A comparative literature review survey of employee HIV and AIDS-related corporate social responsibility ( CSR ) practices in small , micro and medium enterprises ( SMMEs ) in Zimbabwe and South Africa ”

ARTICLE INFO Tendai Makwara, Masiwa Mutambara and Sihle W. Magagula-Hlatjwako (2019). A comparative literature review survey of employee HIV and AIDS-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Problems and Perspectives in Management, 17(1), 339-347. doi:10.21511/ppm.17(1).2019.29 DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.17(1).2019.29 RELEASED ON Monday, 01 April 2019 RECEIVED ON Thursday, 07 February 2019 ACCEPTED ON Tuesday, 26 February 2019

A comparative literature review survey of employee HIV and AIDS-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in small, micro and medium enterprises (SMMEs) in Zimbabwe and South Africa

INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH FOCUS
Zimbabwe and South Africa are two Southern African countries bedevilled with the HIV and AIDS epidemic to greater proportions. According to UNAIDS statistics, 1.3 million Zimbabweans and 6.2-7 million South Africans are living with HIV (AVERT, 2019). While there are commendable, government efforts to arrest the epidemic, debates still rage on the contribution from the business sector in confronting the epidemic. Despite the well-known economic hardships in Zimbabwe, government and donor sponsored HIV and AIDS programs have been kept alive, saving the lives of many citizens (Chevo & Bhatasara, 2012;Fleshman, 2006). Likewise, the South African government runs the world's largest antiretroviral program to promote access to medication for those living with the epidemic (AVERT, 2019). These highlighted posi-tive steps in Zimbabwe and South Africa, however, do not mask the implementation challenges inherent in the programs they run.
In contrast to the actions of the respective governments, the business community's response to the epidemic is rather disappointing and tragic. According to Rosen, Feely, Connelly, and Simon (2007, p. S42): "the appropriate role of the private sector in fighting the epidemic remains an unanswered question in most countries" and this is no less apparent in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Makwara (2015, p. 9) further contends that the response pattern of business to HIV intervention is still an evolving process with full commitment yet to be realized.  poses a question 'Corporate South Africa's response to HIV and AIDS: Why so slow?' Arguably, the business community, including SMMEs, still regard the issue of HIV and AIDS as a public health concern, which lies in the government domain and civil society (Davids, Weihs, Tunzi, & Tassiopoulos, 2017, p. 29). Thus, if they are to take interest in addressing the epidemic, it is motivated purely by aims to meet business case ends (Douglas & Sutherland, 2009). Evidence of this bias can be drawn from abundant literature that justifies HIV and AIDS social responsibility emphasizing its costs to business and reputational benefits (Deane, Stevano, & Johnston, 2018) than altruistic motivations. Additionally, few firms have instituted HIV and AIDS policies in the workplace to show commitment to addressing the epidemic, and even among those that do have many are thriving on 'talking the talk' rather than 'walking the talk'. Based on these observations, one could conclude that the business community still needs to prop up its attention to the epidemic.
Pursuant to exploring how business is responding to the epidemic, albeit at such a lethargic pace, this study limits its interest to the actions of SMMEs in Zimbabwe and South Africa towards arresting the epidemic in the workplace. The research objective is to develop a comparative overview of how SMMEs are responding to the epidemic as a basis for developing a framework that could be implemented by SMMEs in both countries. Additionally, the study frames a generalized understanding of SMMEs' HIV and AIDS related social responsibility in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and thus contributes to a growing body of knowledge on SMME and their context driven CSR practices in general and specifically towards HIV and AIDS.

Employee related HIV and AIDS practices by SMMEs in Zimbabwe
While it is a global truth that more has been done by large businesses than SMMEs in terms of initiating workplace measures to arrest the epidemic, response patterns experienced in Zimbabwe can be explained on two fronts: 1) the general malaise associated with 'smallness' and 2) the worsening economic climate in the country. Emphasizing the second aspect, Kaseke (2009, p. 18) Manuere (2016) finds that SMMEs donate more to charity (70%) than addressing employee welfare (10%). These findings, in the authors' view, are consistent with an SMME environment that has become informal (no employees or very few) such that employee welfare is no longer a formal business concern and donations are warranted to support other more pressing social problems such as hunger and poverty, thus suggesting a possible impact of the economic environment on SMMEs CSR behavior. As a matter of fact, the cogency of these observations fall squarely within Amaeshi, Adegbite, Ogbechie et al. (2016, p. 21) who assert, despite the challenges of the contaminating context within which SMMEs in Africa operate, that there is an innate commitment to address their social responsibility, however limited this might be.

