small business when viewed from an ethic of care perspective wherein

the CSR domains are redrawn in terms of survival, personal integrity, ethic of care, and philanthropic;

the CSR pyramid approach is made specific rather than generalized, allowing for the order of priority of the CSR domains to be differentiated according to the group to whom responsibility is orientated.

Contributions and Future Research

In this article, three contributions are made to the extant literature. First, the ethic of care has been shown to help explain empirical observations of CSR in SMEs. Second, a feminist and in particular ethic of care application to core CSR theory has been shown to enable a redrawing of those theories revealing a masculinist bias in some extant CSR research. Third, it has been shown how these developed versions of CSR theory are illuminating and relevant when applied to small business social responsibility. While elements of these contributions have been touched on by others (Burton & Dunn, 1996b; von Weltzien Høivik & Melé, 2009; Wicks et al., 1994), this article represents systematic development of business and society theory with potentially wide-ranging implications. This section discusses each of these contributions in terms of their research implications and goes on briefly to consider the consequences for policy and practice.

Using Virginia Held’s summary of the characteristics of an ethic of care, it has been demonstrated that a care-based perspective on CSR has explanatory power. Whereas in MNCs, the focus on the responsibility to maximize shareholder value; the separation of ownership and control; the emphasis on formalized, contracted approaches; and hierarchical structures speak to a rationalist lens based on principles and utility, this focus is less illuminating for small firms. The highly personalized nature of business life in small firms, it is proposed, is the key reason for the pronounced relevance of an ethic of care. There is potential for a more fine-grained analysis of the relevance of the ethic of care to small business social responsibility, not least given the variation between small firms (Curran & Blackburn, 1994; Gibb, 2000; Goffee & Scase, 1996). For example, future research may consider whether size difference across small firms affects the pertinence of the ethic of care as an explanatory concept. Is there a tipping point in terms of the scale of an organization and the approach to CSR which can be observed? Does ownership have a role to play, whether the organization is jointly owned, a cooperative, owned by a silent partner, or owner-managed as has been assumed here? Industrial sector has been noted as a key distinguishing feature between firms (M. Phillips, 1994); are there some industrial sectors for which a care perspective is more in keeping than others? Are there other institutional factors that are relevant such as legal framework and whether the country is developing, a transition economy, or developed? What role do the characteristics of the individual owner-manager have to play? These characteristics might include experience in large firms, serial entrepreneurial experiences, previous successes or failures, education, religion, culture, and identity, belonging to a minority ethnic group, and the gender of the owner-manager. Given the feminist orientation of an ethic of care, gender deserves a special mention.

Gender of the owner-manager has not been discussed here because the argument has been that an ethic of care (a) is relevant to all, not just women; and (b) is a useful explanatory concept across small businesses. Future research might, however, interrogate this perspective more closely. While female entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses (commonly lumped together with ethnic-minority businesses) are regularly studied, there is little work that robustly explores gender in small business social responsibility (Braun, 2010; Calás et al., 2009). There is also an intriguing phenomenon in terms of the long-established existence of paternalism in small business studies (Goffee & Scase, 1996). The application of an ethic of care presented here has explicitly not been couched in terms of maternalism, but it is worth investigating whether there are links between the ethic of care and maternalistic or paternalistic management styles, and the role if any of the gender of owner-manager and stakeholders.

The ethic of care may be valuable for other types of settings than small firms. Others have previously used an ethic of care to seek to explain actions in implicit or explicit large firm settings (Burton & Dunn, 1996b; Liedtka, 1996; Simola, 2003). Hence, there are grounds for both deepening our understanding of the insights that can be gained by applying an ethic of care to small business, and investigating its potential in other organizational settings. The future research agenda in this area might, for example, explore such questions as the role of an ethic of care in explaining practice in family firms (both large and small) because “family and business dynamics are highly interrelated” (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003, p. 574). Where large firms are sometimes decentralized and characterized by small teams or groupings, the importance of proximity and personal relationships may point to a role for an ethic of care. Where firms are highly networked or closely linked with other organizations through their supply chain, for example, relationships are likely to be of great importance, again pointing to the potential for an ethic of care. It is also suitable to consider the role of an ethic of care outside of private sector businesses, in charities, nongovernmental organizations, trade associations, professional bodies, business networks, the public sector, and public–private partnerships.

