Environmental and social sustainability in SMES: a comparison of European union countries and turkey

Abstract

This study contributes to the literature by analysing the sustainability activities of SMEs and evaluating sustainability with its social dimension, which is often overlooked in previous research. In this paper, data from 28 countries and 11,418 SMEs were analysed. The sustainability practices of Turkey, a candidate country for the European Union, which makes a significant amount of its exports to EU countries, and SMEs operating in 27 European countries have been evaluated comparatively. The most striking result of the research is that Turkey does not lag behind EU countries in terms of environmental and social sustainability, and even comes to the fore in some items. However, SMEs operating in Turkey state that there are more sustainability barriers than SMEs operating in EU countries. The belief that sustainability will not be profitable is found to be the factor that makes the most significant difference with EU countries regarding sustainability barriers.