A Comparative Study On Corporate Social Responsibility Communication Between Chinese And American Pharmaceutical Industry

Along with the improvement of people's awareness to their rights,more people and firms pay greater attention to corporate social responsibilities(CSR).The pharmaceutical industry,as an important part in a country,its corporate social responsibility performance exerts a great impact on people's lives in that country;additionally,several scandals of poisonous capsules were disclosed in recent years,therefore,it is necessary to concentrate on pharmaceutical firm's CSR.China and America are two presentative countries of eastern culture and western culture,cultural differences result in variant understandings,attitudes and performances on CSR which may lead to some differences in corporate social responsibility communication between these two countries.Besides,corporate social responsibility communication difference among various countries has become a new focus in academic field,therefore,this thesis compares corporate social responsibility communication differences between Chinese and American pharmaceutical industry.Based on Carroll's CSR Matrix,this thesis selects 28 Chinese top listed pharmaceutical corporations' and American's CSR reports as research samples,and uses content-based analysis method to compare differences in communication contents and strategies between these two countries.It interprets these differences from the cross-cultural perspective as well.This thesis defines CSR communication and communication contents clearly.Through the concordance function of AntConc3.2.1 software,occurring frequencies of key words in 28 reports are extracted,and different focuses of two countries' communications are compared in terms of communication objectives,issues and strategies.The results show that there are actually different focuses in two countries' corporate social responsibility communications.Firstly,Chinese companies pay more their attention to communications with internal stakeholders(investors and employees),and American tend to more care about that with external stakeholders(customers,public and society and government).Secondly,focus issues involved in the communication with stakeholders and different responsibility types are also diverse.Thirdly,Chinese corporations primarily rely on the one-way stakeholder information strategy,while American companies prefer to combine one-way stakeholder information strategy and two-way response strategy and involvement strategy together.Theoretically,this thesis expands comprehensive researches on corporate social responsibility communication in China;practically,it helps improve people's understanding of corporate social responsibilities;besides,it makes some suggestions for Chinese pharmaceutical corporations which can benefit them in their international operations.