Abstract
This work deals with the logic of action enabling Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to integrate the SMEs. Today’s society is evolving because of increasing social inequalities and the growing need for the reduction of negative influences of human activity on natural environment. At the heart of these social problems, there are the corporations, which are more and more obliged to integrate sustainable development matters in the way they operate. Since the SMEs represent a consequent part of the economic fabric, it is essential for them to appropriate CSR and assimilate it in their operating methods. However, SMEs operate in a particular way, notably because they are limited in terms of resource and because they have a strong proximity with their stakeholders, which they have to sustain. Nonetheless, just like big corporations, they want to improve performance through strategic choices. In that respect, we question ourselves on how CSR is integrated in SMEs through the implementation of sustainable practices as well as the induced performance. Literature gives two logic of action enabling the integration of CSR in corporations: sustainable entrepreneurial logic and sustainable managerial logic. Research in SMEs presents the sustainable entrepreneurial logic as a preferred method for the inclusion of these matters. Starting from these first elements, we elaborate a conceptual model that allows us to evaluate the importance of entrepreneurial initiative and sustainable entrepreneurial logic in the implementation of sustainable activity in the SME. This model also aims at clarifying the stakeholders’ role in the CSR procedure in SMEs as well as the impact on performance. Before we test this model, starting from an exploratory qualitative study and literature, we develop a measurement indicator of sustainable entrepreneurial logic. The conceptual model is then tested through the structural equation on a sample of 402 French SMEs. This data was gathered thanks to a questionnaire survey. We then highlight the importance of sustainable entrepreneurial logic in the implementation of CSR in SMEs, as a way of seizing opportunities, innovating or creating social and economic value. However, the study doesn’t show any of the positive effects that CSR has on performance, nor the influence of stakeholders on this relation.