SMES AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: DOES FIRM AGE MATTER?

Corporate Social Responsibility is a well-established concept, covering a wide range of actions practiced for many years in western countries; at European level, social responsibility is a philosophy, a way of ethic and responsible behavior which covers all aspects of the relationship with own employees, clients, shareholders, stakeholders, local communities. However, in Romania, the concept of social responsibility has emerged after 1990, along with the set-up of many NGOs and the entrance of multinational companies. After 2000, many other Romanian business companies, both large and SMEs, started to involve in actions of social responsibility, especially for improving the environment, adopting social measures for employees etc. The main purpose of our paper is to investigate practices and actions related to social responsibility, which are undertaken by SMEs, and to reveal which factors really matter in determining different degrees of involvement in CSR actions. Nevertheless, the level of social responsibility actions undertaken by SMEs often depend on the decisions of their managers and the value orientation of the entrepreneur seems one of the most prominent factors driving CSR actions. However, the younger a firm the less likely it is that it gets involved in CSR. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the firms' age and the level of their social involvement We expect to find out that young ventures display a weaker propensity to get involved in social responsibility actions. In order to validate this hypothesis, we use survey data collected during July - September 2014, from 48 SMEs operating in Oradea, Romania. Our findings reveal that there are significant differences between newly established ventures and those with a longer history in several directions related to their CSR profile. Managers of young firms are more inclined to consider that producing social welfare is the sole responsibility of government, and therefore the firms they own and themselves are significantly less involved in CSR actions. Nevertheless, our conclusions based on both theoretical synthesis and our analysis suggest that including business ethics and social responsibility related aspects in educational programs for entrepreneurship would reinforce such approach on behalf of new firms. A strategic approach to CSR from the beginning of the activity of a company is likely to improve the impact of such initiatives on the community and contribute to deeper and earlier involvement of SMEs in social responsibility actions.