Corporate Social Responsibility in Social SMEs: Discourses of Prosocial Behavior in Individual, Organizational, and Societal Levels

The past decades have seen an increase in studies on social entrepreneurship, yet its theorization remains underdeveloped. This is especially the case for clarifying how the social mission inherent in social enterprises is related to the social responsibility of traditional businesses, usually understood through corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. The relation between social entrepreneurship and CSR is not unequivocal, as from a theoretical perspective these constructs should be distinct, yet their boundaries both in theory and in practice are still unclear. The literature suggests that it is their social mission that defines social enterprises whereas, for other types of smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), CSR activities would be instrumental and motivated by profit maximization. Until now, it has been unclear what the role of CSR in activities and behavior in social enterprises is, which is a notable research gap since social entrepreneurship is an emerging domain of study in business research and practice. This study contributes by illustrating how CSR manifests through prosocial behavior across different levels in social SMEs, thus shedding light on how social entrepreneurs view their motivations towards others-oriented behavior in SMEs. We study the discourses of entrepreneurs who manage mission-driven businesses and social enterprises in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, and Latvia. The perspective can also have implications for SMEs and their strategic positioning of social entrepreneurship and CSR. Viewing social entrepreneurship, CSR, and prosocial motivation as sociopsychological and contextual, constructivist processes sheds light on the multifaceted nature of these phenomena. This discourse study presents a model of how individual, group, organization and societal prosocial motivations co-exist.</p

Corporate Social Responsibility of SMEs: Learning Orientation and Performance Outcomes

Responsibility and sustainability are today a key part of doing business globally. However, the attention of scholars and policymakers has mainly been on large multinational enterprises, with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) receiving less attention. Recent studies have noted the importance of learning for SMEs to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR), but it is not yet known how the learning orientation of SMEs impacts their CSR, and how the development impacts the internationalization and performance of SMEs, which are research gaps that recent studies have noted. Shedding light on those dynamics is also important from a practical perspective since in most countries SMEs constitute a large majority of firms in both amounts and total employment. The present study contributes by illustrating how CSR impacts different types of performance in SMEs, and how the learning orientation of SMEs predetermines their CSR. Regression analyses conducted on an empirical sample of Finnish SMEs indicate that CSR in SMEs has an impact on certain types of performance and that their learning orientation determines their CSR. Therefore, the study contributes to the literature on responsibility and sustainability in SMEs, and to that SME internationalization, by shedding light on the antecedents and outcomes of CSR for SMEs.</p

Network exploration and exploitation capabilities and foreign market knowledge: The enabling and disenabling boundary conditions for international performance

This empirical study analyzes how strategic orientations influence the relationships between exploration and exploitation-related networking capabilities, foreign market knowledge, and market performance of 198 internationally operating firms in Bangladesh. The results of hierarchical regression showed that a higher level of network exploration capability and network exploitation capability individually generate greater foreign market knowledge. In addition, our results show that international entrepreneurial orientation reinforces the positive effect of network exploration capability.The positive association between market knowledge and performance, in turn, is accentuated by a proactive export market orientation but attenuated by a responsive export market orientation. These findings suggest that, while both types of networking capabilities are beneficial to develop stocks of foreign market knowledge, firms can acquire and create greater knowledge if they strategically align entrepreneurial orientation with network exploration capability.Further, to use this market knowledge with the goal of improving their position in international markets, firms need to develop a proactive rather than a responsive export market orientation. The current study contributes to the literature on networking capabilities by analyzing firms' networking capabilities with the lens of exploration-exploitation typologies and incorporating strategic orientations as the contextual factors of such capabilities.</p

Sensemaking of environmental commitment: a socio-historical contextualization of post-Soviet managers’ views

The different social contexts and historical backgrounds of countries in which companies operate may influence how their managers understand and apply the concept of environmental commitment. Thus, the understanding of environmental commitment in the post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe can be expected to be different from the Western markets. This study sheds light on these issues by analyzing managerial stories about environmental commitment in Russia. It explains how managers’ sensemaking is shaped by the Soviet socio-historical context. This study contributes to the limited literature on environmental commitment in postcommunist societies and provides a link between environmental commitment and sensemaking research, thus responding to recent calls for a clarification of the microfoundations of corporate social responsibility.</p

The Role of Digitalization on the Internationalization Strategy of Born-Digital Companies

Digital technologies have led to born-digital companies, defined by their highly digitalized value chains, designed at their inception. Born-digital (BD) companies leverage digitalization across their value chains in the internationalization path. However, despite this emergence, very few empirical studies in international business literature have explained the impact of bricolage in conducting value chain activities and exploiting the internationalization strategy of BD companies. The present study responds to these omissions of how the digitalization of the value chain activities and the internationalization strategy enhance companies by allowing them to reach customers (users) and partners with available resources and less time. The results indicate that the digitalization of value chain activities facilitates the re-use and mixing of the resources at hand to overcome challenges, innovate solutions, or create new opportunities for international growth, in line with the bricolage theory. Overall, this study contributes to international business literature regarding, specifically, the behaviors of born-digital companies as they strategically approach internationalization efforts. </p

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and the COVID-19 Response

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a crisis that has impacted international business and entrepreneurship globally. Many small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly hard hit, yet many are also finding strategies to survive and even thrive in this “new normal”.  This chapter highlights the survival strategies of SMEs in the small open economy context of Finland where, alike most European countries, international trade has been restricted due to the pandemic. We conduct a qualitative case analysis of five Finnish SMEs across different industry sectors, describing the internal and external changes they have undergone during the crisis, and we also shed light on the strategies and contingency planning they have been employing in order to survive. From the results, it is evident that internationalization remains an opportunity for Finnish SMEs. We conclude the chapter by summarizing our recommendations for SMEs dealing with the current and the next crisis, while also considering the generalizability of those recommendations in environments less stable and developed as the Finnish context.</p

Cultural sensemaking of corporate social responsibility: A dyadic view of Russian–Finnish business relationships

International Management (IM) needs a better understanding of how managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make sense of cultural differences in international business relationships, especially regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in relationships between firms from emerging and developed countries. We address this lacuna by uncovering how dyads of Russian and Finnish SME managers, engaged in mutual international business relationships, construct their understanding of CSR. The findings indicate that conceptualizations of CSR are embedded both in SME managers' cultural backgrounds and in the contextual environment. This extends previous research on the role of CSR in IM and respond to calls to study the microfoundations of CSR and internationalization, adding to the sparse knowledge of CSR in cross-cultural SME settings.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Cultural sensemaking of corporate social responsibility: A dyadic view of Russian–Finnish business relationships

International Management (IM) needs a better understanding of how managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make sense of cultural differences in international business relationships, especially regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in relationships between firms from emerging and developed countries. We address this lacuna by uncovering how dyads of Russian and Finnish SME managers, engaged in mutual international business relationships, construct their understanding of CSR. The findings indicate that conceptualizations of CSR are embedded both in SME managers' cultural backgrounds and in the contextual environment. This extends previous research on the role of CSR in IM and respond to calls to study the microfoundations of CSR and internationalization, adding to the sparse knowledge of CSR in cross-cultural SME settings. </p

Examining the generalizability of research findings from archival data

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples