Societal concern for preserving the environment,
as well as the public request for ethical behavior are the main corporate
social responsibility driver for a large sized agro-food company.
Furthermore, the information age has contributed to significantly
reduce the societal pressure on company since word spreads quickly
when companies fail to comply to societal standards.
Indeed, consumer often organize themselves in movements
to boycott products from company.
That do not match societal standards, such as they use product that they
may hit the health, offering poor labor condition to their employees.
Lack of environmentally responsible subsidiary located in developing country.
Or otherwise, the using of unethical practice.
An example of consumer boycott is that one against our box in 2007.
Consumers indeed stopped buying in Starbucks products in many higher
view has as consumers were concerned for their own health.
Since at that time, Starbucks used milk containing human
growth hormone in many of these products.
Thus, in response to Starbucks's activity,
consumers stopped buying its product and Starbucks agreed
to stop using milk containing bovine growth hormone.
This is a clear example how the societal pressure can be
influential in shaping firm's decisions.
Therefore, multinational food companies have to actively promote their corporate
socially responsible activities as well as inform consumer stakeholders about firm's
achievement in ethical and sustainable area where firms are involved in.
Thus, communication instruments, such as standards, code of conduct,
advertisement as well as corporate societal reports are key instruments
to protect the multinational brand's image and to prevent the boycotts of products.
An effective communication indeed as a pivotal rule for food companies looking to
maximize the benefit for their corporate social responsible initiative, gaining
consumer's preference and differentiating their product from those of competitors.
Also, scientific literature well-documented the fact that
consumer value more this product and
the way with social attributes compared it to the standard ones.
However, consumer are able to appreciate such attributes only if
it's aware of their presence in firms product.
Thus, multinational expenses in advertising increase
the public awareness of the firms and its responsible practice.
Prompting the customer to purchase its products instead of others.
On the opposite sides, small and medium firms already are not active with
respect to their corporate social responsibility activities.
However, the CSR plan can be measured in the same way of those of
corporate companies.
Indeed, small and medium enterprise do not invest in communication activities.
It seems they prefer investing social capital.
Securing licenses to operate in their own community.
And furthermore, their corporate social responsibility action are taken
in a generally intuitive way no formalized it and rarely publicized it.
This reflect the fact that small and medium enterprises are typically owned and
manage, supported by internal source of funds and often burden with bureaucracy.
Thus, small and medium enterprises may not have enough financial and
human resource to invest in informal corporate social responsible activities or
to gain the know-how for undertaking complex action.
Furthermore, small and medium enterprises have the worst access to
information and consultancy service than large companies have.
Thus, they are less likely to implement, formalize and structure their CSR plans.
Thus, small and medium corporate firm