Research On The Antecedents Of CSR Reporting: Evidence From Chinese Listed Frims

With the increasing prevalence of social and environmental problems in the world, corporate social responsibility(CSR) and CSR reporting disclosure has attracted tons of attention from government, and commercial corporations, yet there is significant variation across Chinese firm in the adaption of CSR reporting and the amount and quality of information disclosed on specific CSR activities. This variation allows us to examine the basic questions of(1) why some firms disclose their CSR reports and other firms don’t;(2) why some firms choose to substantively disclose their CSR reports and other firms choose to symbolically disclose their CSR reports.To explore this theoretical question, we firstly argued that the behavior of firms’ CSR reporting includes two processes: one is the probability of CSR reporting that means firms should choose between issuing a CSR report and not issuing a CSR report; the other is the substantiveness of CSR report that means whether firms adopt decoupling strategy to issue symbolic CSR reports. Then, we combined the neoinstitutional and resource-based theoretical perspectives to propose an integrative theoretical framework which can explain the antecedents of the probability of CSR reporting. Based on the study of organizational decoupling strategy, we also proposed a theoretical model to explain the antecedents of CSR report’ decoupling strategy. Finally, based on Chinese publicly listed firms’ CSR reporting data during 2008-2011, we tested the above theoretical models and provided the following results.1. The antecedents of the probability of CSR reporting.First, we find that the probability of CSR reporting is mainly driven by external legitimacy pressure. For example, political-connected listed firms who faced regulative legitimacy pressure from government are more likely to issue CSR reports. Listed firms who faced normative legitimacy pressure from their industrial peers are more likely to issue CSR reports. And listed firms with high visibility faces more cognitive legitimacy pressure, thus are more likely to issue CSR reports. Second, we also find the probability of CSR reporting is partly driven by listed firms’ resource and capabilities. For example, firms with great prior financial resources(ROA) are more likely to issue CSR reports. However, we didn’t find the significant relationship between listed firms’ slack resources and the probability of CSR reporting.2. The antecedents of the “decoupling strategy” of CSR report’s qualityWe use “decoupling strategy” to indicate the extent to which issuing CSR reports are purely symbolic or indicative of substantive CSR activities, and we propose two terms of “decoupling intention” and “decoupling risk” to measure the antecedents of CSR reporting’s “decoupling strategy”. First, we find that those listed firm whose CSR strategy is clear and combined with firms’ long-term strategic plan will have less “decoupling intention”, thus are likely to issue substantive CSR reports. Second, we also find listed firms with high visibility, and cross-listed firms attract more attention and monitoring from government, the public, media, non-government organizations and other stakeholders. Therefore, they face much more “decoupling risk”, thus are more likely to issue substantive CSR reports. At the same time, we also find the support of the significant positive relationships between state-owned and political-connected listed firms, higher marketization development and the extent of issuing substantive CSR reports.This dissertation makes a number of contributions to the study of CSR reports disclosure. First, this dissertation proposed an integrative theoretical framework based on neoinstitutional theory and resource-based theory. Second, we show how legitimacy pressure from institutional constituents, firms’ resources and capabilities, and the international effect between legitimacy and firms’ resources and capabilities affect the probability of CSR reporting. Third, we propose two novel concepts of “decoupling intention” and “decoupling risk” and examine how they affect the extent of issuing substantive CSR reports.This dissertation also provides valuable practical implications for promoting the development of CSR reports in China. It is important to keep strengthening the promotion effect of governments at various levels in guiding and regulating the CSR repoting. It is also necessary to make firms realize the importance of combining CSR strategy into firms’ long-term strategic plan. It would make a big difference if media, public, and other stakeholders can monitor these firms’ CSR reporting behavior. Finally, we pointed out some limitations and provided three directions for future research.