Corporate Social Responsibility And Firm Growth:the Mediating Effect Of Technological Innovation And Legitimacy

Under the background of industrial transformation and upgrading in China and promoting the high-quality economic development in new era,the public pursuit of a happy life that they pay more attention to product quality,ecological environment,employees' safety and other corporate social responsibility issues.How can enterprises carry out corporate social responsibility practice and achieve dual goals of economic benefits and social value? The existing literatures show that the financial indicators such as profit,revenue and asset,have a positive correlation with CSR significantly,as well as the non-financial indicators such as management ability and competitive advantage.The CSR contributes to firm growth,which provides theoretical support for corporate's undertaking social responsibility voluntarily.However,few studies have focused on the underlying mechanisms linking CSR with firm growth,and the effect of organizational and institutional factors on the relationship between CSR and firm growth.How should enterprises respond to the internal and external environment to implement CSR strategy? Based on the resource based view and institutional theory,this paper has explored the external and internal drivers that make corporates engage in social responsibility.The CSR would improve r&d investment and technological innovation,promote the evaluation and recognition of stakeholder which means firm gains legitimacy,and lead to the firm growth.Specifically,this study mainly carries on the following aspects to supplement:Firstly,based on the resource-based theory,this paper takes corporate social responsibility as an investment,which can attracts excellent employees to join and improves technological innovation,and thus CSR brings key resources and competitive advantages to corporates.This study examines the mediating effect of technological innovation in the relationship of corporate social responsibility and firm growth and moderating effect institutional environment,market competition,organizational slack,and business strategy from the internal drives.Secondly,based on the institutional theory,this paper holds the view that corporate social responsibility behavior is the response to the institutional pressure and the pressure of stakeholders,and CSR is also an important way to gain legitimacy.Under the stakeholder framework,this paper puts forward the concept of political legitimacy and organizational legitimacy,and also examines the mediating effect of political legitimacy and organizational legitimacy in the relationship of corporate social responsibility and firm growth and moderating effect perceived institutional environment,and legal efficiency from the external drives.The boundary conditions of how corporate social responsibility works on legitimacy is discussed.This paper adopts the data of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2014 and survey data of Chinese firms.The hierarchical regression method is used to test the underlying mechanisms linking CSR with firm growth and the moderating effect of environmental factors.The main conclusions are as follows.(1)Corporate social responsibility can promote internal technological innovation and firm growth.The technological innovation plays a mediating role in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm growth partially.The institutional environment moderates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and technological innovation negatively.However,the market competition,organizational slack both have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and technological innovation.In addition,compared with the corporates implementing the defender strategy,the positive effect of corporate social responsibility behavior on the technological in the corporates who carry out the prospector strategy,is stronger.(2)Corporate social responsibility can help firm gain external political legitimacy and organizational legitimacy and promote firm growth.The t political legitimacy and organizational legitimacy both play a mediating role in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm growth partially.The perceived institutional environment has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and organizational legitimacy significantly.However,the moderating effect on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and political legitimacy is not significant.The legal efficiency moderates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and organizational legitimacy positively,and moderates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and policitcal legitimacy negatively.Based on resource-based view and institutional theory,this paper has improved the theoretical model on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firm growth,which is main innovation of this paper.This study also puts forward the internal influencing mechanism “CSR-Technological innovation-Firm growth” and external underlying mechanisms “CSR-Legitimacy-Firm growth”.The moderating effect of environment factors is examined,and it provides managerial implication for Chinese corporate social responsibility practice finally.