Confucianism,Institutional Environment And Corporate Social Responsibility

Since the reform and opening up,China's economy has maintained a relatively high speed of development.Today,China's total economic output has leapt to the second place in the world and the first place in Asia.The rapid development of China's economy has led to the growth and enlargement of a large number of Chinese enterprises.However,the rapid development of enterprises has also resulted in a series of problems related to corporate social responsibility.Corporate social responsibility not only inhibits the development of enterprises,but also seriously restricts the sustainable development of the economy,which has aroused great concern of the government,business and academia.In recent years,the Chinese government has promulgated a series of relevant laws and norms on corporate social responsibility.More and more enterprises have begun to publish their own corporate social responsibility reports.Academia has made a thorough discussion and research on the influencing factors,mechanism and economic consequences of corporate social responsibility performance,and has achieved some results.As one of the important manifestations of informal system,cuture will restrict the behavior of enterprises from the moral and ethical level.As the essence of traditional Chinese culture,Confucianism contains such ideas as "people-oriented" and "the union of heaven and human ",which have a significant impact on the shaping of business ethics of Chinese enterprises,and the issue of corporate social responsibility is essentially a business ethics issue.Therefore,on the basis of previous studies and from the perspective of informal system,this paper explores the impact of Confucianism on corporate social responsibility and the potential path of Confucianism on corporate social responsibility through theoretical analysis and empirical research,and further explores the relationship between Confucianism and corporate social responsibility under the current situation of great differences in institutional environment in different regions of China.In order to verify the hypothesis proposed in this paper,this paper chooses Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in China from 2009 to 2017 as research samples to empirically test the impact of Confucianism on corporate social responsibility performance.The study finds that there is a positive correlation between Confucianism and corporate social responsibility,that is,the stronger the Confucianism atmosphere,the more likely enterprises are to fulfill the role of social responsibility.Further researchfound that in areas with perfect institutional environment,Confucianism is more conducive to corporate social responsibility,and Confucianism can influence the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility through two channels: corporate reputation and human capital investment level.The results provide empirical evidence for the synergy between formal system and informal system in fulfilling corporate social responsibility,and provide new ideas for improving the level of corporate social responsibility performance.