Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Public Policies and Sustainability in a Challenging World

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability has long been on the agenda for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs), but their social, environmental, and governance activities have been tackled due to various challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, the energy crisis, and the inflation crisis have created many constraints on the path towards achieving sustainable development. The growing number of social and environmental issues and challenges has become imperative for SMEs, governments, international trade, national competitiveness, and local communities. As the world is constantly changing, consumers and governments are attempting to encourage SMEs to be more focused and committed to their social and environmental goals.

Stakeholders and policy makers at all levels of governance (supranational, national, regional, and local) have emerged as major forces promoting social responsibility and environmental sustainability. They can provide comprehensive solutions to interrelated issues such as economic, social, and environmental measures. They can facilitate dialogue to find common solutions and mobilize new stakeholders to work with SMEs, governments, and socioeconomic organizations to address emerging issues and challenges around the world, and they can create new rules, structures, and support mechanisms for creating enterprise networks, synergizing platforms for sustainable development. Universities, as key agents in modern knowledge economies, undertake initiatives for sustainable development either by pursuing the UN’s SDGs or by educating future entrepreneurs with new learning materials and practices. Moreover, SMEs have not generated a clear and concrete entrepreneurial strategy towards how they are aiming to achieve sustainability. The above elements all remain under-researched.

We invite papers to be contributed to this Special Issue that seek to address modern and contemporary challenges in the sphere of SMEs and sustainability. We particularly welcome papers that focus on the following topics:

• How SMEs can put sustainability at the heart of their entrepreneurial strategy and thus make a difference.

• Sustainability embedded in the entrepreneurial models and production processes of SMEs.
• The effect of sustainable entrepreneurial performance on growth.
• The role of governments in promoting social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
• The role of NGOs in promoting social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
• The role of national governments and institutional frameworks in SMEs and sustainability.
• The impact of SMEs on the resilience of local community.
• The impact of a socioeconomic crisis on promoting social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
• The role of entrepreneurship education in sustainability-embedded models.
• The role of educational policies (e.g., GreenComp) in sustainable education for youth.
• The role of SMEs in their transition towards sustainability.

Dr. Nikolaos Apostolopoulos
Prof. Dr. Panagiotis Liargovas
Dr. Alexandros Kakouris
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
• sustainable entrepreneurship
• social and environmental sustainability
• sustainable education
• crisis