Abstract

Background and purpose: Many people think that the corporate social responsibility is inseparable from large companies. However, small condiment companies have come to realize the importance of corporate social responsibility in recent decades as well and begun to implement it gradually. But there are still some challenges and opportunities that are faced by small condiment companies. This study will contribute to increases in literature of corporate social responsibility of SME by examining the SME in Chinese state policy context. And the purpose of this study is to find out the opportunities and challenges confronted by small condiment companies in implementing corporate social responsibility through the case study of the small condiment company, Meihua Condiment Co. Ltd. Shandong Branch.

Method: The main method used in this study is single case study, which helps the authors get in-depth investigation, rich description and better understanding of how a small condiment company implements corporate social responsibility and the opportunities and challenges it faces therein.

In this thesis, semi-structured face-to-face interviews that are aimed to get detailed information about the small condiment company---Meihua Condiment Co. Ltd. Shandong Branch are held. Since the face-to-face interview allows more communication between the authors and interviewees, and through the interviews, the authors get more familiar with the main condition of the company and know how they implement the CSR, as questions raised to the interviewees mainly concern how the company runs and how it implements corporate social responsibility.

Around the topic of implementing CSR in small companies, the authors had looked up and analyzed the internet information like in China Development Observations, professional journals, and different digest like Special Focus, thus come up with an conclusion that small companies are faced with both challenges and opportunities. Furthermore, through the practical investigation of a small typical company--Meihua Condiment Co. Ltd. Shandong Branch, the authors make a step future to prove this argument.

Conclusion: During the process of implementing CSR, small condiment companies may face plenty of opportunities such as low production cost, high group cohesiveness and less social responsibilities, but also lots of challenges such as enterprise development resistance and low social recognition. The investigation on a condiment SME in China shows that it’s important to combine both business opportunity and government effort for small condiment company to implement CSR. The small condiment company can take the advantage of its little social responsibility to save much effort to promote productions, utilize its strong staff coherence to improve production enthusiasm, make effort to do charity work well to establish good reputation, transfer the capital saved from taxes reduction to development, actively carry out moral construction for responding the nation’s summons, enhance enterprise’s sense of social responsibility. Meanwhile, the company shall also face challenges and take full advantages of them.

What is more, due to the financial constrain and lack of external attention, the government shall transform its functions, deepen the reform, create good external environments and broaden the financing channel for small condiment company, enhance the company’s sense of safe production and solve the environment and products problems well.

Key words: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Small Condiment Company, Opportunities, Challenges, Corresponding Countermeasures