A newly released Western Australian study has found that small businesses are far more active in terms of corporate social responsibility than previously thought.
A newly released Western Australian study has found that small businesses are far more active in terms of corporate social responsibility than previously thought.
In fact the report’s author, Dr Helen Grzyb, could not find a small business that wasn’t active in the community in some way – from sponsorship through to direct involvement, and often in ways that made it difficult to separate the two, let alone measure it.
Dr Grzyb’s research through Curtin University found companies with less than 20 employees could assess their community expenditure at $7,000 to $9,000, though this was an estimate and she felt it most likely under-represented the cost of this activity.
The study, titled ‘Small Business: Big Impact – How small business is supporting the WA community’, was drawn from the results of doctorial research undertaken with 40 diverse small businesses in Fremantle and the Great Southern Wheatbelt town of Narrogin, aided by local business enterprise centres and chambers of commerce.
Dr Grzyb said that, while corporate social responsibility was generally considered a big business concept, her research showed that small business embraced the idea wholeheartedly, it just didn’t have the mechanisms to measure and promote its role.
“They don’t have a separate staff member or a separate line item in their budget,” she said. “It falls under the radar.”
Dr Grzyb said that while the contribution of small business to the community may go unrecognised in the statistics, the businesses and the communities, especially smaller ones, understood the importance of giving.
“People in small communities know they have to look after their small business or they will not survive, and vice versa,” she said.
This point is more easily lost outside those smaller communities.
“A lot of us don’t understand that in our local community, all around us are businesses that are doing a lot,” Dr Grzyb said.
“When government is looking at policy settings they need to understand what the small business sector is not the same as medium or large business.”
In the study, owners and managers identified that their community involvement included volunteering, donations or sponsorship (including paying for postage and other costs), marketing and advertising opportunities and in-kind support.
By extending the traditional concept of corporate social responsibility to include provisions of opportunities for work experience or skills development, involvement in local government and industry committees or access to equipment or space, Dr Grzyb said she found 100 per cent of companies interviewed had a community role.
“Everyone was doing something,” she said.
