Small and Medium Enterprises and the Relation between Social Performance and Financial Performance: Empirical Evidence from Korea

Jun H. Choi, Saerona Kim and Dong-Hoon Yang
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Jun H. Choi: Department of Accounting, Dongguk University, Seoul 04620, Korea
Saerona Kim: Department of Tax & Accounting, Soongeui Woman’s College, Seoul 04628, Korea
Dong-Hoon Yang: Department of Accounting, Dongguk University, Seoul 04620, Korea

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: Most studies on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) have focused on large enterprises and archival tests for SMEs have been relatively few. There is a need for SME studies that are comparable to the research on large enterprises. In this study, we tested the CSP-CFP relationship of SMEs in Korea using a massive archival database. Although common theories on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs describe SMEs as non-strategic performers, we found a strong positive relationship between CSP-CFP for the larger or hi-tech SMEs. Therefore, some SMEs are similar to multinational companies in that they approach CSR effectively. This study makes a contribution to the literature on both CSR and SMEs because it empirically demonstrates the heterogeneity of SMEs and it presents a CSR-SME study that is methodologically comparable to the research on big corporations.

Keywords: small and medium enterprise; corporate social responsibility; corporate social performance; hi-tech industry; social capital theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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