Research On The Agricultural Corporate Social Responsibility

There are two different perspectives on the research of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) among theorists:one is from the internal perspective of enterprises, and the other is from the external perspective. The former mainly researches on how the attribute, resource and strength of an enterprise influence the CSR, while the latter mainly analyzes how exterior stakeholders such as government and consumers influence the CRS. Recently the frequent domestic food safety problems have aroused people’s extensive concern about the CSR of agricultural enterprises, so more and more enterprises have incorporated it into their long-term development strategy. According to the resource school’s points of view, a complete enterprise strategy should include two aspects:what the enterprise can do and what the enterprise may do. What the enterprise can do reflects the resources and ability of the enterprise and what the enterprise may do is the enterprise’s strategic choice based on the external environment. Therefore, it is necessary to combine these two aspects in the analysis. The consumer is the most important exterior stakeholder of the enterprise, which together with the enterprise constitute the two main parts in the CSR movement. To better carry forward the CSR movement in China, these two parts must work together and interact with each other. Therefore, the thesis researches on the CRS of agricultural enterprises from these two aspects:the enterprise and the consumer. Major research works are carried out as follows:Firstly, it explains the background of topic selecting, significance and research method of this thesis, it also comments on the existing classical literature at home and abroad, gives an overview of the theoretical foundation of this thesis, analyzes the elements of CSR of agricultural enterprises, and interprets the core concept involved. These are the contents in chapter 1 to 3.Secondly, it’s about questionnaire design and data collection. This thesis analyzes the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprise from two layers:the agricultural enterprise itself and the consumer. Two questionnaires are designed for the reason that it’s necessary to investigate both the agricultural enterprise and the consumer. In chapter 4, the design principles and processes are stated, the formation and reasons of the questions are introduced in details, and the source of the sample, the process of the research, the data collection and processing are explained.Thirdly, this thesis researches on the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprise from the enterprise aspect in chapter 5 and 6. It analyzes and summarizes the particularity of the CSR of agricultural enterprises theoretically. Based on the questionnaire, statistical description of the status quo, motivation and standard of the CSR of agricultural enterprises is presented. Through factor analysis, the CSR is summed up in seven responsibility factors:the responsibility of shareholders, partners, consumers, employees, government, community and environment. On the basis of this, by means of structural equation model, these seven responsibility factors are further summed up in three dimensions:internal responsibility, external responsibility and public responsibility. Then through statistical methods such as variance analysis and regression analysis, empirical research on the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprises has been done, and conclusions are drawn as follows:first, from the perspective of enterprise, agricultural enterprises take high social responsibility especially in the aspect of governmental, consumer and partner responsibility. Though sometimes the internal motivation of agricultural enterprise is to enhance its own reputation, more for external motivation such as devote to the society, serve the consumer, etc. Second, the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprises is influenced by many factors such as the manager’s personalities, the enterprise’s cycle, scale, profitability, various attributes, innovation, management, and location, etc., but the degree and content of influence are different. From the perspective of personal characteristics, the manager’s education background has a great influence on the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprises, whereas the influence of other factors like gender and age are not significant. Enterprise cycle has little effect on the general performance of the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprises, but in terms of insider responsibility, those enterprises in growth period and maturity period do much better. From the perspective of agricultural enterprises’characteristics, organization type, scale, profitability, innovation, management and the condition of export have great influence. However, industrial classification and the structure of ownership have little effect. In addition, in the aspect of inner responsibility, agricultural enterprises in the eastern area do better than those in the western area, but in the aspects of other responsibility factors and general level, agricultural enterprises in different regions have no obvious difference. Third, according to the result of multivariate regression analysis, profitability, management, educational level of the manager, the condition of product exportation and innovation ability are the five most critical factors.Fourthly, in chapter 7, this thesis researches on the CSR from the aspect of consumer. On the basis of questionnaires for consumers, a descriptive statistical analysis has been carried out on consumers’ choices of the importance of CSR, opinions on the motivation of CSR, the way for enterprises to take social responsibility and the degree of consumers’satisfaction of social responsibility. After that, on the basis of consumers’ personal characteristics and by using factor analysis, independent-samples test, contingency table, etc., an empirical study on what influence consumers’choice on the importance of enterprise responsibility and degree of consumers’ satisfaction of social responsibility. The results show that age, educational level and profession, on the cognizance of the importance of social responsibility, have significant impacts on consumers’ choices, while living environment, family income, family structure have no effect at all. From the degree of consumers’ satisfaction of social responsibility, the following three factors:gender, family income and whether there are children and old people in a family have little effect. Age has some effect on consumers’ satisfactory degree of social responsibility, the older the consumers are, the higher the satisfactory degree is, and living background has an influence on both the employees’and consumers’satisfactory of responsibility factor. Employees’satisfactory degree of responsibility factor is higher when the city size is getting smaller, the consumers’ satisfactory of responsibility factor is lower in big cities and rural areas, and higher in small and medium-sized cities and counties. The educational level and profession have great influence on the consumers’ satisfactory degree of responsibility factor. The higher the educational level is, the lower the consumers’satisfactory degree of responsibility will be. The satisfactory degree of social responsibility of officials, employees in public institutions and students is lower than that of enterprise managers, employees and private businessmen.Fifthly, two aspects are combined to analyze the CSR of agricultural enterprises. At first, from the perspective of enterprise and consumer, the differences among importance, mode, motivation and cognitive level have been analyzed comparatively. And then the interaction mechanism between agricultural enterprises and consumers during the process of social responsibility has been constructed. At last, this thesis puts forward the choice of CSR of agricultural enterprises, including theoretical selection and practical countermeasures so as to improve the level of CSR of agricultural enterprises and consumers’ satisfaction. This is the content of chapter 8.Sixthly, chapter 9 gives a summary of the whole thesis. It elaborates the research conclusions, academic and practical significance of this thesis, and points out the existing problems and causes, and prospects of the research contents and improvement direction in the future as well.The research on the CSR is becoming deeper and deeper, and there are different perspectives, but there is no stable unified theoretical framework and research system. The research on the CSR behavior of agricultural enterprises from the aspects of enterprises and consumers in this thesis is only one of the perspectives. Due to the limitation of time and ability, many shortages also exist in this thesis, the influence factors of agricultural enterprise social responsibility behavior and consumers’ satisfactory degree of social responsibility still deserves further excavation, the affecting mechanism and process of consumers’ satisfactory degree on social responsibility CSR behavior deserves further investigation.