Volume 18, 2007
Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting
Yves Fassin, Annick Van Rossem, Marc Buelens
Pages 27-32
A Small Business Leader’s Perception on Corporate Responsibility and Business Ethical Concepts
An Application of RGT in Manangement and Social Sciences
Recent academic articles point to an increased vagueness and overlapping of the concepts around business ethics and corporate responsibility. However, the perception of these notions in the entrepreneurial world can differ from the original academic definitions. The aim of this exploratory study is to uncover how the small business entrepreneur understands these various concepts. For this analysis, the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) is used, a method with limited applications in the business and society field. Our findings partially reject the confusion in terminology in academic literature. Entrepreneurs, pragmatically and rather clearly differentiate the various corporate responsibility and business ethics related concepts.