The Effects And Governance Of Mega Infrastructure Project Social Responsibility

Mega infrastructure projects(MIPs) are large-scale public engineering facilities which provide fundamental public services for national economic,political,social,scientific,and environmental development.China has started,constructed,and operated series MIPs in recent years,including the Three Gorges hydropower projects,high speed railways,national expressway network,South-North water diversion project,West-to-East gas pipeline project,etc.In the context of "One Belt and One Road" initiative and the national strategy of sustainable development,China's MIPs are currently at a period with strategic opportunities,environmental sensitivity,and value reconstruction,thus,the it's very urgent,special,and crucial for the practical management and theoretical research on MIP social responsibility(MIP-SR).By analyzing the evolution and development of MIP-SR in theoretical and practical fields,this dissertation focuses on the two core questions,"What does MIP-SR impacts on?" and "How to govern MIP-SR?",addresses the organizational and industrial spillovers of MIP-SR,explores the roles of firms and governments in MIP-SR,and structures a theoretical framework of MIP-SR's societal governance.Based on stakeholder theory,institutional theory,and project management body of knowledge,the theoretical and empirical studies in this dissertation try to enrich and improve the academic understanding on MIP-SR,to shed light on the spillover effects and governance mechanism of MIP-SR,and to provide supports for the strategic development of MIP in China.The contents of this dissertation have four parts,and the conclusions mainly include:First,this dissertation analyzes the intension and extension of MIP-SR.MIP-SR have the narrow and the broad senses,which cover different levels including the basic function realization,the project cost,time,and quality controlling,health,safety,and environment management within the project,organizational,industrial,and regional spillovers.Comparing to corporate social responsibility(CSR) MIP-SR involves series key issues,and the characteristics of lifecycle dynamism,stakeholder heterogeneity,and social responsibility interactivity.Second,this dissertation explores the organizational and industrial spillover effects of MIP-SR.MIP-SR has positive impacts in micro and meso levels.MIP-SR helps participant organizations to acquire multiple legitimacies and reduce transaction cost,so to improve their market competitiveness;MIP-SR also drives organizations to enhance their capacity on social responsibility.Besides,MIP-SR promotes the construction industry on effective resource allocation and technological innovation;helps to obtain political and social capital and create favorable external institutional environment;and improves the industrial standards and performance on social responsibility by establishing benchmarks.Moreover,MIP's stakeholder interaction has significant contingent effects on those spillovers above,and the contingences are different between internal and external stakeholders.Third,this dissertation studies the roles of firms and governments in MIP-SR governance mechanism.One side,MIP related firms in China,like contractors,have differentiated international strategies in global market.The scale and scope of contractors'international diversification have different impacts on their social performance.The results indicate that,contractors should try expanding the range of their international business in ways other than diversifying geographic markets in order to improve the social performance,enhance their international reputation,and gain competitive advantage.The other side,according to the resource and attention based views,public sectors investment ratio is positively related to project social responsibility in public-private partnership(PPP).Such relationship is moderated by project and national level risks.More specifically,project financial and environmental risks,and macroeconomic risks all play negative contingent roles.Fourth,this dissertation structures theoretical framework of MIP-SR societal governance based on "Business-Government-Society"(BGS) model.The governance for MIP-SR are dual-centric,distributive,diversified,and dynamic.It can never be implemented by either corporate or government solely,but requires synergy within the stakeholder network including business,government,and society.The societal governance is a flexible,dynamic process;which mainly covers social participation,social learning,social interaction,and social integration.In such process,prudence of decision-making,reasonableness of action-taking,and uniformity,transparency,and accountability of controlling are necessary to balance the interest of all stakeholders and maximize the sustainable shared value.The main innovations of this dissertation are as follows.First,the systematic analysis on different levels and dimension of MIP-SR in this dissertation,help to improve the fragmented research in previous literature to some degree.The proposition of unique characteristics comparing to CSR provides theoretical support for next work on effects and governance of MIP-SR.Second,given that most papers focus on MIP's macroeconomic effects,the empirical studies on organizational and industrial spillovers of MIP-SR in this dissertation enrich the research from the micro and meso perspectives.The interactive effects between different dimensions of MIP-SR and internal and external stakeholders help to shed light on the mechanism of MIP-SR's impacts on financial and social responsible performance of participate organizations and construction industry.Third,the empirical studies on roles of firms and governments in governance of MIP-SR integrate various theoretical perspectives.By exploring the impacts of contractors'international diversification on their social performance and the relationship between public investment and PPP project social responsibility,this dissertation tries to analyze the pluralism and complexity in governance of MIR-SR.Moreover,the societal governance framework of MIR-SR based on BGS model makes breakthroughs on previous literature that discuss solely from the perspective of corporate governance or public governance.Societal governance calls for the synergetic collaboration of all stakeholders through the project lifecycle,along with compatible objectives and principles,complementary functions and performance,and the sharing of resources and accountability,so as to purse sustainable development of MIP.