IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/corsem/v32y2025i5p6879-6896.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond Values: Business Orientation as a Driver of Small Business Social Responsibility

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara Tomasella
  • Elaine Conway

Abstract

Small businesses differ from larger corporations in their approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR) due to their unique reliance on the personal values of owner/managers. This study employs an abductive research methodology to explore the depth and relative influence of these personal values, in contrast to business motivations, on their social responsibility, through 38 semi‐structured interviews with owner‐managers of small businesses. Our key finding lies in demonstrating that transcending the purely economic‐focused responsibilities toward broader social change requires self‐transcendent values embedded in business orientation; otherwise, such values informing small business social responsibility (SBSR) might be traded off against other business motivations. This work expands SBSR theory, highlighting policy strategies and practical implications for small businesses, which can inform proactive SBSR that goes beyond compliance and economic responsibility.

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara Tomasella & Elaine Conway, 2025. "Beyond Values: Business Orientation as a Driver of Small Business Social Responsibility," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(5), pages 6879-6896, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:32:y:2025:i:5:p:6879-6896
    DOI: 10.1002/csr.70054
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.70054
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/csr.70054?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:32:y:2025:i:5:p:6879-6896. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1535-3966 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.