The Impact Of Corporate Social Innovation On Economic Performance

Corporate Social responsibility has become the practice choice for global companies,whether it is to respond to moral pursuit?social pressure and social risk prevention,or to pursue competitive advantage and create economic profit.Throughout the evolution and development of CSR practice,CSR is often regarded as an additional activity of companies,such as supporting the charity work of natural disaster?education?children and women's welfare.Hence,CSR is completely independent from the operation activities of companies,which generally adopt an add-on type practice of social responsibility.However,these practices may lead to the independence of social responsibility and core business of companies,result the separation of public welfare and business,the blind and inefficient allocation of CSR resources will increase operational cost.Business to the good,justice and benefit have been regarded as the value orientation by more and more corporate strategists.A new generation of companies are beginning to realize that they must seek business opportunities from social demand,establish strategic blue ocean of corporate social innovation,explore new markets and provide differentiated products/services,and change corporate strategies to increase competitive advantage and improve profitable,while at the same time solving existing societal problems and bringing solutions to societal needs.Traditional CSR is no longer enough to meet the needs of sustainable management,so it must move towards a new way of CSI that combines social value and business value.Based on resource based view?stakeholder theory and value co-creation theory,construct the preset model of ‘ Value co-creation behavior ? capability? firm economic performance'.Then we conduct the exploratory case analysis to explore the core construct dimension of CSI,introduce value co-creation behavior among focal firm,supplier and customer as the antecedent,explore the relationship between CSR and economic performance.In addition,we empirically explore the mediating effect of innovation ability on the relationship between CSR and economic performance,clarify the influence mechanism of CSI on economic performance,and improve the theoretical research framework of CSI and value co-creation.Based on the data of 200 manufacturing companies in China,we empirically verify the conceptual model and research hypothesis.The results show that the value cocreation behavior among focal firm?supplier and customer have a positive impact on CSR,but in different ways and degrees.Meanwhile,CSR has no direct effect on economic performance.Finally,the relationship between CSR and economic performance are fully mediated by innovation ability.In other words,innovation ability can facilitate implementation of CSR and improve economic performance of companies.The paper builds the research framework of‘value co-creation?(CSR?innovation ability)?economic performance',and based on theoretical analysis and empirical test,it deepens the understanding of companies' innovative social responsibility,and then broadens research field and perspective of corporate social responsibility.In addition,the critical path relation and mechanism are clarified to provide important guidance for the practice decision of corporate social innovation.Through implementing social responsibility practices led by the core business,promoting supply chain synergies and enhancing comprehensive innovation capacity to fulfill social responsibilities,which facilitate effectiveness of stakeholder cooperation,built emerging markets to provide solutions for potential social demand,thereby increasing profits and maintaining the continued competitiveness.