| The first Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR)report of our country was released in 2001 when it was over 15 years before now.During these years,our government pays more and more attention to the performance of CSR and the disclosure of CSR report,and the number of CSR reports are increasing.However,according to the public data,the quality and the continuity of CSR reports in our country are relatively low.In addition,the government only forces some specific listed companies to disclose CSR reports,the rest of the listed companies can disclose CSR reports voluntarily.Public data shows that the number of voluntarily disclosed CSR reports grows up year by year.By reading previous research of CSR reports and CSR information disclosure,this paper finds that the existing research discussed the reason for disclosing CSR reports mainly from the perspective of economic rationality,stakeholder theory and the strong sense of legitimacy.Research studied on the basis of weak sense of legitimacy is less.In 1980s,Dimaggio and Powell concerned about the homogeneity of organizational forms and practices and came up with the theory of institutional isomorphism which believed that the reason why organizational forms and practices became similar was that organizations initiatively adopted those socially approved organizational forms and practices in order to adapt to the external environment,discussing legitimacy from the weak sense.Institutional isomorphism identified three mechanisms to explain the homogeneity of organizational forms and practices,which were coercive isomorphism,mimetic isomorphism and normative isomorphism.Coercive isomorphism stemmed from both formal and informal pressure,such as laws and policies enacted by the government,ethical norm and manners and customs.These pressures encouraged companies to adopt those socially accepted practices;mimetic isomorphism resulted from uncertain environment.When companies confronted uncertain environment,they would imitate the practices of successful enterprises of the organizational field so as to relieve the uncertainty;while normative isomorphism was associated with professionalization,including formal education produced by universities and the growth of professional networks.Professionals,who accepted similar education,possessed similar cognitive base,orientation and disposition,which could transmit those socially approved practices they learnt among companies when they entered the organizational field.This paper thinks that it is more suitable to discuss about the voluntary disclosure of CSR reports from the angle of weak sense of legitimacy and the situation of voluntary disclosure of CSR reports match with the characteristics of those three mechanisms.Therefore,this paper explains the practices of voluntarily disclosing CSR reports with the theory of institutional isomorphism.Through empirical analysis,this paper examines the influence of institutional pressure on the aspiration and quality of voluntary disclosed CSR reports and the various impact of institutional pressure on the aspiration of voluntary disclosed CSR reports under different nature of firms and different listing location of enterprises.Results show that:(1)coercive isomorphism can increase the aspiration of voluntary disclosed CSR reports and this positive influence is more significant when the nature of firms is non-state-own or when the listing location of enterprises is in Shenzhen.However,the influence of coercive isomorphism on the quality of voluntary disclosed CSR reports is not significant;(2)mimetic isomorphism,on one hand,can enhance the aspiration of voluntary disclosed CSR reports,which shows more significance when companies are non-state-own enterprise,but shows no significant differences when companies listed on different stock exchanges.On the other hand,mimetic isomorphism has negative impact on the quality of voluntary disclosed CSR reports;(3)normative isomorphism is weakly correlated with the aspiration and quality of voluntary disclosed CSR reports.Finally,this paper proposes related suggestions according to those results. |
