Mapping social responsible practices in Portuguese SME

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been mainly associated with big, often multinational, companies. Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) represent an important part of the economic structure globally. Specifically in Portugal, SME’s represent more than 90% of the economic structure, which makes them the most important contributor to the Portuguese economy. Even though, there is still much to know about the implementation of CSR practices in this type of companies. This paper investigates what social responsible practices Portuguese SME implement, identifying different company profiles. The concept of social responsibility was operationalized in eight groups of practices, corresponding to the economic, social and environmental dimensions. Data collection was made using a structured questionnaire sent to 5452 companies and 421 valid answers were obtained (response rate of 21%). Following the descriptive analysis, a cluster analysis was performed using the hierarchical method. The cluster analysis revealed four groups of companies that represent four different implementation levels of social responsibility practices: low CSR implementation; medium-low CSR implementation; medium-high CSR implementation; and high CSR implementation. The low CSR implementation (45,8%) is the major cluster, followed by the medium-low CSR implementation (26,4%). Based on the cluster analysis, companies’ profiling was developed allowing an in-depth understanding of the most and less implemented CSR practices in each cluster. The companies revealing higher levels of CSR practices tend to be larger, older, with a higher turnover value and with some type of certification.