CSR and sustainability in SMEs. Social Capital and sustainable development of SMEs

Beschreibung

By 6 case studies from 12 2009 to 04 2010 in cooperation with small businesses (from 3 to 85 employees) we have tried to create a methode to link up results from measuring social capital with results from balance sheet analyses. The aim was to get a statement about capabilities of SMEs to cope with future requirements as we know them from sustainable development in order to to generate several hypotheses out of the assumption: todays soft facts are the tomorrows hard facts. The data were collected by business reports, standardised questionnairs, semi structured individual interviews and site visits.
The social capital concept, a further assumption, offers an appropriate basis for as-sessing the mentioned capabilities. The characteristic of social capital in connection with environmental performance shows the willingness of the staff to pick up an excitation from outside (bridging) and to bring it to a collective action (bonding).
The 6 case studies are part of a project chain to deploy an online service with two intentions: (1) to deliver a practical service for supporting SMEs with an automatically generated feedback report as a preparation for the internal rating by a bank; in most cases a written document about the status and potentials will strengthen the position of SMEs in their relation to banks; (2) to deliver an instrument for collecting data and feeding a data base to prove several hypotheses about the relation between soft facts of sustainable SMEs development and their ability to gain future revenues.
Financing issues are used as a leverage to achieve two goals: (1) SMEs learn about sustainability by using self assessment tool; (2) Research gets data which have been never collected before.

Zeitraum	5 Sept. 2010 → 17 Sept. 2010
Ereignistitel	Corporate Responsibility Research Conference 2010 “Sustainability Management in a Diverse World”
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International