ECONOMIC CRISIS AND SMES SUSTAINABILITY POLICIES: APPLICATION OF EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING FUNCTION FOR ANALYSIS.

Current global economic crisis has had sweeping effect on industries, societies and nations. It is evident that economic downturn will mostly affect more socially vulnerable subjects and inequality in society will probably increase. Sustainable development deals with the issues of inequality: it is directed at enhancing economic, social and ecologic sustainability on a macro level. The role of SMEs in this context is becoming more and more important for achieving sustainability goals. However, as economic crisis hits, there is uncertainty of how SMEs policies regarding sustainable development values will change. Will SMEs remain committed to sustainability? This paper contributes to examining the economic crisis impact on SMEs policies regarding sustainability values by proposing an analytical model for such analysis. Authors build an integrated framework for behavioural pattern of sustainable-development-values-driven SMEs activities and adopt a mathematical model to identify their dependencies. The paper concludes that a mathematical model based on emotional-well-being and CSR monetary value functions may be employed for the analysis of economic crisis impact on SMEs policies as far as sustainable development values are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]