Responsibility work in SMEs is often discussed in terms of methods, models, and tools. Surveys, reporting templates, metrics, and processes are offered with the promise of making sustainability work easier and helping it move forward. Yet in many SMEs, responsibility work is carried out, but its impact remains unclear. Habicher et al. (2021) examine sustainable change in SMEs from the perspectives of change and design thinking, and the message of the study to SME management is surprisingly clear: the problem in sustainability work is not a lack of methods, but what the change is actually connected to.
SMEs do not start from responsibility, but from survival.
The study shows that change in SMEs is primarily driven by very practical and rational factors: competition, profitability, digitalization, generational transitions, and business continuity. Responsibility is most often not the starting point of the change process, but rather a side effect or an outcome.
Responsibility truly moves to the core of business only when it supports a company’s viability, helps respond to market pressures, or is part of the company’s identity and values. Without these linkages, responsibility easily remains a detached theme, no matter how effective the toolsin use may be. This explains why sustainability work feels burdensome and separate in many SMEs: it is not embedded in everyday business practice.
Sustainable change is not a project or a quick development initiative
Habicher et al. emphasize that sustainable change in SMEs is by nature a long, uncertain, and often slow process. It is not a project that can simply be completed, nor a development initiative with a clearly defined beginning and end.
For many SMEs, this is a challenging idea. Everyday business is busy, decisions must be made quickly, and results are expected fast. In sustainability work, however, this logic does not hold. Change requires time, space, and above all, active managerial engagement.
According to the study, change succeeds only if management invests time in understanding the change, keeps the direction clear in everyday decisions, and accepts that not everything can be controlled in advance or handled alone. This is not about losing control, but about refraining from trying to solve everything upfront before the change has had time to take shape.
Design thinking refers to the idea that sustainability-related change is inherently uncertain, unfinished, and requires learning.
What does design thinking mean in this context?
Habicher et al. do not use design thinking as a methodological toolkit or a single tool, but as a way to understand and structure change. In this context, design thinking refers to the idea that sustainability-related change is inherently uncertain, unfinished, and requires learning. The problems and solutions are not clear at the outset; instead, they take shape gradually through action, experimentation, and everyday decision-making.
From a design thinking perspective, sustainability cannot be fully planned in advance in the same way as a technical project or an investment. Instead, change is built step by step in everyday work and practices. This highlights the role of management as a provider of direction and an enabler, rather than a distributor of ready-made solutions.
Design thinking does not make a company responsible
One of the key findings of the study is that change approaches, such as design thinking, do not in themselves make a company responsible. They can support change, but only when the context is right. In SMEs, design thinking is most often used to advance digitalization, improve operational efficiency, and develop new products and services. Social and environmental objectives are usually secondary. Only companies that are already oriented toward responsibility use change approaches as genuine tools for sustainable change.
This is an important message also in discussions about sustainability frameworks and standards. No model, method, or reporting structure will make a company responsible if responsibility is not connected to the core business and its real challenges. In this sense, design thinking is not a business development method, but a way of leading in situations where the outcome cannot be known in advance.
Leadership makes the difference – not the number of tools
The overarching message of the study is that sustainability work in SMEs is above all a leadership issue. Change does not occur because a company has the right tools, but because management understands why the change matters, integrates responsibility into business development, and leads the change through everyday decisions—not only through strategy documents.
Sustainability work in SMEs does not fail because companies do not know what should be done. It fails because the change remains detached and is not genuinely part of how the company is managed. Progress in sustainability is not achieved by adding more methods, but by making clear leadership choices. The question, therefore, is not whether an SME has the right tools, but whether it dares to embed responsibility into the way the business is actually led.
Reference: Habicher, D., Erschbamer, G., Pechlaner, H., Ghirardello, L., & Walder, M. (2021). Transformation and Design Thinking: Perspectives on sustainable change, company resilience and democratic leadership in SMEs. Leadership, education, personality: an interdisciplinary journal, 3(2), 145-156. https://doi.org/10.1365/s42681-022-00028-x
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