Transmission of CSR requirements in supply chains: investigating the multiple mediating effects of CSR activities in SMEs

Rebecca Stekelorum (), Issam Laguir and Jamal Elbaz
Additional contact information
Rebecca Stekelorum: ICN Business School, CEREFIGE - Centre Européen de Recherche en Economie Financière et Gestion des Entreprises - UL - Université de Lorraine
Issam Laguir: Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School
Jamal Elbaz: Ecole Supérieure de Technologie d'Agadir - Université Ibn Zohr = Ibn Zohr University [Agadir]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the separate areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and supply chain management (SCM). However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the transmission of CSR requirements from a small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) perspective. Drawing on institutional and innovation diffusion theories, this paper investigates to what extent the CSR requirements of customers influence the CSR activities of SMEs and their CSR requirements toward their own suppliers. Multiple mediation analysis was performed on data from a sample of 146,060 French SMEs. The findings indicate that the CSR requirements of customers have a direct negative effect on SMEs' CSR requirements toward suppliers. However, the relationship becomes positive when we take into account the mediating role of the SMEs' own CSR activities (i.e. economic, social and environmental activities). Furthermore, the study reveals that the indirect effect through economic CSR activities is the greatest, followed by social and then environmental CSR activities. Our main contribution is that implementing CSR activities within SMEs is a necessary step so that SMEs can be brokers in the transmission of CSR requirements in the supply chain.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; sustainable supply chain; sustainability; small-to medium-sized enterprise (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-03-22
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Applied Economics, 2019, pp.1-16. ⟨10.1080/00036846.2019.1593942⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02089953

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1593942

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().