Ethics and Sustainability in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Public Policies
Abstract
In an age of important scientific and technological breakthroughs, among people that constantly search further, it is quite a challenge to stop in place and assess the situation from a sustainable dimension; more so, even harder to perceive at organizational and functional level a company and its actions based on ethical principles. The origins of ethics are still unclear, and sustainability is a globally promoted concept, mostly for its rhetorical value. Within the global economy, the ethical and sustainable decision-making process of businesses is not often linear, but it presents more or less the same manageable pattern, especially when the unit of analysis is represented by multinational companies. There is, though, a different guiding path for the small and medium-sized companies, and it all starts with the SME public policy. By making an analysis of SME public policy of the ASEAN countries, and by introducing the elements of business ethics and corporate social responsibility at the level of small economic entities, the research managed to create a backbone of a narrative of frameworks and approaches within the South-East AsianSME public policy. The research question of the paper simply manages to direct towards finding different perspectives on SME public policy and cases of ethical and sustainable decisions, based on secondary data, using a qualitative approach. The study resumes the knowledge on ethical and sustainable practices and guidance in the Asian SME sector, and adds to the current database a straightforward answer to the question: Are ASEAN SMEs ethical and socially responsible?
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