Relating Personal, Firm-based and Environmental Factors to the Monetary and Temporal Engagement in Corporate Social Responsibility in German Gazelles

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to voluntary actions of firms to address the needs of societal stakeholders. Small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are important agents of CSR, and information about the antecedents to their engagement in CSR activities is needed to inform practitioners, researchers and policy makers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relative impact of personal, firm-based and environmental factors on the monetary and temporal engagement in CSR activities of these firms. Based on a quantitative analysis of 62 rapidly growing owner-managed small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany, we found that the personal involvement of the entrepreneur and slack resources contribute about equally to the monetary and temporal engagement in CSR, while market-based factors only seem to have a small influence. Also, we find that monetary spending is related to firm profits, while the time spent on CSR is related to its number of employees.