The increased globalization has brought increased interdependency between countries as well as markets.  The  2007  financial  crisis  impacted  companies  on  a  global  scale  and  the  need  for companies  to  be  socially  responsible  has  increased.  Corporate  social  responsibility  (CSR)  can build reputation and lead to societal and competitive advantage, which can be especially useful for  small  and  medium  sized  enterprises  (SME)  with  limited  resources.  CSR  has  traditionally been  the  domain  of  multinational  corporations  and  little  is  known  about CSR in  SMEs. Recent research  shows  mixed results  of  how  the  financial  crisis  has  affected  CSR  strategies.  The purpose of this study is to explore how stakeholders‟ issues and CSR strategies change during times  of  market  turbulence  and  SMEs  conform  to  the  changes  of  the  internal  and  external environment. This was studied through a qualitative case study of three Swedish exporting SMEs and  their  key  stakeholders.  Interviews  with  managing  directors  of  the  companies  and  key stakeholders  together  with  secondary  data  constitute  the  gathered  empirical  data.  Key stakeholders,  key  issues,  legitimacy  with  stakeholders,  company  matching  with  the  external environment and the CSR strategy,  as well as changes during crisis were analyzed based on the empirical data. We found an increased need for CSR activities during times of turbulence. Two companies  increased  their  CSR  activities  while  one  decreased the  activities.  The results  of  the study  indicate that  the  external  environment  changes  during  times  of  market  turbulence  and companies  need  to  adapt  to  the  newly shaped  environment.  CSR  activities  became  more important  for  some  stakeholders  during  market  turbulence.  Companies  which  adapted  to  the changes  of  the  external  environment  improved  legitimacy  with  their  stakeholders  and  moved toward enhancing their competitive advantage as well as improved their performance. The study contributes  to  the  knowledge  of  how  SME  form  CSR  strategy  as  well  as  how  this  strategy  is changed  during  times  of  turbulence.  We  found  CSR  strategies  of  the  studied  SMEs  to  be emergent  and  intuitive,  and  that  CSR  strategy  changed  in  a  mixed  direction  during  the  crisis. Finally,  a  recommendation  is  made  based  on  the  results.  SMEs  can  strategically  use  CSR activities  in  order  to  develop  a  competitive  advantage through  differentiation by  a  creating societal advantage.

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This study attempts to explain the inability of resource constrained farmers in Zambia to invest in soil fertility enhancing improved fallows, a sustainable land use practice developed by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in the 1980s. Although several studies in the laboratory and field have shown that improved fallows positively impact on farmers’ welfare, the reliability of such conclusions comes into question given their use of improper identification strategies. Secondly, although there is general consensus that improved fallows additionally co-produce environmental services, the literature acknowledges that such services are not only imprecisely defined but also rarely quantified. Most estimates for environmental services have been confined to controlled field trials and laboratory experiments. Consequently, this research was designed to answer the following questions: 1) Would the use of randomisation procedures to estimate impact provide additional support to the foregone conclusions by most literature regarding the positive impact of improved fallows on farmer welfare? 2) Studies from on-station experiments show that improved fallows provide environmental services; do such conclusions hold for improved fallows planted on-farm where the near ideal experimental conditions are not guaranteed? A structured questionnaire was used to interview 324 randomly selected small scale farmers in Chongwe district of Zambia between November and December 2011. The data was analysed using well-grounded and robust matching and switching regression counter factual analysis tools. The rigorous econometric methods confirmed the positive impact of improved fallows on household maize yields, maize productivity, per capita maize yield and maize income. Insignificant impact results were however obtained when broader welfare indicators – overall per capita, crop income and value of crop production were considered. The study attributes these later results to two possible areas; first, most of the maize sold that contributes to crop income may be coming from other input sources such as the inorganic fertiliser that is common in the study area. Second, the non-use of the technology on cash crops (for example cotton) in subsequent periods after a year or two of maize cropping reduces the technology’s contribution to the households’ cash crop income portfolio. Had the study only used maize income or value of maize income to measure overall crop income (or value of crop production), or had it just made a simple comparison between adopters and non adopters, the likelihood of not finding any insignificant results on the efficacy of improved fallows would have been high. The study thus concludes that the use of improved fallows should be diversified to cover the entire cash crop portfolio especially a year or so after maize cropping when most of the nitrogen supplied by technology has been used up. More importantly, the study recommends use of better and more robust methodologies in evaluating impact of interventions. The positive effects of improved fallows on on-farm environmental quality, controlling for farmers’ biophysical and socio-economic characteristics were confirmed. Estimates from OLS regression, matching and the more robust endogenous switching regression showed that the technology had a significant causal effect on households’ consumption of fuel wood obtained from natural forests. The technology can provide up to 1,086 kg or about 51% of annual household fuel wood requirements in the year the fallows are terminated. This amount is substantial enough to make a positive contribution towards reducing encroachment on public forests and thus control the rate of deforestation. In addition to promoting the technology for soil fertility improvement (the role which is widely accepted by the farmers), explicit extension messages conveying the technology’s capacity to provide various products that contribute to farmer welfare as well as provide on farm environmental quality should be made available. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / PhD / Unrestricted