The "Mittelstand“, as German SMEs are called, is not only the much-praised powerhouse of the German economy but also plays a vital role in working towards a sustainable society: for example through corporate environmental protection, vocational training of employees or the support of local community organisations. These activities benefit both society and bottom line: Responsible businesses easier find qualified employees, more and more customers demand responsible business practice and employees of responsible businesses are better motivated.
Responsible entrepreneurship has a long tradition in German SMEs. Nevertheless, there are easy ways to more systematically integrate social, ecological and economical concerns into day-to-day business and, hence, increase business benefits: Activities range from core business (marketplace) to ecologically relevant issues (environment) and from the relationship with employees (workplace) to community investment (community). For this purpose these examples, which describe good practice in such a way that SMEs think of them as “businesses like us”, are incredibly important.
The recently published collection of 20 good examples thereby takes a slightly new approach towards good practice examples as it provides practical easy to copy single activities, which have already been implemented by SMEs, instead of describing the full range of CSR-related activities of a single business, which is generally difficult to reproduce.
The collection demonstrates the variety of CSR-related fields of action and helps SMEs to understand the potential business benefits as well as the necessary effort. The activities include e.g. ethical manufacturing in China, work-life-balance, introduction of environmental management structures, CSR-communication on the internet, cause related marketing, employee volunteering, corporate governance, climate protection and environmental staff training.
The working paper is part of the UPJ campaign “Verantwortliche Unternehmensführung im Mittelstand” (Responsible Entrepreneurship) and is available online and as pdf-File from the UPJ website.
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