The climate and culture of environmental compliance within SMEs

This paper reports some of the findings of an ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme project which considered the attitudes of individuals (management and non-management) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the environment and environmental compliance. The focus on individuals and an understanding of the relationship between attitudes and behaviour within businesses is essential to implementation of effective sustainable development and self-regulation policies. The research revealed that the environment is important to individuals and that environmental compliance is regarded as 'the right thing to do'. However, the influence of the regulatory domain on businesses is revealed as considerably more complex than suggested by some other surveys. In particular the positive culture amongst individuals in businesses to the importance of compliance appears to differ from the operational climate of many SMEs; i.e. their capacity and feasibility to act. The research suggests that SMEs in general are 'vulnerably compliant' due to a mismatch between climate and culture.