Many entrepreneurs practise corporate social responsibility without being aware of it. Because they are literally amongst the people and relate to the local community. These entrepreneurs know their neighbours and are often active as chairpersons or committee members in local associations or school committees. They often play the role of main sponsor. How many entrepreneurs don’t keep the local football team afloat? Or sponsor or organise art exhibitions? Give free products to youth movements? Go on camps or look after the transport of tents and equipment? How many countless grocers and supermarket owners buy lottery tickets or sponsor posters for student parties? A recent UNIZO study showed that an independent shopkeeper spends on average € 1500 annually on sponsoring. That is a telling amount.

 

These entrepreneurs also know the personal circumstances of their employees. They often advise and assist them with family problems. They maintain a very direct relationship with their customers and, if a problem arises, they can be approached personally. No ombudsman is needed. Customers also do not have to call via a distant call centre with anonymous customer or complaint services to get complaints off their chests.

 

But: these entrepreneurs do not write books about it, nor build PR campaigns about their efforts for the environment, HRM policy or good relations with the community. SMEs simply practise CSR. Without making a big deal of it. What is special about an SME is that personal and formal accountability coincide. That economic relationships are human relationships as well.

It is printed on paper, therefore it exists

 

Testimonials and labels are frequently used as a way of ‘displaying’ CSR efforts. Here, too, big companies are more active than SMEs. The latter often lack the resources to record their efforts on paper and thus acquire a label. For that very reason they remain in the shade. Yet the values of SMEs often form the basis for their action. Not so long ago one of our directors expressed his vision as follows: “A company in which human values prevail, based on mutual trust in relationships and focussed on a meaningful goal, development of people, a positive contribution to society, with respect for the environment.” Such an attitude most probably explains SMEs’ aversion to labels and certificates. They find it difficult because the process to obtain and retain the label or testimonial is often at odds with their way of running a business. This, after all, demands great flexibility aimed at continually responding to the rapidly changing demands of customers.

 

SMEs want to keep their business running and, in addition, do the best they can for society. But don’t ask them to put this down on paper and develop ‘systems’. Don’t bother them with paperwork. They aren’t made for that. We have to ask ourselves what the added value is of all that bureaucracy: specialised companies get richer and paper is produced to comply with what society supposedly requires. The importance one attaches to labels and testimonials fits in with the general belief that ‘what is not bureaucratised, does not exist.’ This phenomenon also crops up elsewhere. Smart Alecs make sure that everything works out on paper, then ‘everything is in order’. Reality is often completely different. A little while ago senator Hugo Van den Berghe (CD&V) made a statement that is still relevant: “The degree of decadence of a society can be measured by the degree of bureaucratisation.” As an example of this he mentioned the Austrian Empire, which “bureaucratised so much in order to divert attention from its own decadence.” One can only conclude that history regularly repeats itself.

The way in which corporate social responsibility appears in the press also explains many misconceptions. Recently the ‘sustainable business’ prize was awarded. The press paid much attention to the winner, Ecover , an increasingly important player which, for that matter, we respect a lot. The company is a growing family-owned SME which has demonstrated that less polluting washing powders can also be marketed successfully.

 

But the fact is that the other winner, a company with five employees that managed to scoop the ‘sustainable business’ award in the category of enterprises with fewer than 10 employees, received no mention. Yet the prize-winning photo lab, Asap Photographic Services, is a pioneer in its sector. It removes waste products from its production water by making use of the purifying power of a small field of reed on the roof of the business and, in its own league, contributes in a special way to a better environment. That one person sows and another reaps is a well-known phenomenon. In addition to this, SMEs, unjustifiably for that matter, tend to some extent to distrust the media world which is unknown to them. And the best way to change this? Much more than in the past we need to openly share these fine examples via the media with a large part of the population.

Here, too, an organisation like UNIZO can play a role by responding to the widespread misconceptions concerning the social responsibility of SMEs. For that reason we have published a book with 15 testimonies of SME pioneers in CSR. They show how an independent entrepreneur constantly takes social issues into account without losing sight of the most important – namely the economic – objective of the business.

 

We have also published a practical handbook dealing with the problems which the SME manager encounters on a daily basis and for which he seeks sustainable solutions. The handbook must systematically stimulate the entrepreneur to reinforce his aspirations in the environmental and social arena alongside the pursuit of his economic objectives, supported by good relationships with all stakeholders.

I am in good company with my vision about the high CSR calibre of SME activities. Take for example Luc Van Liedekerke of the Leuven Centre for Economics and Ethics. He consistently defends the proposition that SMEs in particular act as pioneers in respect of CSR.

 

Our conclusion from this entire story is simple: if a problem exists, it is one of visibility. The entrepreneurs themselves find what they do nothing more than self-evident. The same applies to their communities. Everyone finds the CSR efforts of the local entrepreneurs so normal that these are no longer ‘seen’ and are therefore underestimated. For us, therefore, the issue is to bring this aspect of SMEs more into the open. We have to publicise the fact that independent entrepreneurs are more than important creators of jobs or contributors of taxes and parafiscal revenues. They are indispensable pillars of our society.