Moderating effect of firm size on the influence of corporate social responsibility in the economic performance of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises

• Published in: Technological forecasting & social change 2020-02, Vol.151, p.119774, Article 119774
• Main Authors: Sánchez-Infante Hernández, Juan Pablo, Yañez-Araque, Benito, Moreno-García, Juan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Business size; Companies; Corporate social responsibility; CSR; Economic conditions; Economics; Environmental aspects; Hypotheses; Moderating effect; MSMEs; PLS-SEM; Small & medium sized enterprises-SME; Social aspects; Social impact; Social responsibility
• ISSN: 0040-1625; 1873-5509
• DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2019.119774

•Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is part of increasing the business income in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.•CSR targeting economic results taking into account the economic, social and environmental dimensions at once time.•To turn CSR into tangible benefits, MSMEs must carry out CSR practices acting in all three dimensions simultaneously.•CSR is not exclusive to large businesses, but firm size determines the size of the impact of the CSR on the results.•The larger the firm size, the stronger the relationship between CSR and economic performance. Corporate social responsibility (hereafter, CSR) continues to be generally relevant, with growing interest from academic researchers, businesspeople, public administrations and society as a whole. Numerous works have studied the influence of CSR on economic performance (hereafter, EP) in large businesses, but very few studies have focused on micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). This study analyzes the moderating effect of firm size on the influence of CSR actions on the economic performance of MSMEs. This work has two purposes: first, to empirically test the “social impact” hypothesis of stakeholder theory, which assumes that CRS positively impacts EP; second, to analyze the moderating effect of the MSME size on this hypothesis. The results obtained using the PLS-SEM technique based on a sample of 278 Spanish firms confirm that MSMEs that carry out CSR activities in their economic, social and environmental aspects improve their economic performance, and this relationship is moderated by the size of these organizations; the larger the size is, the stronger the relationship is.