Businesses are under the increasing pressure to demonstrably engage in social responsibility (SR). Following the demand, the International Standard Organization developed ISO 26000 for SR. small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are dominant in contributing to GDP. The relationship between SMEs and SR is still elusive. The purpose of this paper will be aimed at how SMEs will adopt ISO 26000 under what circumstances. We determine a set of hypotheses about diffusion of ISO 26000 and examine it empirically. We provide a better understanding of the cognition-behavior gap while “doing good”. SMEs think that SR was Philanthropic responsibility, but strive for their subsistence as their top priority of strategy decisions. However, the impact of multinomial company and government are not decisive. Finally, SMEs take SR practices into consideration when evaluating stakeholder, they are more likely to adopt ISO 26000. Thus, SMEs must feed themselves with their own words and grow.
TopIntroduction
Businesses are under the increasing pressure from their stakeholders to demonstrably engage in activities which are known as corporate social responsibility (CSR), social responsibility (SR), environment management and sustainability issue. In dealing with rapidly globalization, they have to increasingly face the challenge of doing more with less. Especially Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in the development of global economy (Morsing & Perrini, 2009), but lack of resource. Although there are several private and public organizations focus on improvement of social welfare of firm (Retolaza, Ruiz, & San-Jose, 2009). However, such initiatives are little, so indeed much thinking about SMEs and SR are based on a range of unsubstantiated hypotheses about SME behaviors (Jenkins, 2006).
There is an increasing appeal for businesses to become involved in SR practices (Fassin, 2008; Stoian & Gilman, 2016). Following this demand, the International Standard Organization (ISO) developed ISO 26000 international guidance standard for SR in 2004 (Castka & Balzarova, 2008a). The ISO 26000 has been built on the practical infrastructure of ISO 14000 and ISO 9000 (Castka & Balzarova, 2008a). This standard is suitable for all scales of organizations, no matter large or small (ISO/TMB/WG/SR, 2009). Castka, Balzarova, Bamer, and Sharp (2004) demonstrated how SMEs can implement the SR agenda and benefit from it. Furthermore, SMEs need to understand more about the details and conditions through more studies to adopt SR practices (Morsing & Perrini, 2009).
Large companies usually start from a small scale. Many a little makes a mickle. Most of all the businesses in Taiwan, including SMEs, are export-oriented or part of multinomial corporate (MNC) supply chain (Chen, Lin, & Chu, 2013). Taiwan has a very sound economy, and the best approach to mainland china’s expanding market. For these reasons, the purpose of this paper will be aimed at how SMEs among Taiwan will adopt ISO 26000 under what circumstances.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. We start by reviewing the relevant literature about SMEs, social responsibility and ISO 26000. We then detail our methodology and investigate empirically. Next, we focus on the diffusions of ISO 26000. Finally, we conclude the key factors that push SMEs to engage in social responsible.