Abstract
This conceptual paper examines the issue of integrating CSR at the start-up level with the aim of increasing the firm’s ability to identify new opportunities. Both a constraint and an occasion to strengthen the company’s legitimacy and competitive advantage, CSR principles and practices are a key vehicle for opportunity identification and implementation. Historically, SMEs have contributed significantly to the improvement of existing products and services, and the creation of new ones. Grounding CSR in the strategy of enterprises at the start-up level is increasingly examined as an effective management tool with multiple benefits for opportunity identification. CSR may be promoted as a means of nurturing creativity and innovation at the start-up level and beyond, through pushing entrepreneurs to imagine new business models, to discover new raw materials, as well as to create new products and services so as to respond to both economic and social expectations.
Highlights
Over the last decades, business organizations, regardless of their size or sector, have acknowledged an increasing pressure to comply with corporate social responsibility (CSR) imperatives and principles (Lepoutre & Heene, 2006)
Long and McMullan (1984) envisioned opportunity identification as a creative structuring process, with Hills, Shrader and Lumpkin (1999) bringing empirical evidence to support this idea. This conceptual paper examined the issue of integrating CSR principles and practices at the start-up level so as to stimulate opportunity identification
Entrepreneurial literature indicates that CSR may be promoted at the start-up level and beyond as a means of nurturing creativity and innovation, through increasing the entrepreneurs’ creativity and their ability to elaborate new products, services, and business models
Summary
Business organizations, regardless of their size or sector, have acknowledged an increasing pressure to comply with corporate social responsibility (CSR) imperatives and principles (Lepoutre & Heene, 2006). Start-ups and small businesses may benefit from CSR practices through maximizing corporate social opportunities described as “commercially viable activities which advance environmental and social sustainability” (Grayson & Hodges, 2004: 11) These new opportunities can be identified in three main domains: innovation in products and services, serving niche markets and elaborating new business models (Jenkins, 2009). This conceptual paper aims to examine the issue of integrating CSR categories and issues at the start-up level so as to increase the firm’s ability to identify new opportunities and gain competitive advantage. Rather than thinking about CSR as a costly externality, it may be beneficial for start-up companies to build it into the company’s business strategy right from the beginning in order to prepare the favorable conditions to gaining competitive advantage from socially and environmentally responsible activities (Grayson & Hodges, 2004)
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