Small Business Social Responsibility: A Critical Multilevel Review, Synthesis and Research Agenda

• Author: Dima Jamali,Vivek Soundararajan,Laura J. Spence
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12171
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Date: 01 October 2018

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 934–956 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12171

Small Business Social Responsibility:

A Critical Multilevel Review, Synthesis

and Research Agenda

Vivek Soundararajan, Dima Jamali1and Laura J. Spence2

Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK, 1American University

of Beirut, Olayan School of Business, Beirut, Lebanon, and 2Centre for Research into Sustainability, RoyalHolloway,

University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK

Corresponding author email: v.soundararajan@bham.ac.uk

Small-business social responsibility (SBSR) related research is rapidly increasing in

quantity, but is found in divergent literatures and disciplines. It is time to offer a

comprehensive review that identifies, synthesizes and integrates previous research, and

highlights the knowledgegaps and the way forward.This methodical search of the litera-

ture helped to identify 115 multidisciplinary peer-reviewed academic articles appearing

in high-quality journals over the 1970–2016 period. Using a systematic and in-depth

content analysis technique, the authors reviewedthe articles and identified the theories

used, the national contextual focus and the methodologicalorientations in these ar ticles.

They also identified the predictors, outcomes, mediators and moderators of SBSR at

the institutional, organizational and individual levels of analysis. This review helps to

identify significant knowledge gaps in terms of the theoretical orientation, the national

contextual focus, the core content under study, and the methods used. The authors

offer numerous suggestions across these topics to help addressthe knowledge gaps and

raise important questions for future research.The primary contributions of this paper

are: delineating and summarizing a multilevel analysis of an emerging literature on

SBSR; integrating contributions from a wide range of management disciplines and ge-

ographical contexts; extracting the potential theoretical contributionsin this field; and

informing directions for futureresearch. The authors propose a research agenda that is

theoretically relevant and innovative, and call for context- and size-aware research on

SBSR, using small-business-specific methodologies and measurements.

Introduction

Research on small businesses (also referred to as

small firms or small and medium-sized enterprises

(SMEs)) is a sub-field of management and organi-

zation studies in its own right, and has an important

presence across disciplines (Goss 2015). Through re-

search on supply chains (Soundararajan et al. 2016),

business networks (Fuller and Tian 2006), clusters

(Lund-Thomsen and Nadvi 2010), innovation(Brown

et al. 2007), entrepreneurship (Morris et al. 2002),

family-owned firms (Campopiano et al. 2014), stake-

holders (Roberts et al. 2006) and leadership (Murphy

et al. 1992), the small business and its owner-manager

has become a core part of the business landscape, al-

beit one often overlooked in favour of multinational

corporations (Spence 2016). While large businesses

undoubtedly have amplified individual significance

and visibility, small businesses are, in fact, the most

predominant organizational type, usually constituting

more than 95% of private-sector companies (Quinn

1997).

There is no single definition for small business

(Harvie and Lee 2002). Country-, region- or industry-

specific definitions tend to evolve over time and, ac-

cording to Harvie and Lee (2002), prevailing social

and economic conditions play a vital role in the ways

in which small businesses are defined in a specific

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Small Business Social Responsibility 935

context. Globally, small businesses are defined in sev-

eral ways that invoke a diverse range of indicators,

such as number of employees, investment capital, to-

tal amount of assets and sales volume, which makes

comparison between countries difficult. Adding to

such complexity, the definition of small business

within specific countries is often multifaceted. For

example, the Indian government differentiates be-

tween manufacturing and service small businesses,

while the Chinese government differentiates between

township and village enterprises. Although the def-

initions of small businesses differ across countries,

they tend to highlight the quality of smallness, be it in

terms of employment, turnover or investment. How-

ever, size is onlyone of the various qualities – such as

small-scale decentralization and flat organizational

hierarchy – that differentiate small businesses from

large enterprises (Russo and Perrini 2010; Terziovski

2010). Toenable a universal interpretation of the find-

ings of this paper and since definitional certainty is

not our primary purpose, consistent with recent re-

search (e.g. Harvie and Lee 2002; Perrini et al. 2007;

Soundararajan et al. 2016; Spence 2016; Wickert

2016), we define small businesses as firms that have

no more than 250 employees, are generally indepen-

dent, multi-tasking, cash-limited, based on personal

relationships and informality, actively managed by

owners, highly personalized, largely local in their

area of operation, and largely dependent on internal

sources to finance growth.