Results of another International Labor
Organization (2007, pp. 17-18) SMME survey further highlight other innovative approaches firms are using to cope with the challenges of the epidemic in the workplace. In one featured SMME, the owner solicited the help of the partner to take over duties of running the business, while she recovered from the epidemic related illness at home. Another entrepreneur reported forming a supporting group, with another HIV and AIDS volunteer to bring educational pamphlets from outside sources to share with others in the workplace. It is apparent that these CSR related activities rely on external resources and social goodwill requiring no internal investment, suggesting that SMMEs lack adequate resources to pursue firm-determined intervention approaches.
In In another research study, Bowen, Edwards, Simbayi, and Cattell (2013, pp. 20-21) investigated interventions by construction firms in the Western Cape and found that SMMEs facilitate employee medical treatment, provide transportation to medical centres, supply antiretroviral treatments (ARV's) for 3 months to infected employees (medium firms), as well as liaised with non-government organizations and clinics as part of their HIV and AIDS CSR initiatives. It is further reported that SMMEs employees prefer to go to the state hospitals than use in-house facilities (Bowen et al., 2013, p. 24), a finding that indicates either the perceived successful implementation of the HIV and AIDS program by the government or the inhospitable nature of SMME workplace in the eyes of the employees. In Davids, Weihs, Tunzi, and Tassiopoulos (2017), trends in the tourism alternate between having no HIV and AIDS policy to other SMMEs who provide antiretroviral support in and out of the workplace, facilitate counselling and provide peer education. Presumably, HIV and AIDS policies are present in relatively stable medium enterprises, because, as noted in the study, many small firms do regard such policies as too complex and associated services expensive. Complementary to these studies, Wilkins (1999) investigated the informal sector and found that such kind of small business did not have any CSR initiatives towards the epidemic.
In conclusion, literature in South Africa exhibits a comparative narrative between small business and large business to the extent SMMEs 'copy' or endeavor to adopt HIV and AIDS CSR practices in corporate South Africa. However, literature also reveals SMMEs are reliant on their own small scale and altruistic initiatives to improve employee welfare in the workplace. Thus, while they may be aware or feel pressure to enact HIV/AIDS policies or provide medical resources to employees like large business, SMMEs do not seem convinced HIV and AIDS is a special concern among the multitude of social problems they tackle in society.

METHODOLOGY
The research objective is to present a snapshot of the state of HIV and AIDS-related CSR in SMMEs found in Zimbabwe and South Africa. As such, an exploratory literature review approach was used with careful selection of literature that would credibly represent the status of CSR development in this sector across the two countries. Data sources consulted include institutional research and policy publications, research articles from academic sites such as Google Scholar, EBSCOhost, and the general Google platform.

Theoretical framework
This literature review study uses the concept of corporate social responsibility as its theory of study. CSR theory suggest firms commit to improving the wellbeing of society (Kotler & Lee, 2005) arising from a belief that they (firms) have a moral and ethical duty to serve society (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004 Furthermore, CSR theory also posits that public prejudice about CSR practices has been skewed towards large companies than SMMEs (Jenkins, 2006), perhaps because the concept of CSR is born in the large business domain. As such, SMME CSR tends to be low key, giving rise to a perception that they do not practice CSR (Fassin, 2008 , among other tasks. Accordingly, leveraging CSR in SMMEs solely as a business strategy is wholly inappropriate, because its purpose goes beyond the interests of the firm, and are possibly overshadowed by owner manager and employee relational interests. It has also been observed that the informal nature of SMMEs makes them highly flexible and adaptable to prevailing local community issues than would be possible with large businesses (Jenkins, 2006). Baumann-Pauly, Wickert, Spence, and Scherer (2013) further state that CSR practices in SMMEs derive from daily business conduct and are characterized by high employee participation in shaping up the agenda. In Demuijnck and Ngnodjom (2012), in a research conducted on Cameroonian SMEs, it was found that immediate CSR concern of the owner-mangers was security of the employees -"in a broad sense -access to health care of the employees and their families". On the basis of these theoretical viewpoints, one can contend that Zimbabwe and South Africa where HIV and AIDS threaten the firm survival, the owner and employees, SMMEs are possibly altering the scope of their internally focused CSR practices to focus on HIV and AIDS.
In this paper, theoretical conception of an SMME in both countries is that it is anything from a street vendor to enterprises employing less than 200 people (Tustin, 2015, p. 79). SMMEs are small entities, which are independently owned, managed by individuals, lack a national presence due to the size of their operations and workforce, and are heavily dependent on internal sources of capital to finance growth and expansion.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Literature evidence from both Zimbabwe and South Africa shows that SMMEs experience a variety of operational, challenges from financial, knowledge and impetus to design formalized responses to the HIV and AIDS. Importantly, the concept of HIV and AIDS policy as signature of social responsibility runs parallel to the nature and aspirations of SMMEs who rely on informal and innovative approaches to assist employee to deal with the epidemic. Notwithstanding the foreign nature of such policies and cost implications, SMMEs have shown that they are capable of integrating big business oriented and HIV and AIDS policy based CSR practices with their own informal nature.
Literature from Zimbabwe intimate that SMMEs in that country are disengaged from large business influences, as well as institutional support as compared to SMME experiences in South Africa. The authors believe large business in Zimbabwe is constrained by the effects of a bad economy from extending their CSR influences to SMMEs. This is necessarily so because they may not be CSR compliant on their own account and they lack resources to support SMMEs. In contrast, corporate South Africa boasts a better economy and face a regulated CSR environment that forces them to support SMMEs.
In conclusion, this article has reviewed SMME HIV and AIDS-related CSR in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Findings suggest despite differences in Zimbabwean and South African economies and the role of large business in framing the CSR environment, SMMEs in both countries fulfil their CSR obligations through informal ways corresponding with their small business nature. As this article is based on literature reviews, an empirical examination of the research question to establish a grounded recommendation for the development of a SMMEs CSR framework that could be implemented by SMMEs in both countries is recommended.