This article examines the way in which SME managers may adopt the CSR concept and decide to put it to practice using the support of the corporate network. In the fi rst part, the authors review the stakeholder theory, seen as a means of explaining the positioning of the manager faced with the challenges of corporate social responsibility. Where this theory helps to describe the stakeholders and how management envisages responding to the pressures they exert, it does not help to explain why and how management becomes involved. Of the numerous possible factors determining the action of responsibility, in the second part of the article, the authors describe the role that the network can play in the management learning process. The third part helps to illustrate this discussion by showing the example of a grouping of SME’s in the Indre et Loire region of France who exert considerable infl uence on their members to implement practices of social responsibility. The network of learning is presented in this article as the principal vehicle for enabling management to take action in the fi eld of CSR.