Exploring sustainability, good governance, and social responsibility in small and medium enterprises

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need to create shared value in order to compete in a global environment. Reputation is the result of the good work carried out by SMEs with regard to their main stakeholders, given their condition as a small‐ or medium‐sized enterprise. Rather than drawing on conventional financial performance, we propose an innovative sustainability model using shared value creation as the main endogenous variable. The results obtained are based on the opinions of the 261 owners–managers consulted. The method used is partial least squares, and conclusions show that good governance in SMEs must be reflected in good responsibility practices so as to generate reputation, which in turn has a positive effect on shared value. This leads to an effective level of commitment for SMEs, such that their codes of good governance and reports must be consistent with their responsibility towards stakeholders in order to achieve shared value.