Having considered avenues of future research that might profit from an ethic of care perspective, the second contribution relates to how feminist ethics and in particular the ethic of care application can enhance core theory in the business and society arena. Other theories might also benefit from renewed reflection, as it is reasonable to assume that they also have been drawn in light of the dominant masculinist worldview of business research. Some work has been done in this direction though failed thus far to be picked up substantially by the mainstream. For example, the ethic of care has been applied to corporate governance (Machold, Ahmed, & Farquhar, 2008), environmental sustainability (Sama, Welcomer, & Gerde, 2004), and corporate citizenship (Dion, 2001). Furthering these initial analyses, and augmenting them with other business and society concepts such as corporate philanthropy and corporate community involvement, could be of great value. The ethic of care is not without its critics, and there are a range of approaches within the overarching theory (for a discussion, see Keller, 1997). These approaches might usefully be subject to closer analysis and critique in the future, taking into account recent theoretical progress on care and compassion in organizations (Rynes, Bartunek, Dutton, & Margolis, 2012).

In this article, the author shows how redrawn versions of CSR theory from an ethic of care perspective are illuminating and relevant when applied to small business social responsibility. Thus, the article contributes to theory development for the small firm and SME literature. The revised versions of CSR theory could also usefully be tested for their relevance in other empirical contexts. Stakeholder theory and care has already received some treatment as previously noted in terms of the environment as a stakeholder (Sama et al., 2004), the Maori culture (Spiller et al., 2011), and with reference to employee rights (Burton & Dunn, 1996a). It would be interesting to assess whether there is any special alignment to the so-called “feminine” cultures such as in Denmark, or “masculine” cultures such as Japan. Given the ethic of care’s origins, is there a particular relevance where there are marginalized voices (such as the case with the environment) or where vulnerable people are concerned? Taking Carroll’s pyramid of CSR, with varied responsibilities according to different constituents, is there a need to focus more closely on subsections of society rather than seek to amalgamate “society” into one implied coherent whole?

This research highlights issues for policy makers and business practitioners. It informs the interactions between MNCs and small businesses typically but not only through supply chains. Presently received wisdom suggests that large firms can mitigate the risk of poor CSR practices among their suppliers (such as sweatshop labor practices in the sports apparel industry) by requiring their compliance to predetermined social responsibility standards (Boyd et al., 2007; “Working Conditions in Factories,” 2012). This approach implicitly assumes that the MNC is equipped to determine correct social responsibility standards, for example, in Spence and Bourlakis’ (2009) terms that they are Corporate Social Watchdogs, that suppliers have poor social responsibility, and that MNCs can and should transfer their standards up the supply chain. Boyd et al. (2007) have shown this assumption to be highly problematic and that imposition of standards may negatively affect supplier–buyer relationships. Indeed, standards and responsible sourcing codes are influenced most actively by the MNC view (Gilbert & Rasche, 2007). Furthermore, as small businesses have been identified as targets for policy makers in relation to CSR (CEC, 2008), this work is an important contribution to understanding how best to support the promotion of socially responsible business practice. Advancing the “business case,” for example, is unhelpful when profit maximization is not a driver and small businesses are already operating with employee care and reputation management as high priorities whether or not they call this approach CSR (Baumann-Pauly et al., 2013). In contrast, awareness of the embedded nature and importance of relationships and promoting network, cluster, and trade-based CSR would be more meaningful (Murillo & Lozano, 2009; Perrini, 2006).

Conclusion

This article, and the body of work on ethics and social responsibility in small firms on which it builds, has significant implications for mainstream CSR and small business research. CSR in small firms has to date been a distant relative of the main field, only really having an impact at the margins. Part of the reason for this marginalization has been poor awareness of the overwhelming importance of small firms and the high profile, individual power, and impact of MNCs. In addition, a failure by small firm researchers to engage fully with CSR theory tending instead to rely on empirical research rather than theory development has not helped the small firm perspective to gain traction in the wider field. In this article, progress has been proposed by engaging closely with the familiar territory of CSR theory, but redrawing it to show how it can be illuminating for small firms. It is hoped that this process has also enriched CSR theory in a wider sense and enhanced its relevance. Furthermore, the exercise is of value to the small business literature by offering a clear theoretical basis for future social responsibility research in the small firm context. In particular, the introduction of the ethic of care may also have wider value in small business studies. This research provides a meaningful bridge between the SME and the CSR literatures, with appropriately crafted theory for empirical testing and further development.

