Small and medium‐sized enterprises and the environment: evaluation of a specific initiative aimed at all small and medium‐sized enterprises

TLDR

SMEs face increasing pressure from legislation, supply chains, trade associations, and customers to address environmental issues, yet lack time, resources, and expertise, creating a gap between initiative developers and users and limited discussion of these challenges. This paper aims to evaluate an initiative for SMEs using grounded theory and to highlight the problems SMEs face, thereby promoting further debate. The study employs a grounded theory approach to initially evaluate the initiative.

Abstract

Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are under increasing pressure to address environmental issues from a range of sources, including legislation, supply chain, trade associations and customers. Addressing environmental awareness, not to mention sustainability, is a complex issue for SMEs, exacerbated by a lack of time, resources and environmental expertise. Consequently, many initiatives have been developed to direct and support SMEs. This paper is concerned with an initial evaluation of one such initiative based on a grounded theory approach. This process highlights the practical issues SMEs face when trying to implement environmental issues as workable company policies. A “gap” between developers and users in terms of the achievable outcomes perceived and obtained from such initiatives is also highlighted. To date, little has been written about the problems SMEs face in addressing environmental issues. This paper attempts to highlight some of these problems and, more importantly, promote further debate and discussion.