دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی یک طبقه بندی تجربی مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکت در صنایع تولیدی چین - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Notwithstanding the availability of a substantial body of literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR), the term has remained controversial and ambiguous in terms of its meaning, use, and usefulness. Specifically, the impact of CSR on tangible and intangible returns to Chinese manufacturers has remained uncertain. Drawing on stakeholder theory and CSR literature, we empirically develop an exploratory taxonomy of CSR practices in China’s manufacturing industries. By surveying the manufacturers operating in China’s food, pharmaceutical, automotive, and clothing industries, we identify three CSR clusters and examine how they are related to their financial, operational, reputational, and social capital performances. Our findings deepen the understanding of CSR adoption patterns by clarifying the consequences of CSR adoption in China’s manufacturing industry.

Limitations and Future Research

The following are the main limitations of this study. First, employing crosssectional survey data-sets does not effectively test the assumed cause-effect relationships of our hypotheses. Future research may adopt a longitudinal approach to collect data on CSR adoption and firm performance at different times with a view to gathering more evidence supporting the cause-effect assumptions made. Second, our data were collected from four industries to ensure generalizability of our results. However, organizations in different industries operate under different environments and face their own unique problems and constraints. Future research may focus on a single industry to be able to offer industry-specific insights. Third, our tests were directed mainly at the direct associations between different CSR patterns and performance outcomes. Future researchers can identify and test whether there are contingency factors moderating such associations. While measuring the performance of social capital, we have focused on supplier related social capital because of its known significance in Chinese manufacturing. Future researchers may explore the relationships between CSR and other forms of social capital (e.g., the structural linkage with the market). Fourth, as for the research context, future research may explore how firm internationalization affects its CSR activities because internationalized or export-oriented companies need to demonstrate awareness of multiple stakeholders globally and their compliances of foreign market requirements (Attig et al., 2016). Future researchers may address the CSR adoption problems associated with manufacturing to export market in developing countries, such as the lack of recognized international standards, the economic orientation of Western multinationals and domestic/host government regulations (Zhao et al., 2014b). Fifth, since our findings have suggested that government influence could be a significant factor affecting CSR adoption in firms in developing countries, future CSR work may examine the influence of this factor on CSR implementation. Sixth, since we could not avoid the influences of state-owned enterprises in China’s manufacturing, our survey data had to include state-owned companies (wholly or partly), which might have supported other perspectives on implementing CSR activities (Zhu et al., 2015) due to the mixed objectives and controls of the organizations (Bruton et al., 2015). Even though this did not affect two of the CSR clusters statistically, they may still have limited our research findings. Similarly, companies with different sizes may have different needs in terms of CSR implementation. Although our study had controlled company size in terms of annual turnover, it did not measure other company size indicators such as the number of employees, which could have limited our research findings. Since our study was limited to the Chinese context, its replicability in other developing countries should be examined. Finally, it should be kept in mind that the taxonomy developed in this study is merely exploratory. Further studies are necessary to examine and refine the validity of its findings.