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TABLE 6: MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING ETHICAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PRACTICES WITHIN SMEs
General guidelines for implementing ethics and social responsibility in SMEs SMEs should:
1 Regard reducing their environmental footprint as a cost-saving activity. 2 Strongly support actions aimed at reducing corruption. 3 Collaborate with other firms to address issues raised with regards to responsible entrepreneurship. 4 Engage in building trust by being transparent and open to all stakeholders. 5 Be committed to triple bottom line reporting. 6 Have policies to ensure honesty and quality in all its contracts and dealings.
7 Put in place a process to ensure that adequate steps are taken against discrimination, both in the work place and at the time of recruitment.
8 Have a written code of conduct pertaining to ethics. 9 Quickly discipline unethical behaviour. 10 Be concerned with resolving complaints from customers, suppliers and its business partners. 11 Conduct regular audits of its social performance. 12 Encourage their employees to participate in local community activities.
13 Foster open dialogue with local communities on adverse, controversial or sensitive issues that involve the firm.
14 Voluntarily take action to solve social problems. 15 Have in place a social responsibility strategy that is proactive and surpass all lawful obligations.
LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH The following are the main limitations regarding this research project:
Ÿ The sample was limited to 120 SME's only which may have impacted on the representativeness of the sample.
Ÿ The target population included only SME's in Nelson Mandela Bay and is not representative of other regions in South Africa.
Ÿ The respondents are not equally representative in terms of ethnic classification. The following extract seems appropriate to conclude this paper with:
“An integrated approach needed to help SMEs understand what CSR means for them and how to integrate it into core business practices … needs to be interpreted more informally and introduced incrementally, in line with owner–manager and other stakeholder values … develop tools specifically for SMEs, not simply adapt ideas designed for large companies for small companies … consider diversity of SMEs when developing CSR policies and tools for them … key to engaging SMEs in CSR is to educate them …. more research to be undertaken into proving the business case for CSR in SMEs … knowledge on approaches taken to social and ethical responsibilities in SMEs still has many gaps … need for sector, size and location specific research to reflect the diversity of SMEs.”
(Jenkins 2006:253)
PERCEPTIONS REGARDING ETHICAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PRACTICES: AN SME PERSPECTIVE 149