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General perceptions regarding ethics and social responsibility
Perceptions regarding ethical practices
Perceptions regarding social responsibility practices
Mean 3.60 4.50 3.45
Standard Deviation
0.75 0.88 0.89
Skewness -0.79
-0.84 -0.08
Kurtosis 0.46
0.25 -0.53
With regard to the descriptive statistics of each variable, no in-depth discussion is provided, as it falls beyond the scope of this paper. It appears that the mean scores for the general perceptions regarding ethics and social responsibility and ethical practices cluster around point four (agree) on the five-point Likert scale, whilst the mean score for perceptions regarding social responsibility practices is around point three (neutral). The standard deviation scores for the factors are relatively low (below one), indicating that respondents do not vary much in their responses towards these factors. Skewness characterizes the degree of asymmetry of a distribution around its mean. The negative skewness values in Table 2 indicate a distribution with an asymmetric tail extending towards more negative values. Kurtosis characterises the relative peakedness or flatness of a distribution compared to the normal distribution. Positive kurtosis indicates a relatively peaked distribution. Negative kurtosis indicates a relatively flat distribution (Sall, Creighton & Lehman, 2007: 134). The kurtosis statistic of 0.25 and 0.46 would be an acceptable kurtosis value for a mesokurtic distribution because it is close to zero, whilst the negative value of 0.53 indicates the possibility of a platykurtic distribution.
Frequency distribution results
Table 4 outlines the frequency distribution results of Section A of the questionnaire. TABLE 4: FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION RESULTS OF SECTION A
Items/Variables A1-A10
A11-A20 A21-A30 Factor
General perceptions regarding ethics and social responsibility
Perceptions regarding ethical practices
Perceptions regarding social responsibility practices
% Agree 66
74 59
% Neutral 25
19 27
% Disagree 9
7 14
Table 3 analyses the frequency distribution results for the three factors used in Section A of the questionnaire. For analysis purposes, point four and five on the Likert scale have been combined into the agree score, three indicates neutral and point one and two have been combined into the disagree score. It is clearly shown that the respondents agree with all three factors and the statements thereof as applicable to their SME. The highest agree score (74%) was obtained for perceptions regarding ethical practices in SMEs. The highest disagree score (14%) was obtained for the factor regarding perceptions of social responsibility practices in SMEs.
PERCEPTIONS REGARDING ETHICAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PRACTICES: AN SME PERSPECTIVE 146