Pioneering small and medium-sized enterprises’ engagement in sustainability policy in Japan: Toward a new role in policymaking

While the engagement of large corporations in sustainability policy has been widely studied, the potential role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in this area remains underexplored. This qualitative study aims to clarify how SMEs can participate in sustainability-related policymaking within the context of political corporate social responsibility (CSR). To that end, interviews were conducted with 14 pioneering Japanese SMEs that had received recognition through one of two government-sponsored award programs for their implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To analyze the political activities of these firms, this study adopts the framework proposed by Westman et al. (2020), which conceptualizes SME political engagement through formal political participation, activism, civic engagement, and involvement. Based on this framework, the collected data were classified and analyzed to identify how SMEs engage in political processes. The findings reveal that SMEs influence both sustainability policymaking and informal rule-setting within sectors such as production and healthcare, often through participation in advocacy groups and other collective actions. These results suggest that SMEs are not merely passive recipients of policy but have the capacity to shape it through diverse forms of engagement, acting as policy actors. By positioning SMEs as a previously underexamined unit of analysis, the study contributes to the literature on political CSR and sustainability governance, offering a new perspective on the ways in which smaller firms can participate in and help shape public policy, particularly within the sustainability domain.