Awareness-rasing Sustainable Business and Corporate Social Responsibility Among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Awareness-rasing Sustainable Business and Corporate Social Responsibility Among Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Huseyin, Onlem Ersoz
Ramazan, Kilic

Sustainable business and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have been raising in Turkey since 2001 Economic Crisis. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), is an approach developed with the concept of sustainable development. CSR is a kind of self-regulation management and organization model. CSR means that a company's business model should be socially responsible and environmentally sustainable. It refers to responsible corporate action beyond legal requirements; CSR manifests itself throughout the value chain, in a company’s treatment of its employees and in its dealings with the relevant stakeholders. Especially, most large-sized companies in Turkey at least have played some roles on sustainable development with their projects, activities or reports. Most of them have relations with the world business environment. That’s why they could find chance and had to use sustainable strategic management methods to prevent their stakeholders. But many small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) couldn’t have realized yet the importance of sustainability and CSR because of the many reasons (financing, accounting, human resources, work places, cultures and others). SMEs give dynamism to the Turkish economy, employment and businesses providing an important contribution to sustainable development. 98% of total enterprises in Turkey ara SMEs, Community and the environment in which SMEs can make significant contributions to corporate social responsibility. Because the term responsible for the business, social and environmental issues become part of the company's activities to ensure the economic success of the company with sustainability. CSR in Turkey is not a new subject. Historical background the society has already got a culture of philanthropy by some foundations and trade guilds. The research problem was how SMEs efforts could be improved into responsible entrepreneurship by raising questions on the possible ways with a profitable and sensible manner. The research may also help the companies in our region identify further actions that they can take to strengthen their business, its reputation and performance. The research area was undertaken in Aydin. Only seven percent of companies have ISO 9000 certificate. Almost nearly SMEs don’t have certificates such as ISO 14000 and CE certificates. This situation may be the result of SMEs adequate environmental awareness. SMEs owner/managers play important roles to build workplace, environmental, marketplace and community policies. Cause they are the first policy makers on entreprises’ values. Besides they think that these are unnecessary expenditures for themselves and the society or they have limited ability to apply. Keywords: Sustainable Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Business Policies, Company Values

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-31

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