The diffusion of voluntary ISO 26000 among SMEs: Evidence from Taiwan

Businesses are under the increasing pressure to demonstrably engage in social responsibility (SR).Following the demand, the International Standard Organization developed ISO 26000 for SR. smalland medium enterprises (SMEs) are dominant in contributing to GDP. The relationship between SMEsand SR is still elusive. The purpose of this paper will be aimed at how SMEs will adopt ISO 26000 underwhat circumstances. We determine a set of hypotheses about diffusion of ISO 26000 and examineit empirically. We provide a better understanding of the cognition-behavior gap while "doing good".SMEs think that SR was Philanthropic responsibility, but strive for their subsistence as their top priorityof strategy decisions. However, the impact of multinomial company and government are not decisive.Finally, SMEs take SR practices into consideration when evaluating stakeholder, they are more likelyto adopt ISO 26000. Thus, SMEs must feed themselves with their own words and grow.