Cultural Antecedents of Sustainability and Regional Economic Development - A Study of SME ‘Mittelstand’ Firms in Baden-Württemberg (Germany)

This paper examines behavioural and regional/geographic cultural antecedents of sustainability in SME contexts. The study identifies prevailing macro-representations of sustainability in the literature and highlights an over-focus on large firms constituting the predominant unit of analysis. Moreover, there is a propensity in the literature to view sustainability primarily in terms of ‘environmental’ – closely linked to a corporate strategic...