Influences of the use of management systems on the moral attitudes and behaviours of small and medium sized enterprises : measuring the dynamic interplay of morality, environment and managing systems

The author designs a comprehensive model to characterise and optimise sustainable performance of small and medium sized enterprises SMEs - in the overall context of physical environment, society, economy and business. This model embraces issues of morality, management system, and environment and uses a corresponding measurement tool to discuss the interplay of these issues with the intention of leading SMEs to continuous improvement. For the design, issues of system thinking have been applied to cope with the complexity of the interplay of the elements. The model and the measurement tool are tested by a longitudinal survey of 27 SMEs in Switzerland and Germany. An outstanding issue of this survey is the interviewing of people from different hierarchical levels and departments of the companies (total: 212 individuals); it provides a comprehensive view of companies' attitudes and behaviours. The survey illustrates that a standardised management system is not decisive for the implementation of an increasingly dynamic and circular system with intensive integration of people. The implementation merely depends on the (moral) attitudes and behaviours of owners or top managers and employees. But SMEs with standardised (especially environmental) management systems generally demonstrate more outcomes towards embedded morality, circularity and integration as well as effectiveness and sustainable performance. Through the design and development of a comprehensive SME model and measuring tool, the author broadens the gap of narrowing SME research concerning optimised performance on individual issues and positions of individual companies to an overall context of society, economy, business and physical environment.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo