The Research On The Coupling Of The Government Regulation Of Food Safety And Corporate Social Responsibility

Along with economic and social development, public demand for food safety has shown increasing trend. However, in reality, the status of food security is not optimistic. In theoretical studies, most scholars regard government food safety-related behavior and corporate behavior as relatively independent problem. Therefore, the research on food safety regulation and corporate social responsibility coupling has strong practical and theoretical significance. This paper researches on government regulation of food safety and corporate social responsibility from a new perspective, using empirical analysis and normative analysis. Under the framework of nested system of rules, paper uses cooperative governance as coupled organizational foundation, and it also builds the relational model which is to achieve coupling, and reveals the path and mode selection. Finally, it recommends policies to promote coupling. The thesis can be divided into seven chapters.The first part builds up the framework of coupling, including chapter I and II. Chapter Ⅰ analyzes the coupled logic, that, according to social contract theory, companies need to fulfill their social responsibility. However, due to the nature of "economic man" dictates, there is natural wastage of corporate social responsibility on food production and management, so we need government to implement regulation and the government has a regulatory advantage. However, because of the government’s limited rationality, itwould give rise to "regulatory capture" and so on. Government and enterprises are indispensable to the visible solution to the problem of food security. But the relationship between the two is neither one nor the other, nor is it alternative, nor is it independent of each other, but need both to achieve coupling. This chapter defines the concept of "coupling" and "coupling affection", and also explains the purpose of the research paper, and the basic ideas and methods. Chapter Ⅱ combines the previous research on food safety regulation and corporate social responsibility, including the food market information asymmetry problem, food safety regulatory responsibility in the process of problem identification, costs and benefits issues of food safety regulation, and empirical research of food safety regulation, stakeholder theory, social contract theory; stage of the evolution of corporate social responsibility, study of corporate social responsibility on the relationship between business and government issues and so on. On this basis, the paper indicates the origin of the research problem, the basis for discussion, and then exports the object of the study.Chapter III, IV and V constitute the second part of the paper, which is the main part of the paper, explains the coupled system base, theoretical models and the path and mode selection of the realization of coupling.Chapter Ⅲ begins by describing the thesis research of institutional analysis framework---ested system of rules. The coupling process of social regulation and corporate social responsibility, involves government, business, civil society organizations and other related subjects. Constitutional-level rules which the suppliers of the government (i.e., social regulation of the law). Collective choice rules constrained by constitutional rules, which is under the guidance of the government, promote the corporate to make their social responsibility. Operating rules which are constraints by the collective choice rules, is specific rules used by corporate social responsibility, government regulation and the implementation of civil society organizations to monitor and information transmission. Actions of different actors are in different levels, and different rules show different levels of "nested" type features. In general, the rules of the constitutional level are the most stable and they are also the core of the whole system of rules. The actions of other subjects are within the limits of the constitutional rules, and form the collective choice rules, while urging the collective action of the next level decision-making body. So that decision-makers in this layer carry out collective action under the constraints of prior level rules and generated in the rules of this layer. Followed by recurrence, the rules of this layer not only restrict the actions of decision-makers of the next layer, but also restrict the rules of the next layer. At the same time, this layer will make adjustments to its system of rules by assessing the effect of the rules of practice in this layer. Then, will begin a new round of interaction, again and again. Nested system of rules can not only guarantee the constitutional authority of selection rules, but also take into account the actors of the initiative. This can achieve the flexibility and diversity of the fundamental rules of operation, and can also ensure the coupling of social regulation and corporate social responsibility effectively from the system. On this basis, this chapter analyzes the economic environment, legal environment, and ethics rules of coupling from the aspects of business, government and society.The coupling of social regulation and corporate social responsibility not only need reasonable institutional arrangements, but also need a viable platform for the organization, and co-governance model is a feasible option. In this paper, in order to meet the public demand, we can not only rely on self-consciousness or government. We need business, government and community together to solve. Business and government need impact each other, and achieve governance. On this basis, this chapter