Knowledge of the concept of corporate social responsibility in agribusiness enterprises (based on the example of the SME sector in Malopolska)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative in Poland is relatively little known and has not been yet deeply rooted in the consciousness of Polish entrepreneurs especially in the field of SMEs and local communities. CSR is a concept whereby companies at the stage of strategy building voluntarily take into account the social interests and environmental protection, as well as relationships with their stakeholders. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present issues related to the knowledge of the CSR concept in the surveyed agribusiness enterprises. The article presents among other things, statistical relations between knowledge of the above concept and education of owners of the business, company size or business entity year of uprising. The research on opinions of entrepreneurs on the above concepts was carried out at the turn of 2014 and 2015 included 182 micro (0-9 persons), small (10-49 employees) and medium (50-249 employees) agribusiness companies engaged in business activities in rural areas of Małopolska. The results showed that there is a need for awareness of small and medium enterprises with agribusiness that consumers increasingly pay attention to the aspect of the behavior of responsible practices, let alone to observe their assumptions. Given the nature of the business, the knowledge of the CSR concept prevailed in a group of entrepreneurs from the manufacturing sector.