The work presented here is limited in a number of ways. First, it is limited in scope in terms of engaging with only two core concepts in the business and society literature, and treating small firms as heterogeneous. A loose definition of small business and SMEs was used here, in part reflective of the disparity of definitions of the small firm. A relative position has been taken, describing smaller firms rather than seeking to point to a definitive type or size. Indeed, this description is no different from research on MNCs, where a common understanding is often presumed, without seeking to define what is undoubtedly also a highly heterogeneous group, although relatively small in number. In this article, the approach has been to accept the idiosyncrasies empirically observed within the small business and focus on the commonalities. Future research should consider some of the subgroups of small firms. For example, a significant proportion of those firms which are defined as small have no employees at all (CEC, 2008), and the analysis here incompletely applies to them, as emphasis has been given to the importance of employees. Finally, it should be noted that here the entrepreneur is considered simply to be the small business owner-manager, despite the many and varied understandings of entrepreneurship as an activity, character trait, process, or organizational stage (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). Such aspects are also beyond the scope of the current article.

Feminist research in the business and society, small business, and mainstream management fields appears regularly but tends not to be embraced actively by the mainstream research base. Reasons for this reluctance are unclear, but it is hoped that the fresh perspective that has been developed in this article demonstrates the wide relevance of a feminist approach. As small business and CSR research are already running somewhat parallel to the mainstream, feminist perspectives on these fields may run the risk of ending up in an intellectual siding. It is sincerely hoped that the potential value of the approach continues to be acknowledged, interrogated, critiqued, and used to good effect in the future.

By focusing on small business, one purpose has been to shift the lens away from the hegemony of the MNC. Large firms routinely and systematically overshadow any other type of organization in the management and business literature and popular press. I conclude by calling for renewed awareness and acknowledgment of CSR in the full gamut of organizational forms and ownership structures such as public sector firms, state enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, charities, social enterprises, family businesses, cooperatives, small business partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Each of these forms and structures plays a substantive role in business and society and research is incomplete if they are disregarded when theorizing CSR.

Footnotes

Appendix

MNC and SME Difference and Small Business Social Responsibility (SBSR) Implications.

	Classic MNC (Djelic & Amdam, 2007; Sundaram & Black, 1992)	Classic small business	SBSR implications
Ownership and control	Shareholders, principal, and CEO agent	Owner-manager as principal and agent (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003; Quinn, 1997), personal and family influence (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011; Jenkins, 2004; Morsing & Perrini, 2009; Uhlaner, van Goor-Balk, & Masurel, 2004)	Partisan: Discretionary CSR implicit, responsibility to family and self
Governance and reporting	Formalized and codified professionalization of management	Informal and personal (Baumann-Pauly, Wickert, Spence, & Scherer, 2013; Kitching, 1994; Kotey & Slade, 2005; Russo & Tencati, 2009)	Personalized: No language or codification for CSR
Transactions (internal and external)	Contract based, profit maximization, and shareholder value	Relationship based in embedded community networks (Besser & Miller, 2001; Campin, Barraket, & Luke, 2013; Murillo & Lozano, 2009), reputation, status and legacy (Lähdesmäki & Siltaoja, 2010) Importance of social capital (Fuller & Tian, 2006; Russo & Perrini, 2009)	Relationship based: Personal trust, integrity, honesty
Power structures	Hierarchical and role orientated	Flat, flexible, multitasking; personalized responsibility (Russo & Tencati, 2009; Small Business Research Centre, 1997)	Flat power structure and responsibility: Owner-manager power, and responsibility for and reliance on employees

Note. MNC = multinational corporation; SME = small- and medium-sized enterprise; CSR = corporate social responsibility.

Acknowledgements

The authors express sincere thanks to the special issue editors and reviewers, Kate Grosser, and Dirk Matten for their insightful comments in the development of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Laura J. Spence (PhD, Brunel University) is a professor of business ethics and director of the Centre for Research Into Sustainability at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Accounting, Organizations and Society, Business Ethics Quarterly, California Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and Organization Studies.

References

Agle

Donaldson

Freeman

R. E.

Jensen

Mitchell

Wood

(2008). Dialogue: Toward superior stakeholder theory. Business Ethics Quarterly, 18, 153-190.

