Li-Wen Lin

Bio: Li-Wen Lin is an academic researcher from University of British Columbia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Corporate governance & Corporate social responsibility. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 30 publications receiving 941 citations. Previous affiliations of Li-Wen Lin include University of California, Berkeley.

Corporate Social Responsibility in China: Window Dressing or Structural Change?

Abstract: In recent years many indigenous corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have emerged in China. The Chinese CSR initiatives include laws and regulations, governmental instructions and guidelines, non-governmental standards and organizations. The recent growth of the Chinese CSR initiatives deserves an analysis of the CSR development in China, especially given that China’s international image is usually associated with human rights abuses, substandard products, sweatshops, and serious environmental pollution. How sincere and serious are the Chinese CSR measures, simply window dressing or any real structural change? This article overviews major Chinese CSR initiatives and analyzes the Chinese CSR development from the perspectives of the historical and ideological foundations, instrumental motivations, and institutional environments in China.

Corporate Social Responsibility in China: Window Dressing or Structural Change?

Abstract: In recent years many indigenous corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have emerged in China. The Chinese CSR initiatives include laws and regulations, governmental instructions and guidelines, non-governmental standards and organizations. The recent growth of the Chinese CSR initiatives deserves an analysis of the CSR development in China, especially given that China's international image is usually associated with human rights abuses, substandard products, sweatshops, and serious environmental pollution. How sincere and serious are the Chinese CSR measures? Are they simply window dressing or is there any real structural change? This Article overviews major Chinese CSR initiatives and analyzes the Chinese CSR development from the perspectives of the historical and ideological foundations, instrumental motivations, and institutional environments in China.

We are the (national) champions: understanding the mechanisms of state capitalism in china

Abstract: RESUMEN: China ahora es el segundo pais que mas empresas Global Fortune 500 tiene en el mundo. Casi todas ellas son empresas estatales (SOEs, acronimo en ingles) organizadas dentro de grandes grupos empresariales, con un organismo central gubernamental denominado SASAC como accionista controlador fi nal. A pesar de la importancia de estos grupos para la economia domestica china y su estrategia de invertir en el exterior, muchas de las particularidades del sector SOE –especialmente su estructura organizacional y las caracteristicas de gobierno corporativo de los distintos grupos empresariales– permanecen en la penumbra. Para salir de esa oscuridad se requiere dejar el analisis habitual basado en los costos de agencia de las empresas que cotizan en bolsa, predominante en la bibliografia sobre gobierno corporativo. Por el contrario, examinamos la ecologia relacional en la que se mueven los grupos SOE, con atencion en los mecanismos institucionalizados que unen los grupos empresariales con otros organos del Estado-partido. Pensamos que a traves de estos enlaces, las elites administradoras de la economia china han ensamblado lo que Mancur Olson llamo una “coalicion englobante total” –una organizacion cuyos miembros deben tanto a la sociedad, lo que hace que tengan grandes incentivos para estar muy pendientes de la productividad del grupo SOE. Exponiendo de esta manera los mecanismos del capitalismo de Estado chino surgen muchas interrogantes para los investigadores y para los responsables de politicas publicas, las que se incrementan a medida que se expande la interaccion global de las empresas chinas. Por ejemplo, ?se explica adecuadamente el ascenso de las SOEs chinas mediante las teorias ordinarias de la bibliografia comparada de gobierno corporativo? ?Como podria transformar la trayec

The New Role for Assurance Services in Global Commerce

Abstract: In this Article we examine the rapid emergence and expansion of a private-sector compliance and enforcement infrastructure that we believe increasingly may be providing a substitute for public and legal regulatory infrastructure in global commerce, especially in developing countries where rule of law is weak and court systems are absent or inadequate. This infrastructure is provided by a proliferation of performance codes and standards, and a rapidly growing global army of privately trained and authorized inspectors and certifiers that we call the "third party assurance industry." The growth in the third party assurance business has been phenomenal in the last decade. The business first developed to facilitate making and carrying out private contracts, but in recent years, assurance services are being deployed for purposes that are more appropriately seen as regulatory in nature. Third party assurance may thus be providing a new institutional structure through which private commercial exchange is being harnessed and regulated for essentially public purposes. I. INTRODUCTION II. THE THIRD PARTY ASSURANCE INDUSTRY AND EVIDENCE OF ITS GROWTH A. The Impact of ISO B. An Overview of Assurance Organizations C. The "Professionalization" of the Inspection Industry III. FACTORS CAUSING A RAPID GROWTH IN DEMAND FOR THIRD PARTY ASSURANCE SERVICES A. Growth in International Trade and Outsourcing B. The Growing Complexity of Products and Increased Division of Labor Within Supply Chains C. The Need by Global Corporations to Assure That Contractors Can Meet Quality and Delivery Requirements D. The Need by Global Corporations to Assure That Contractors Can Meet Labor, Human Rights, and Environmental Standards 1. Recognition of the Risks to Global Brands From Problems in the Supply Chains 2. The Increasing Sophistication of Activists Pressuring Corporations About Environmental, Human Rights, or Labor Concerns 3. The Growing Demands for Transparency in Social Performance Indicators IV. AN EXAMINATION OF THESE DEVELOPMENTS: CHINA AS A CASE STUDY V. THEORETICAL AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS A. The Contractual Role of Third Party Assurance B. The Regulatory Role of Third Party Assurance VI. CONCLUSIONS I. INTRODUCTION The problem of organizing complex production has for the most part been analyzed by law and economics scholars in a dichotomous way: production can be accomplished either through a series of market transactions and contracts, or under the guidance and control of a hierarchical governance structure within a firm. (1) A rich and well-developed literature has emerged in the last few decades analyzing these two modes (as well as some "hybrid" modes), and considering why one mode might be used in some circumstances, and the other in different circumstances. (2) More recently, scholars have explored how globalization seems to be leading to more "outsourcing," in which activities that were once carried on within a single firm are now being organized by contracts, across multiple firms, perhaps in multiple countries. (3) Nearly all of the economic literature on choice of organizational form and the "outsourcing" phenomenon, however, assumes the existence of an institutional context in which rule of law is followed, minimum social standards and business norms are established and regulated (or are at least commonly accepted and followed within a given trade), and contracts can be enforced. (4) Given these characteristics of the institutional context, two firms that both operate in the United States or other developed countries, for example, can focus in their contracts with each other on the terms on which the subject of the contract will be carried out, without having to worry much about baseline or "default" terms. …

