دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی مدیریت محیطی و عمل مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکتی شرکتهای کوچک و متوسط - الزویر 2018

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to facilitate small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt environmental management (EM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. The study reveals SMEs’ motivation, pressure, targets and methods for EM and CSR practices. Additionally, the paper investigates how these variables relate to employee number, turnover and geographical locations. The outcomes of the research will add value to SMEs decision-making processes in both strategic and policy levels (e.g. supplier selection) and policymakers’ initiatives to make SMEs environment and socially friendly. Although there are studies on EM and CSR practices of SMEs, they mainly focus on impact of EM and CSR practices on business performance, and SMEs’ motivation for adopting EM and CSR practices in specific country. Studies that reveal SMEs’ motivation, pressure, targets and methods for EM and CSR practices and their relationship with their characteristics (e.g. size, turn over, and geographical location) are scant. This research bridges this gap. Our data originates from 223 carefully selected representative SMEs in the West Midlands, UK (105) and Kolkata, India (118) covering manufacturing and process industries. The relevant data was collected using questionnaires and analysed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) methods. The results reveal that perceptions of SMEs’ motivation, pressure, targets and methods of EM and CSR practices vary considerably with respect to size, turn over and geographical location. The findings are significant to policymakers, client organizations and individual SME for improving EM and CSR practices.

Conclusions

The association of SMEs’ number of employees, turnover and geographical location with EM and CSR practices is unique and assists in decision-making for optimum supply chain design and operations. Moreover, derivations of the perceptions of the SMEs’ experienced managerial staff on EM and CSR practices in both the countries are quite unique and have strong practical significance. Whilst our study results are not representative of all SMEs they do highlight areas for policymakers and government bodies to focus on making improvements. Thus, on one hand our results call for improving the sustainability practices of SMEs covering both environmental and social practices and on the other hand provide information to all involved beneficiaries. Specifically, individual SMEs could benchmark their involvement in environmental and CSR practices in comparison to others by observing the outcomes of the current study and potentially adopt means for further improvement. The SMEs customers (i.e. OEMs/retailers/public sector units) could take away the knowledge on their SMEs’ environmental and CSR practices to make appropriate decisions upon selecting their supply chain partners. Moreover, this study could inform the policymakers on the basic characteristics of environmental and CSR practices of SMEs, in order to facilitate their improvement through additional resources. Furthermore, suppliers of SMEs are expected to gain knowledge on their SME customers related to their involvement with CSR practices, enabling the former to practice green supply chain operations. Finally, this study will contribute to the public awareness of EM and CSR practices of SMEs. This will also help other sectors to formulate their strategies and policies. Lastly, as mentioned before, this study is limited to a single industry type, the one of manufacturing and processing, due to the lack of more diverse data. As such, generalizations made in this study may not be appropriate for other business sectors of SMEs. Construction industry could be a very good candidate for future study as this industry is equally vulnerable with respect to environmental and social impact. Our study is limited to two geographical locations – West Midlands in the UK and West Bengal in India. Although there are a few synergies of both the locations, the biasness could not be avoided completely. Therefore, one needs to undertake research across varied regions in order to generalize the findings. Sample size is also another limitation of the study along with the perceptional survey method and consideration of limited constructs. Hence, further study could be undertaken using more robust constructs.