Aldrich

Cliff

(2003). The pervasive effects of family on entrepreneurship: Toward a family embeddedness perspective. Journal of Business Venturing, 18, 573-596.

Banerjee

S. B.

(2007). Corporate social responsibility: The good, the bad and the ugly. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Baumann-Pauly

Wickert

Spence

L. J.

Scherer

A. G.

(2013). Organizing corporate social responsibility in small and large firms: Size matters. Journal of Business Ethics, 15, 693-705.

Besser

Miller

(2001). Is the good corporation dead? The community social responsibility of small business operators. Journal of Socio-Economics, 30, 221-241.

Borgerson

J. L.

(2007). On the harmony of feminist ethics and business ethics. Business and Society Review, 112, 477-509.

Boyd

Spekman

R. E. E.

Kamauff

J. W.

Werhane

(2007). Corporate social responsibility in global supply chains: A procedural justice perspective. Long Range Planning, 40, 341-356.

Brandenburger

Nalebuff

(1996). Co-opetition. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Braun

(2010). Going green: Women entrepreneurs and the environment. International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, 2, 245-259.

10.

Brown

Butler

(1995). Competitors as allies: A study of entrepreneurial networks in the U.S. wine industry. Journal of Small Business Management, 33(3), 57-66.

11.

Burton

Dunn

(1996a). Collaborative control and the commons: Safeguarding employee rights. Business Ethics Quarterly, 6, 277-288.

12.

Burton

Dunn

(1996b). Feminist ethics as moral grounding for stakeholder theory. Business Ethics Quarterly, 6, 133-147.

13.

Burton

Goldsby

(2009). Corporate social responsibility orientation, goals, and behavior: A study of small business owners. Business & Society, 48, 88-104.

14.

Calás

Smircich

Bourne

(2009). Extending the boundaries: Reframing “entrepreneurship as social change” through feminist perspectives. Academy of Management Review, 34, 552-569.

15.

Campin

Barraket

Luke

(2013). Micro-business community responsibility in Australia: Approaches, motivations and barriers. Journal of Business Ethics, 115, 489-513.

16.

Carland

J. C.

Carland

J. W.

Stewart

W. H.

(2000). The indefatigable entrepreneur: A study of the dispositions of multiple venture founders. Journal of Business & Entrepreneurship, 12(1), 1-16.

17.

Carroll

A. B.

(1991). The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders. Business Horizons, 34(4), 39-48.

18.

Carroll

A. B.

(1999). Corporate social responsibility: Evolution of a definitional construct. Business & Society, 38, 268-295.

19.

Casson

Della Giusta

(2007). Entrepreneurship and social capital: Analysing the impact of social networks on entrepreneurial activity from a rational action perspective. International Small Business Journal, 25, 220-244.

20.

Commission of the European Communities. (2008). “Think small first” a “small business act” for Europe (COM[2008] 394 final). Brussels, Belgium. Retrieved from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0394:FIN:en:PDF

21.

Courrent

J.-M.

Gundolf

(2009). Proximity and micro-enterprise manager’s ethics: A French empirical study of responsible business attitudes. Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 749-762.

22.

Cox

Sanderson

Watson

(2001). Supply chains and power regimes: Toward an analytic framework for managing extended networks of buyer and supplier relationships. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 37, 28-35.

23.

Curran

Blackburn

(1994). Small firms and local economic networks: The death of the local economy? London, England: Paul Chapman.

24.

Curran

Blackburn

(2001). Researching the small enterprise. London, England: Sage.

25.

de Bakker

den Hond

(2008). Introducing the politics of stakeholder influence: Review essay. Business & Society, 47, 8-20.

26.

De Carolis

D. M.

Saparito

(2006). Social capital, cognition, and entrepreneurial opportunities: A theoretical framework. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30, 41-56.

27.

Derry

(1999). The mother-child paradigm and its relevance to the workplace. Business & Society, 38, 217-225.

28.

Derry

(2007). Feminist theory and business ethics. In Frederick

R. E.

(Ed.), A companion to business ethics (pp. 81-87). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

29.

Dion

(2001). Corporate citizenship as an ethic of care: Corporate values, codes of ethics, and global governance. In Andriof

McIntosh

(Eds.), Perspectives on corporate citizenship: Context, content and processes (pp. 118-138). Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing.

30.

Djelic

M.-L.

Amdam

(2007). Americanization in comparative perspective: The managerial revolution in France and Norway, 1940-1990. Business History, 49, 483-505.

