Follow the Trend or the Opportunism: A Study on the Contagion Mechanism of Corporate Social Responsibility

Follow the Trend or the Opportunism: A Study on the Contagion Mechanism of Corporate Social Responsibility


Author:Liu Bai,Lu Jiarui Journal:Nankai Business Review Date:2018

AbstractNetwork will bring the convergence of action of members that are embedded in it, which is the contagion effect of social network. In the case of better corporate social responsibility environment, the implementation of corporate social responsibility of enterprises is "following the trend" or just "opportunistic" ? This study is based on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2015, which is the first to confirm the impact of the average corporate social responsibility of other enterprises in the industry on individual enterprises. After controlling the factors that influence the social responsibility of the individual and the industry, the average corporate social responsibility of the industry has a significant positive impact on the social responsibility of the individual enterprise, that is, corporate social responsibility is contagious. In addition, the property rights structure affects the "contagious" relationship of corporate social responsibility, and the average corporate social responsibility of peers helps to enhance the corporate social responsibility of state-owned companies, but it cannot affect the corporate social responsibility of non-state-owned companies. Further analysis of the transmission mechanism of non-SOEs suggests that the sensitivity of the socially responsible industry will enhance the positive impact of the average corporate social responsibility of the industry on corporate social responsibility for non-SOEs. The above conclusions show that state-owned enterprises doing CSR is mainly "following the trend", compared with “opportunism” in the non-stateowned enterprise. After doing robustness test about the endogeneity, a variety of estimation methods and other issues, the conclusion is still established. The research of this paper not only enriches the theoretical research on the influencing factors of corporate social responsibility, but also helps to deepen the public's understanding of the mechanism of corporate social responsibility infection from the perspective of the relationship network, and provides a relevant basis for improving the policy suggestion about CSR.


KeywordCorporate Social Responsibility; Contagious; Social Relationship Network;


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