The Behaviour of Selected Small and Medium Enterprises in the Area of Corporate Social Responsibility

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0 (very good), University of Bratislava (University of Economics Bratislava), language: English, abstract: The global objective of the dissertation is to answer the question “What is the status quo regarding strategically implemented CSR in general and at SME’s within the German construction sector in particular and how should a model be designed that enables the practicability of CSR at these SME’s?” For this purpose, the research areas are divided into a theoretical and a practical section. In the theoretical part, the worldwide status quo on CSR is determined by means of a literature research. Concrete results of this research arise in the definition of key figures, which can be selected on the basis of the SDG's by means of a benchmarking with "Best-in-Class-Companies" for SMEs. The practical part of the dissertation addresses expert interviews in the context of qualitative analyses, the evaluation results of which are contributing to the derivation of measures for the strategic anchoring of CSR. A quantitative analysis is used to determine the status quo of CSR directly among a number of representative micro entrepreneurs. The result of the work conducted is an easy-to-implement model, furthermore, a typology and categorization of the German CEOs of the SMEs studied is derived, which enables a type-specific implementation of this CSR model. By deducting the most important indicators for recording and managerial accounting non-financial parameters of the German construction industry and developing a standard reporting system according to the DNK a set of methods could be designed that can be used by micro-enterprises and which has proven its suitability in a practical test. In a cost-benefit calculation, the ROI of these investments made for the introduction and maintenance of CSR could be determined and thus confirming that a rapid amortisation of these expenses can also be expected from a financial point of view.