An Empirical Study Of Corporate Governance And Corporate Social Responsibility Based On The Moderating Effect Of Institutional Environment

The issue of corporate social responsibility(CSR) has been growing into a rich research subject. Especially with the continuous focus of scholars from different disciplines on social responsibility, the research scope and content of corporate social responsibility have been greatly expanded. Under the impetus of stakeholder theory and institutional theory, the study of corporate social responsibility is forming a new wave of hot spots. Corporate governance(CG) as a concrete institutional arrangement is under the constraint of institutional environment. In a series of empirical studies of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility, some scholars have found that ownership structure, board composition, management incentives and other corporate governance factors have remarkable impacts on corporate social responsibility. In addition, this paper argues that the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility is affected by institutional environment. Therefore, in the synergy of institutional environment and corporate governance, what effects will exert on corporate’s behaviors in socially responsible conducts? This study draws from the view of enterprise’s external environment and internal institutional arrangement, namely the institutional environment(institutional level) and corporate governance(organizational level), discussing the issue of corporate social responsibility at multi-levels. Choosing listed companies as samples, this paper will empirical examine the impacts of corporate governance on the extent of participation of corporate social responsibility, and the moderating effect of institutional environment on it.Firstly, through a normative study of relevant literatures, this article clarified the triangle relationship of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and institutional environment by describing the origin and status quo from a series of theoretical and empirical researches, and proposed a constructive model in this paper. Secondly, based on the theoretical model, this paper proposed several hypotheses, paved the way for further empirical study. Finally, in the empirical part, using a sample of CSI 300 Index constituent stocks, this paper conducted a research design and empirical test, empirical examined the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility, as well as the moderating effect of regulation environment in China.Through empirical analysis, the results show that the ownership concentration, equity balance degree, state-owned shareholding, board independence, professional committee set up, manager shareholding and other corporate factors have significant positive influences on corporate social responsibility. The regulation environment in China including the level of government deregulation and legal environment plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility.Therefore, this paper draws to a conclusion that to enhance the participation of corporate in socially responsible activities, something must be done not only the regulators to create a good institutional environment from outside, but also the entrepreneur to improve the governance structure of the enterprise from inside. To be specific, on the one hand, for the government regulators, who could raise the process of marketization, and improve the level of legal norms; on the other hand, for the business practitioner, who should improve the internal governance structure to ensure the effectiveness of the rights configuration, and reasonableness of the benefit-sharing mechanism.