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1. Introduction
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important issue that companies need to be engaged in for satisfying the expected benefits of stakeholders in different ways and staying a well-functioning and sustained economic unit (Matten, 2015; Dawit et al., 2020). Large companies have addressed this issue (Adel et al., 2019), but small businesses (SMEs) lack in those practices (Sundström et al., 2020), especially in emerging economy (Ansu-Mensah et al., 2021). It is estimated that there are 400m small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) around the world (National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights, 2020). These SMEs are responsible for moving the economy and generate approximately 36,300bn of US$ per year (The World Bank Group, 2020). For example, in Vietnam, there are around 518,000 SMEs (Tuan, 2020), Brazil has around 11.5m SMEs (OECD, 2018) and Russia has around 6.2m SMEs (OECD, 2020).
Business is expected to conduct CSR as a prerequisite for sustainable development for firm, economy and society (Abdelhalim and Amani, 2019). CSR and sustainable development are two common terms that attract high attentions from academics and managers around the world. It is important to highlight that sustainable development is not only an economic, but also an ecological and even a social demand. Sustainable development is becoming a central need of the world economy, especially in emerging countries. To achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to ensure balance and harmony between economic growth and environmental protection with social development. To address such issues, the present study focuses on delivering a holistic concept of CSR and its strategic influence on generating values for sustainable development of businesses, society and the economy of the country considering the role of SMEs in emerging countries.
These issues require more comprehensive coordination and efforts from academicians, market participants and policymakers. When competition is increasingly fierce, demands from customers are increasingly high and society has a stricter outlook on businesses. The businesses that want to join the big playing field must equip themselves with new competitive advantages. Accordingly, CSR is considered as a strategic tool to help businesses create a competitive advantage for sustainable development (Abdelhalim and Amani, 2019) and makes it differentiated from its competitors (El-Garaihy et al., 2014).
CSR has been considered an...