analyzes the company to fulfill its social responsibility in three ways, namely, government or private organizations authentication, contract based on the way of game, a voluntary social responsibility approach. All of them require the embedding of government regulation.Chapter IV analyzes the coupled relationship between government regulation and the corporate social responsibility firstly. On the one hand, the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility affects the level of government performance, on the other hand, government regulation is necessary to achieve corporate social responsibility to protect. On this basis, the paper attempts to build coupled relation models between the two, and tries to define the modest nature of coupling theoretically. The paper considers that the government need to use cost-benefit analysis, and balance the degree and methods of government regulation, and the allocation of regulation resources, etc., and adjust the allocation of resources between different ways of regulating. The government regulation must be close to optimal border goals during the repeated games between the government and enterprises.Chapter V analyzes the coupled path and mode selection of food safety regulation and corporate social responsibility. This paper analyzes the realization of coupling between the two paths. First, we use the game between the government and enterprises to explore the coupling path. On the one hand, government can use its advantages of supplying system and its influence on the evolution of the informal system, and standardize the corporate culture and ethical, so as to achieve social regulation enterprise and the universality of corporate social responsibility; On the other hand, enterprises can undertake their social responsibilities under the guidance of social regulation, they can be able to enhance their competitiveness, and thus to promote corporate social responsibility movement, which will be able to achieve the goal of social regulation through fulfilling corporate social responsibility and promote social regulation changes. Second, we can provide external oversight of the coupling mechanism and information platform through non-governmental organizations in order to provide information and transmission mechanism of social regulation and corporate social responsibility. In this path, the paper presents three alternative coupling mode:first, enforced self-regulation, that the regulator decides to force companies to be regulated and implements internal rules and procedures, thus achieving the regulator’s policy objectives; Second, co-regulation, that business, government organizations and non-governmental organizations promote the development of standards, monitoring, reporting, auditing, certification and stakeholder dialogue; Third, responsive regulation, which relies on context-based regulation should be based on the current regulatory environment, and changes resulting from different scenarios.Chapter VI constitutes the third part of the paper, corresponding to the previous theoretical analysis, there is an empirical analysis in this chapter. The paper analyzes China’s current corporate social responsibility and government regulation of food safety, and researches on the coupled status quo, problems and their causes.The fourth part of the thesis is the chapter Ⅶ. It mainly puts forward to policy recommendations of achieving the government food safety regulations coupled with corporate social responsibility. First, we need to build "Trinity" co-governance for food safety between government, business and society and provide organizational platform for the coupling of corporate social responsibility and government regulation; second, we need to regulate government behavior, and improve governance, and provide an effective system of coupled platform for coupling of the government food safety regulation and corporate social responsibility; Third, we need to standardize enterprise behavior, improve governance, build good corporate culture and ethics, and form long-term linkage between the two coupling mechanisms; Fourth, we need to promote the establishment of NGOs and growth, and provide the external conditions of coupling of the government food safety regulation and corporate social responsibility. This chapter also put forward to targeted policy recommendations for the existing coupling issues of China.The paper expects to break through the traditional regulatory economics research ideas through the integrated use of public management theory, industrial economics, institutional economics and other disciplines of knowledge; it can rich the theory of corporate to some extent by the research on coupling relationship and introduce new variables into enterprise behavior to the study. In practice, it expects to promote the enterprises to take the initiative to assume their social responsibility actively; to better promote the reform of government management system, to improve the performance of government regulation, to speed up the establishment of service government, responsible government and efficient government; to better adapt international economic integration to deal with the impact of global social responsibility movement, sound and strengthen China’s comparative advantage in international competition. However, due to my current research data and research capacity constraints, the research paper still has some drawbacks:Sub-analysis of papers are slightly weak, and need to be deepen; the analysis of the "degree" of coupling stay at the theoretical level, and the applicability in practice remains to be done for further research. These deficiencies will be the further research of the author.