The Research On The Mechanism Of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility Bringing Competitiveness Into Corporations

Under the trend of economy globalization and sustainable development, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), has attracted extensive attentions from both academia and industry. Researchers have been conducting theoretical research on the CSR problem for almost half a century. Many global organizations and corporations also joined the research process. Enterprise Competitive Advantage (ECA) is beyond the traditional category of market share, product differences, cost lowering, etc. Nowadays ECA also includes many other aspects, such as social responsibility, corporation moral, public relations, and working environments. The formation mechanism of corporation’s competitiveness is changing. Traditional CSR theory divides corporate revenue and social welfare into two mutual exclusive aspects, indicating that the relationship between corporation and the society is a zero-sum game. Many corporation treats CSR as an extra cost because of outside social pressure during the conduction of CSR. They never built any connection between CSR and the company’s strategy objective. Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (SCSR) theory emphasizes on the interdependence of corporation and society, indicating that the relationship between corporation and the society is a positive-sum game. This paper considers that SCSR is a social responsibility which is based on the concept of co-existence of corporate and the whole society, it incorporates social benefits into its core value and includes CSR in its corporate strategy planning, value creation, and daily running, it treats the social impact of corporate activities as a business opportunity that creates common values that will be shared by both the corporations and the society, therefore, SCSR will bring sustainable competitive advantage for corporations. In this paper, we think we must differentiate Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (SCSR), and traditional CSR when conducting research regarding CSR and corporate performance. This paper mainly focuses on how does SCSR bring sustainable competitiveness into corporations, i.e. the mechanism of SCSR bringing competitiveness into corporations.This paper starts from the evolution history of CSR researches. Then we surveyed and organized the academic research regarding SCSR definition and corporation competition. This paper also discussed the relationship between SCSR and corporation competitiveness. Based on existing researches, the author of this paper defined SCSR clearly from the two perspective of the SCSR as a subdivision of CSR responsibility types and as a new type strategy of corporation, and then analyzed the characteristics and types of SCSR. The author analyzed the mechanism of SCSR’s forming corporation sustainable competitiveness in details based on the enterprise social co-existence theory, benefit relevance theory, and resource-based view theory. The Barney’s VRIO framework is used to explain the SCSR’s value, rarity, imitability, and organization. The author discussed the reason that SCSR can bring corporation competitiveness from the resource-based view. The author also divides SCSR into value chain innovative SCSR and competitive environment investment SCSR, showing that the paths to forming corporation competitiveness include enhancing corporation strategy, improving corporation innovation, and lowering corporation risk. With these three ways, SCSR creates both visible and invisible strategical resource for corporations, which will further become the corporation sustainable competitiveness. Finally, the Yiwu Soton Straw Company’s deployment of value chain innovative SCSR is presented as an example. We presented the Soton Company’s decision making and carrying out procedure. We discussed the mechanism of this value chain innovative SCSR bringing the Soton company sustainable competitiveness which can be used as a good example for all other corporations which want to conduct SCSR.