Multinationals, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Sustainability

Multinational corporations (MNCs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) all over the world engage vividly in sustainable development and responsible management. It is important to know the very different ways in which they do so, as this will allow you to best support their progress for contributing to sustainability and societal improvement. We present five key features where MNCs and SMEs differ in their sustainability approach: motivation, communication, operations, organising and stakeholder scope. For many people, the default position when we talk about business and sustainability is to think of the large, MNCs which dominate media, stock exchanges and business school curricula. However, it is often under-acknowledged how the SME or ‘small business’ in fact is the dominant way of organising business. SMEs constitute over 90 per cent of private sector business and are perhaps even more important in developing economies than developed ones, where reliance on the economic benefits generated for individuals and communities is a fundamental part of poverty alleviation. This chapter aims to encourage you to consider how to support carefully the development and maintenance of sustainability and responsibility in the different contexts of MNCs and SMEs.