Abstract

The imperative for corporate sustainability to effectively significantly aid and drive the global effort and commitment to ensure a general sustainable healthy planet earth, has entailed concerted search for the appropriate enabling factors in the organisational setting, among other frameworks. Culture as the obvious key driver of organisational operations, was considered a possible enabler, hence the focus of this study. The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) segment of the organisational setting was considered suitable for the study in view of its role as the bedrock of any economy and its obvious non-formal nature. We undertook a survey of 401 SMEs, targeting their promoters, CEOs, partners or topmost managers, across six industries/sub-sectors in seven Local Government Areas of Plateau State, using a structured questionnaire, designed based on the competing values framework (CVF) of Cameron and Quinn (1999) with clan, hierarchy, market and adhocracy culture components, and the UN-championed economic, social and environment dimensions of sustainability. The responses from 385 SMEs were subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, with the key findings of significant impact of the aggregated dimensions of corporate sustainability on three components of the CVF version of corporate culture (hierarchy, market and adhocracy), while the fourth component, clan culture, showed no significant impact. Appropriate recommendations were made, including the necessity of SMEs to continuously consider appropriate sustainability-friendly management practices, especially the clan type that emphasises teamwork; sundry sustainability-enhancing policy frameworks for these categories of enterprises, and further study in fewer or more homogenous industries/sectors.