Corporate Social Responsibility: Small and Medium Sized Accountancy Firms in Malaysia

Abstract

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been investigated to a greater depth within the context of large and multinational corporations. However, within the Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) the concept of CSR is under investigated and calls for a comprehensive understanding of its meaning. Therefore this exploratory research sets out to gather meaningful responses from 17 owner-managers of the small and medium sized accountancy firms in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia through qualitative in-depth interviews. Results obtained indicate that the concept of CSR is understood by the small and medium sized accountancy owner-managers only at the discretion of their own values and trust-based relationships that they maintain with their stakeholders. Similarly these SMEs owner managers identified employees, clients, other businesses and community as the important stakeholders. Furthermore, the responses obtained from the SME owner managers indicate that the CSR communication practices differ to a greater extent between the internal and external stakeholders identified by the respondents. Although this research aimed to explore the similarities and differences between small and medium sized firms, results obtained indicated that considerable variations occur amongst family owned businesses, micro firms, small firms and medium sized firms on the basis of the type of CSR-based activities.