In SMEs there is a large need to confront with broadly-understood Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and educate owners and managers in this respect.Individual elements of social responsibility are already addressed in the case of various further educational courses. However, a comprehensive further education and consulting programme is non-existent. Research and teaching have been intensively involved in the CSR in large corporations. There is a deficiency of SME-specific concepts concerning the perception of social responsibility.On the basis of the existing results, a comprehensive CSR training and advisory programme will be designed specifically for SMEs and tested in practice by two project partners in Germany and Poland. After an appropriate revision, the concepts will be transferred to 45 chambers and 15 colleges in 9 Baltic-states, implemented there; trainers will be trained and a lasting implementation for SMEs with widespread impact will be ensured.The Lead Partner is responsible for project management and PR tasks, provides conceptual work and ensures the Baltic-wide transfer and implementation. Partners from Norway and Sweden incorporate their extensive experience of successful CSR application in SMEs. Colleges and universities bring their training and develop relevant educational concepts. Chambers with their further education institutions, being central SME promoters, are important partners for practical testing, implementation and permanent use of the developed programmes. They incorporate both national and regional conditions, as well as specific needs of SMEs in the project work.
The 45 chambers (transfer and implementation partners) represent over 450,000 SMEs Baltic-wide. It is to be achieved that as many of these chambers and the involved colleges/universities as possible offer the CSR further education and advisory programme permanently and thus reach as many SMEs in their region as possible. In this way, social responsibility is promoted in a large number of SMEs in the Baltic Sea Region, strengthening both innovation and competitiveness and improving the chances on educational and labour market for entrepreneurs and employees.