We are the (National) Champions: Understanding the Mechanisms of State Capitalism in China

Abstract: While China appears to present a new variety of capitalism, frequently labeled "state capitalism," the features of this system - particularly the organizational structure surrounding China’s most important state-owned enterprises (the national champions) - remains a black box. Corporate governance scholarship on China has focused on listed firms, but listed SOEs in China are nested in vertically integrated corporate groups, and the groups are strategically linked to other business groups, as well as to the Communist Party and to governmental organs. While the parent company of the listed firms has a governmental controlling shareholder in the form of an agency called SASAC, deconstruction of this agency’s control rights reveals that it has both less and more power than controlling shareholders in other regimes. Unpacking the black box of Chinese state capitalism requires moving away from the standard focus on agency costs in listed firms that predominates in the corporate governance literature. Instead, we analyze the relational ecology that fosters production in a system where all roads eventually lead to the party-state. We introduce two analytical constructs to understand key features of industrial organization in China’s state-owned sector: "Networked hierarchy" is our term for the way top-down governance features within individual state-controlled corporate groups are matched with strategic linkages to other state-controlled institutions. "Institutional bridging" is our term for the widespread use of systematized fasteners uniting separate components of the system. We argue that networked hierarchies and institutional bridges have been used in China to assemble what Mancur Olson called an "encompassing organization" - a coalition whose members own so much of society that they have important incentives to be actively concerned about how productive it is. Exposing the mechanisms of state capitalism refocuses several scholarly debates in which China is conspicuous by its absence, including the law and finance literature and the debate over convergence in corporate governance systems. It also raises a question whose salience increases as the global interaction of Chinese firms expands: What forces have the potential to change the current institutional trajectory of corporate capitalism in China?

Governance in global value chains

Abstract: This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in China: Symbol or Substance?

Abstract: This study focuses on how and why firms strategically respond to government signals on appropriate corporate activity. We integrate institutional theory with research on corporate political strategy to develop a political dependence model that explains (a) how different types of dependency on the government lead firms to issue corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and (b) how the risk of governmental monitoring affects the extent to which CSR reports are symbolic or substantive. First, we examine how firm characteristics reflecting dependence on the government—including private versus state ownership, executives serving on political councils, political legacy, and financial resources—affect the likelihood of firms issuing CSR reports. Second, we focus on the symbolic nature of CSR reporting and how variance in the risk of government monitoring through channels such as bureaucratic embeddedness and regional government institutional development influences the extent to which CSR communications are symbolically decoupled from substantive CSR activities. Our database includes all CSR reports issued by the approximately 1,600 publicly listed Chinese firms between 2006 and 2009. Our hypotheses are generally supported. The political perspective we develop contributes to organizational theory by showing that (a) government signaling is an important mechanism of political influence, (b) different types of dependency on the government expose firms to different types of legitimacy pressure, and (c) firms face a decoupling risk that makes them more likely to enact substantive CSR actions in situations in which they are likely to be monitored.

Imprinting: Toward A Multilevel Theory

Abstract: The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields — including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research — and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This article offers a critical review of this rich yet disparate literature and guides research toward a multilevel theory of imprinting. We start with a definition that captures the general features of imprinting across levels of analysis but is precise enough to remain distinct from seemingly similar concepts, such as path dependence and cohort effects. We then provide a framework to order and unite the splintered field of imprinting research at different levels of analysis. In doing so, we identify economic, technological, institutional, and individual influences that lead to imprints at the level of (a) organizational collectives, (b) single organizations, (c) organizational building blocks, and (d) individuals. Building on this framework, we develop a general model that points to major avenues for future research and charts new directions toward a multilevel theory of imprinting. This theory provides a distinct lens for organizational research that takes history seriously.