Corporate social responsibility and essential factors of personnel risk management in SMEs

Abstract

Properly designed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs can significantly enhance SMEs’ stakeholders’ relationships. The article aims to understand SMEs managers’ and owners’ perceptions of CSR’s impact on personnel risk management in V4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). The online survey was conducted from September 2019 to April 2020 based on a sample of 1,585 respondents. The research questions were validated using descriptive statistics, the Chi-square method and the Z-score. The findings indicate that “CSR positive entrepreneurs” significantly consider people to be the essential company capital; therefore, the entrepreneurs are more optimistic about the intensity of personnel risk, they are more optimistic about the error rate of their employees, and they more highly evaluate employees’ efforts to increase performance. The novelty of the article lies primarily in its contribution to the understanding of CSR practices in SMEs. Firstly, it sheds new light on the mechanisms linking CSR and employee outcomes in SMEs, which is still not widely researched. Secondly, the study elaborates on CSR activities’ relevance in the SMEs’ context and perspective on making CSR policy effective. © 2021, Czestochowa University of Technology. All rights reserved.