Corporate Social Responsibility in SMEs and MNEs. The Different Strategic Decision Making

The purpose of this paper is about how the strategic decisions are affected by CSR's factors, how different are the strategies that are being adopted by the SMEs compared to the MNEs. The SMEs represent a major share of economic value creation worldwide, and differ substantially from MNEs in terms of organizational characteristics, behavioral guiding principles, financial and human resources. The literature mainly is focusing on how large multinational corporations (MNEs) can address to environmental and social problems that arise globally. How the largest multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in their (inclusive) business strategies, either as suppliers, distributors, customers, innovators or as a target of their CSR policies are searchable. We notice that SMEs possess several organizational characteristics that are favorable for promoting the implementation of CSR related practices. In the contrast, the MNEs possess several characteristics that are favorable for promoting external communication and reporting about CSR, but at the same time constrain the internal implementation. Topics, such as how different is the dedication of the personnel, the sensitivities of the enterprises upon social matters, the critical decisions of the management between SMEs and MNEs, and how the stakeholder engagement affect this strategic decision making are discussed hereafter. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.