Our review focuses not on the notion of a small

business in isolation, but with respect to social respon-

sibility. In this paper, we view small-business social

responsibility (SBSR) as those activities of smaller

organizations that result in positivesocial change. Ter-

minology is important here, and since corporate so-

cial responsibility (CSR) research and theory are not

transferable wholesale to small businesses (Murillo

and Lozano 2006), we adopt the emerging acronym

of SBSR. Our definition of SBSR is thus linked to the

field of CSR (which is itself contested), but is sensi-

tive to the small-business context and idiosyncrasies

(Jamali et al. 2009; Wickert et al. 2016).

As shown throughout this paper, SBSR research

has been receiving increased attention, with the CSR

community increasingly acknowledging the limited

applicability of traditional CSR approaches and stud-

ies to this important organizational form (e.g. Jenkins

2006; Wickert 2016). Among others, three well-cited

special issues have been published on the topic in

high-impact journals – namely, Business and Soci-

ety (Jamali et al. 2017a) and the Journal of Business

Ethics (Spence and Rutherfoord 2003; Moore and

Spence 2006). However, missing to date is a system-

atic review that cuts effectively across disciplinary si-

los and levels of analysis in synthesizing knowledge

in this important domain.

Accordingly, and to stimulate enhanced scholar-

ship and provide a better sense of direction, in this

paper, we offer the first thorough and systematic re-

view of this burgeoningliterature at a timely point. We

specifically endeavour to answer the following ques-

tions: What constitutes SBSR activities? What are

the theories that underpin research on SBSR? What

are the national contextual and methodological ori-

entations of SBSR research? What are the predictors,

outcomes, mediators and moderators of SBSR activi-

ties at the institutional, organizational and individual

levels of analysis?

Numerous researchers in the field of social re-

sponsibility (Aguilera et al. 2007; Aguinis and

Glavas 2012; Maon et al. 2010), including those of

SBSR (Carrigan et al. 2016; Jamali et al. 2017a;

Soundararajan et al. 2016) emphasized the need for

multilevel analysis. We also accentuate the impor-

tance of the multilevel analysis of predictors, medi-

ators, moderators and outcomes of SBSR to gain a

deeper understanding of the phenomenon of SBSR

at different levels of analysis. This, in turn, can help

to draw a meaningful picture of the current state of

SBSR and channel attention to any knowledge gaps

and novel research questions.

To maintain consistency in what we refer to as

institutional-level analysis, we use a definition, de-

rived from institutional theory, in which institutions

are conceived as ‘social structures that have attained

a high degree of resilience. [They] are composed of

cultural-cognitive, normativeand regulative elements

that, together with associated activities and resources,

provide stability and meaning to social life’ (Scott

1996, p. 33). We focus on variables that address at

least one of these three institutional elements. An

organizational-level or meso-level analysis turns at-

tention to the firm itself, thus ‘capturing the relation-

ship between the organization and its external envi-

ronment (howthe fir m navigatesthe environment) and

relationships between or among parts of the firm (how

the firm is organized and managed)’ (Nicholls-Nixon

et al. 2011, p. 1189). Thus, we focus not only on

the distinctive features of small businesses, but also

on the internal and external relationships that form an

important part of SBSR activities. An individual-level

analysis is concerned with a range of aspects related

to individuals and their roles within organizations,

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