31.

Drakopoulou Dodd

Anderson

(2007). Mumpsimus and the mything of the individualistic entrepreneur. International Small Business Journal, 25, 341-360.

32.

Dunham

(2010). From rational to wise action: Recasting our theories of entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Ethics, 92, 513-530.

33.

Engster

(2011). Care ethics and stakeholder theory. In Hamington

Sander-Staudt

(Eds.), Applying care ethics to business (pp. 93-110). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

34.

Fassin

(2008). Imperfections and shortcomings of the stakeholder model’s graphical representation. Journal of Business Ethics, 80, 879-888.

35.

Fauchart

Gruber

(2011). Darwinians, communitarians and missionaries: The role of founder identity in entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Journal, 54, 935-957.

36.

Fisher

Geenen

Jurcevic

McClintock

Davis

(2009). Applying asset-based community development as a strategy for CSR: A Canadian perspective on a win–win for stakeholders and SMEs. Business Ethics: A European Review, 18, 66-82.

37.

Freeman

R. E.

(1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston, MA: Pitman Publishing.

38.

Freeman

R. E.

Liedtka

(1991). Corporate social responsibility: A critical approach. Business Horizons, 34(4), 92-98.

39.

Freeman

R. E.

Velamuri

S. R.

(2006). A new approach to CSR: Company stakeholder responsibility. In Morsing

Kakabadse

(Eds.), Corporate social responsibility: Reconciling aspiration with application (pp. 9-23). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

40.

Fuller

Tian

(2006). Social and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship: An empirical investigation of SME narratives. Journal of Business Ethics, 67, 287-304.

41.

Gartner

(2007). Is there an elephant in entrepreneurship? Blind assumptions in theory development. In Cuervo

Ribeiro

Roig

(Eds.), Entrepreneurship: Concepts, theory and perspectives (pp. 229-244). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

42.

Gibb

(2000). SME policy, academic research and the growth of ignorance, mythical concepts, myths, assumptions, rituals and confusions. International Small Business Journal, 18, 13-35.

43.

Gilbert

D. U.

Rasche

(2007). Discourse ethics and social accountability: The ethics of SA8000. Business Ethics Quarterly, 17, 187-216.

44.

Gilligan

(1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

45.

Goffee

Scase

(1996). Corporate realities: The dynamics of large and small organizations. London, England: International Thompson Business Press.

46.

Grant

Perren

(2002). Small business and entrepreneurial research: Meta-theories, paradigms and prejudices. International Small Business Journal, 20, 185-211.

47.

Grosser

(2009). Corporate social responsibility and gender equality: Women as stakeholders and the European union sustainability strategy. Business Ethics: A European Review, 18, 290-307.

48.

Grosser

Moon

(2005). Gender mainstreaming and corporate social responsibility: Reporting workplace issues. Journal of Business Ethics, 62, 327-340.

49.

Hamington

Sander-Staudt

(Eds.). (2011). Applying care ethics to business. Berlin, Germany: Springer.

50.

Held

(2006). The ethics of care: Personal, political and global. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

51.

Jamali

Zanhour

Keshishian

(2009). Peculiar strengths and relational attributes of SMEs in the context of CSR. Journal of Business Ethics, 87, 355-377.

52.

Janjuha-Jivraj

Spence

L. J.

(2009). The nature of reciprocity in family firm succession. International Small Business Journal, 27, 702-719.

53.

Jenkins

(2004). A critique of conventional CSR theory: An SME perspective. Journal of General Management, 29(4), 55-75.

54.

Jenkins

(2006). Small business champions for corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 67, 241-256.

55.

Johannson

(1997). The challenge of implementing ISO 14001 for small- and medium-sized enterprises—Surviving in the new global jungle. Environmental Quality Management, 7, 9-19.

56.

Jones

(1991). Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: An issue-contingent model. Academy of Management Review, 16, 366-395.

57.

Keller

(1997). Autonomy, relationality, and feminist ethics. Hypatia, 12, 152-164.

58.

Kitching

(1994). Employer’s work-force construction policies in the small service sector enterprise. In Storey

Atkinson

(Eds.), Employment, the small firm, and the labour market (pp. 103-146). London, England: Routledge.

59.

Kotey

Slade

(2005). Formal human resource management practices in small growing firms. Journal of Small Business Management, 43, 16-40.

