The effects of corporate social responsibility on small and medium sized enterprises' performance

As a result of fast evolvement of globalization process and technological developments, a new competition environment which pushes companies to take social responsibilities into account has emerged. Therefore, socially responsible activities of companies and their impacts have become one of important research fields. In this sense, this research aims to examine the relationship between social responsibility performance of small and medium sized enterprises and their financial performance by dividing social responsibility performance into five different dimensions (social responsibility with employees, customers, suppliers, local community and environmental responsibility). In the scope of this research, primary data which were collected from SMEs in İzmir, Turkey was used. The sample consists of 61 small and medium sized enterprises from İzmir. Data were analyzed by using both spearman rank correlation and regression analysis techniques. The results indicate that there is no significant relationship between all determined dimensions of social responsibility activities and financial performance and between total social responsibility performance and financial performance of small and medium sized enterprises. Since social responsibility of small and medium sized enterprises is an emerging research field, it is thought that this research will broaden the existing literature. Keywords: Financial Performance, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, Social Responsibility