Open Access
Corporate social responsibility reporting in China: Symbol or substance?
Christopher Marquis,Cuili Qian +1 more
TLDR
A political dependence model is developed that explains how different types of dependency on the government lead firms to issue corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and how the risk of governmental monitoring affects the extent to which CSR reports are symbolic or substantive.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.read more
Citations
More filters
Posted Content
Imprinting: Toward A Multilevel Theory
TL;DR: The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research as mentioned in this paper, and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Review of the Nonmarket Strategy Literature: Toward a Multi-Theoretical Integration
TL;DR: This article reviewed and synthesized strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA) research published in top-tier and specialized academic journals between 2000 and 2014.
Journal ArticleDOI
The role of board gender and foreign ownership in the CSR performance of Chinese listed firms
TL;DR: Liu et al. as mentioned in this paper used Rankins' ratings over the 2009 to 2013 period to show that a greater gender balance in top-management supports stronger CSR performance in Chinese listed firms.
Journal ArticleDOI
Institutional Strategies in Emerging Markets
Christopher Marquis,Mia Raynard +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a review of institutional strategies is presented, focusing on emerging market contexts, settings that are characterized by weak capital market and regulatory infrastructures and fast-paced turbulent change.
Journal ArticleDOI
Embracing Tensions in Corporate Sustainability A Review of Research From Win-Wins and Trade-Offs to Paradoxes and Beyond
TL;DR: Corporate sustainability is rife with tensions as firms seek to balance often divergent economic, social, and environmental goals as discussed by the authors, and the authors of this paper assess how tensions have been addressed in past research and to assess how tension have been handled in past studies.
References
More filters
Posted Content
Law and Finance
Rafael La Porta,Rafael La Porta,Florencio Lopez de Silanes,Florencio Lopez de Silanes,Andrei Shleifer,Andrei Shleifer,Robert W. Vishny,Robert W. Vishny +7 more
TL;DR: This paper examined legal rules covering protection of corporate shareholders and creditors, the origin of these rules, and the quality of their enforcement in 49 countries and found that common law countries generally have the best, and French civil law countries the worst, legal protections of investors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions
TL;DR: In this article, multiple regression is used to test and interpret multiple regression interactions in the context of multiple-agent networks. But it is not suitable for single-agent systems, as discussed in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Strategic responses to institutional processes
TL;DR: The authors applied the convergent insights of institutional and resource dependence perspectives to the prediction of strategic responses to institutional processes, and proposed a typology of strategies that vary in active organizational resistance from passive conformity to proactive manipulation.
Journal ArticleDOI
The corporate social performance-financial performance link
Sandra Waddock,Samuel B. Graves +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors report the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance, finding that corporate social performance (CSP) is positively associated with prior financial performance, supporting the theory that slack resource availability and CSP are positively related.