60.

Lähdesmäki

Siltaoja

(2010). Towards a variety of meanings—Multiple representations of reputation in the small business context. British Journal of Management, 21, 207-222.

61.

Lähdesmäki

Suutari

(2012). Keeping at arm’s length or searching for social proximity? Corporate social responsibility as a reciprocal process between small businesses and the local community. Journal of Business Ethics, 108, 481-493.

62.

Lepoutre

Heene

(2006). Investigating the impact of firm size on small business social responsibility: A critical review. Journal of Business Ethics, 67, 257-273.

63.

Liedtka

J. M.

(1996). Feminist morality and competitive reality: A role for an ethic of care? Business Ethics Quarterly, 6, 179-200.

64.

Machold

Ahmed

Farquhar

(2008). Corporate governance and ethics: A feminist perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 81, 665-678.

65.

McVea

Freeman

R. E.

(2005). A names-and-faces approach to stakeholder management: How focusing on stakeholders as individuals can bring ethics and entrepreneurial strategy together. Journal of Management Inquiry, 14, 57-69.

66.

Mirchandani

(2002). Feminist insight on gendered work: New directions in research on women and entrepreneurship. Gender, Work & Organization, 6, 224-235.

67.

Mitchell

R. K.

Agle

B. R.

Chrisman

J. J.

Spence

L. J.

(2011). Toward a theory of stakeholder salience in family firms. Business Ethics Quarterly, 21, 235-255.

68.

Mitchell

R. K.

Agle

B. R.

Wood

D. J.

(1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22, 853-886.

69.

Morsing

Perrini

(2009). CSR in SMEs: Do SMEs matter for the CSR agenda? Business Ethics: A European Review, 18, 1-6.

70.

Murillo

Lozano

(2009). Pushing forward SME CSR through a network: An account from the Catalan model. Business Ethics: A European Review, 18, 7-20.

71.

Muthuri

J. N.

Chapple

Moon

(2009). An integrated approach to implementing community participation in corporate community involvement: Lessons from Magadi Soda “Company in Kenya.” Journal of Business Ethics, 85, 431-444.

72.

Nunner-Winkler

(1993). Two moralities? A critical discussion of an ethic of care and responsibility versus an ethic of rights and justice. In Larrabee

M. J.

(Ed.), An ethic of care: Feminist and interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 143-156). New York, NY: Routledge.

73.

Perrini

(2006). SMEs and CSR theory: Evidence and implications from an Italian perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 67, 305-316.

74.

Phillips

(1994). Industry mindsets: Exploring the cultures of two macro-organizational settings. Organizational Science, 5, 384-402.

75.

Phillips

(2003). Stakeholder theory and organizational ethics. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Kohler.

76.

Piperopoulos

(2010). Tacit knowledge and emotional intelligence: The “intangible” values of SMEs. Strategic Change: Briefings in Entrepreneurial Finance, 19, 125-139.

77.

Quinn

J. J.

(1997). Personal ethics and business ethics: The ethical attitudes of owner/managers of small business. Journal of Business Ethics, 16, 119-127.

78.

Russo

Perrini

(2009). Investigating stakeholder theory and social capital: CSR in large firms and SMEs. Journal of Business Ethics, 91, 207-221.

79.

Russo

Tencati

(2009). Formal vs. informal CSR strategies: Evidence from Italian micro, small, medium-sized, and large firms. Journal of Business Ethics, 85, 339-353.

80.

Rynes

S. L.

Bartunek

J. M.

Dutton

J. E.

Margolis

J. D.

(2012). Care and compassion through an organizational lens: Opening up new possibilities. Academy of Management Review, 37, 503-523.

81.

Sama

L. M.

Welcomer

S. A.

Gerde

V. W.

(2004). Who speaks for the trees? Invoking an ethic of care to give voice to the silent stakeholder. In Sharma

Starik

(Eds.), Stakeholders, the environment and society (pp. 140-165). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

82.

Schein

(1983). The role of the founder in creating organizational culture. Organizational Dynamics, 12, 13-28.

83.

Scherer

A. G.

Palazzo

(2011). The new political role of business in a globalized world: A review of a new perspective on CSR and its implications for the firm, governance, and democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48, 899-931.

84.

Schwartz

M. S.

Carroll

A. B.

(2003). Corporate social responsibility: A three-domain approach. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13, 503-530.

