Research On The Influencing Factors And Effects Of CSR Behavior In Crisis Situations

The wave of economic globalization brought complex and changeful market environment for modern firms.The operation of firms and market environment factors mutually influence each other.Any abnormal factor may trigger a chain reaction and lead to a firm crisis.A firm crisis is a sudden,publicly visible,and highly uncertain event.It will interfere with the normal operation of the firm,cause the negative evaluation of stakeholders,and then damage the legitimacy of the firm.Corporate social responsibility(CSR),which considers the expectations of stakeholders and the triple bottom line of economic,social,and environmental factors,can be an effective tool for the construction of legitimacy.From the perspective of post-crisis repair,this paper makes an in-depth study of the influencing factors and effects of CSR behavior.The research conclusion provides decision support for CSR behavior in crisis situations and expands the application of CSR strategies in crisis management.The main research contents are as follows:First,this paper explored the influencing factors of CSR behavior in crisis situations.The research sample was 211 crises of listed firms in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2011 to 2017.This paper explored the influence of legitimacy pressures(regulatory legitimacy pressure,normative legitimacy pressure and cognitive legitimacy pressure)and internal management constraints(resource availability and regulatory control)on CSR behavior.The results show that the legitimacy pressures have a significant positive impact on CSR behavior in crisis situations.In addition,this paper studied the the interaction between internal management constraints and legitimacy pressures.The results show that resource availability significantly positively influences the relationship between legitimacy pressures and CSR behavior,while regulatory control significantly negatively influences the relationship between normative legitimacy pressure,cognitive legitimacy pressure and CSR behavior.This research is helpful to clarify the internal and external factors that influence CSR behavior in crisis situations.Second,this paper analyzed the impact of post-crisis CSR behavior on stakeholders.Focusing on investors and employees,this paper took 116 safety accidents of listed manufacturing companies in China from 2009 to 2016 as research samples,and explored the impact of CSR activities on financial performance and employee turnover.The results show that CSR behavior significantly reduces the negative impact of casualties and economic losses on financial performance,and significantly reduces the positive impact of casualties and economic losses on employee turnover.The research conclusion tests the feasibility of firms taking CSR behavior to communicate with stakeholders in crisis situations,and provides empirical basis and practical reference for managers to evaluate the crisis communication effect of CSR behavior.Finally,this paper analyzed the impact of post-crisis CSR strategies on firm reputation.The research sample was 164 crises of listed firms in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange that implemented CSR activities after the crisis from 2011 to 201 7.This paper analyzed the influence of participation in technical CSR(TCSR)and institutional CSR(ICSR)on the tenor of media coverage.This paper further studied the interaction between the engagement of TCSR activities and ICSR activities and crisis attribution.It is found that the intensity of both TCSR activities and ICSR activities has a positive impact on the tenor of media coverage.However,there is a negative interation between the intensity of these two CSR activities,that is,if the firm in crisis simultaneously implement high-intensity TCSR activities and ICSR activities,it will get negative media evaluation.This paper also found that timely TCSR activities and delayed ICSR activities will positively affect the tenor of media coverage.In addition,the higher the responsibility attribution of the firm crisis,the impact of TCSR intensity,TCSR timing and ICSR timing on the tenor of media coverage will be enhanced.These findings are helpful for managers to formulate and implement more targeted CSR strategies to repair firm reputation in crisis situations.The main innovations of this study are as follows.First,based on the perspective of crisis repair,this paper constructed and verified the empirical analysis model of influencing factors and effects of CSR behavior.Specifically,this paper first explored the key factors that influence CSR behavior in crisis situations from the perspectives of legitimacy pressure and internal management constraints.Then,from the perspective of stakeholders,this paper analyzed the practical effect of CSR behavior in crisis communication.Finally,from the perspective of the media as an information intermediary,this paper extractd CSR strategies and tested their impact on reputation repair in crisis situations.This paper enriches the research on CSR management and crisis management by systematically exploring the influencing factors,crisis repair strategies and effects of CSR behavior in crisis situations.Second,this paper innovatively viewed CSR as a strategic tool and systematically constructed a theoretical framework to study its mpact on crisis repair.Specifically,in the exploration of the influencing factors of CSR behavior in crisis situations,previous studies mentioned the influence of legitimacy pressures on CSR behavior,but few scholars pay attention to the possible role of internal management constraints.Based on discussing the direct impact of legitimacy pressures on CSR behavior,this paper further clarified the joint action mechanism of internal management constraints and legitimacy pressure on CSR behavior.In the study on the impact of CSR behavior on stakeholders in crisis situations,this paper based on the background of safety accidents and analyzed the impact of CSR behavior on investors and employees.In the analysis of the impact of CSR strategies on reputation repair.This paper based on stakeholder theory and distinguished CSR activities for different stakeholders.It also analyzed the impact of CSR strategies on reputation repair from the perspective of matching and timeliness by combining the crisis factors.The research conclusion is of great value to accurately judge the influencing factors of CSR behavior in crisis situations,and provides new evidence for the research on the relationship between CSR and crisis repair.Third,the research samples in this paper are real crises faced by listed firms.The research data are obtained through the statistics of basic information of firms and collection of relevant databases,which directly and accurately reflect the strategic model of CSR in crisis situations.This paper makes up for the deficiency of previous researches that mainly focus on qualitative research such as case study or empirical analysis of manipulating virtual situations such as experiments.