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8 - Firm Ownership and Corporate Social Responsibility in China: from a Multiple Stakeholder Perspective

from Part II - CSR and Sustainable Development Cross-Country Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2019

By
Ting Ren ,
Yan Feng ,
Youzhi Xiao ,
Hongyan Yang  and
Wenli Liu
Edited by
Onyeka Osuji ,
Franklin N. Ngwu  and
Dima Jamali
Onyeka Osuji
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Franklin N. Ngwu
Affiliation:
Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria
Dima Jamali
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut
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Summary

Adopting multiple stakeholder orientation as measurement for CSR and using the data of publicly listed Chinese firms from 2011-16, we examine how firms allocate attention to the five key stakeholders’ interests under potential resource constraints across different ownership types. Main results suggest that privately owned firms are more likely to prioritize the societal-orientation, compared to state-owned and foreign-invested firms; foreign-invested firms are more likely to attend to investor-orientation, consumer-orientation and environment-orientation, compared to the other two types. Weak difference is detected in employee-orientations across the three types of firms, which may be due to a general attention to employee benefits. In the context of potential conflicting interests, results suggest that different types of ownership lead the firm to make different choices in trading off different stakeholder interests, with foreign-invested firms trading off between internal stakeholder interests and external stakeholder interests, privately owned firms trading off investor and employee interests for customer interests, and all firms trading off customer interests with environment interests.

Keywords

ChinaCorporate Social ResponsibilityMultiple Stakeholder OrientationOwnershipTrade-Off
Type
Chapter
Information
Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing and Emerging Markets
Institutions, Actors and Sustainable Development
 , pp. 133 - 167
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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