85.

Sen

Cowley

(2013). The relevance of stakeholder theory and social capital theory in the context of CSR in SMEs: An Australian perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 118, 413-427.

86.

Shane

Venkataraman

(2000). The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of Management Review, 25, 217-226.

87.

Simola

(2003). Ethics of justice and care in corporate crisis management. Journal of Business Ethics, 46, 351-361.

88.

Singer

(2006). Business strategy and poverty alleviation. Journal of Business Ethics, 66, 225-231.

89.

Small Business Research Centre. (1997). Dialogue with business owners: Bi-annual research into their motivations, experiences and views. London, England: Horwarth Clark Whitehill.

90.

Spence

L. J.

(1999). Does size matter? The state of the art in small business ethics. Business Ethics: A European Review, 8, 163-174.

91.

Spence

L. J.

(2004). Small firm accountability and integrity. In Brenkert

(Ed.), Corporate integrity and accountability (pp. 115-128). London, England: Sage.

92.

Spence

L. J.

Bourlakis

(2009). From CSR to SCR: The evolution of supply chain responsibility. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 14, 291-302.

93.

Spence

L. J.

Coles

A.-M.

Harris

(2001). The forgotten stakeholder? Ethics and social responsibility in relation to competitors. Business and Society Review, 106, 331-352.

94.

Spence

L. J.

Rutherfoord

(2001). Social responsibility, profit maximisation and the small firm owner-manager. Small Business and Enterprise Development, 8, 126-139.

95.

Spence

L. J.

Schmidpeter

(2003). SMEs, social capital and the common good. Journal of Business Ethics, 45, 93-108.

96.

Spiller

Erakovic

Henare

Pio

(2011). Relational well-being and wealth: Māori businesses and an ethic of care. Journal of Business Ethics, 98, 153-169.

97.

Stonehouse

Pemberton

(2002). Strategic planning in SMEs—Some empirical findings. Management Decision, 40, 853-861.

98.

Sundaram

Black

J. S.

(1992). The environment and internal organization of multinational corporations. Academy of Management Review, 17, 729-757.

99.

Tang

(2012). Stakeholder–firm power difference, stakeholders’ CSR orientation, and SMEs’ environmental performance in China. Journal of Business Venturing, 27, 436-455.

100.

Tronto

(1993). Beyond gender difference to a theory of care. In Larrabee

M. J.

(Ed.), An ethic of care: Feminist and interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 240-257). New York, NY: Routledge.

101.

Uhlaner

van Goor-Balk

Masurel

(2004). Family business and corporate social responsibility in a sample of Dutch firms. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 11, 186-194.

102.

U.S. Small Business Administration. (2012). Office of advocacy. Retrieved from http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf.

103.

van Oosterhout

Heugens

(2008). Much ado about nothing: A conceptual critique of corporate social responsibility. In Siegel

D. S.

Matten

McWilliams

Crane

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of corporate social responsibility (pp. 197-223). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

104.

Visser

(2005). Revisiting Carroll’s CSR pyramid: An African perspective. In Pedersen

Huniche

(Eds.), Corporate citizenship in a developing countries: New partnership perspectives (pp. 29-56). Copenhagen, Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press.

105.

von Weltzien Høivik

Melé

(2009). Can an SME become a global corporate citizen? Evidence from a case study. Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 551-563.

106.

White

(1992). Business, ethics, and Carol Gilligan’s “two voices.” Business Ethics Quarterly, 2, 51-61.

107.

Wicks

Gilbert

Freeman

R. E.

(1994). A feminist reinterpretation of the stakeholder concept. Business Ethics Quarterly, 4, 475-497.

108.

Windsor

(2006). Corporate social responsibility: Three key approaches. Journal of Management Studies, 43, 93-114.

109.

Working conditions in factories: When the jobs inspector calls: Do campaigns for “ethical supply chains” help workers? (2012, May 31). The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/21551498

110.

World Bank. (2012). Annual Report. Retrieved from http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/EXTANNREP/EXTANNREP2012/0,,menuPK:8784414~pagePK:64168427~piPK:64168435~theSitePK:8784409,00.html

111.

Wymenga

Spanikova

Barker

Konings

Canton

(2012). EU SMEs in 2012: At the crossroads—Annual Report on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the EU, 2011/12. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-analysis/performance-review/files/supporting-documents/2012/annual-report_en.pdf