Research On The Impact Of CRS Governance And Media Attention On Differentiation Of Corporate Social Responsibility

At present,the public’s understanding of the concept of corporate social responsibility is deepening,and the research on corporate social responsibility have developed in depth.The strategic importance of social responsibility to enterprises has been self-evident,and the state has established a relatively standardized system and actively introduced relevant policies to urge and guide enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities.The pressure of the system has promoted the standardization and unification of enterprises’ fulfillment of social responsibility.At the same time,some forward-looking enterprises have started to consider social responsibility at the strategic level and try to enhance their market competitiveness by differentiating their social responsibility performance from that of their peers.However,the empirical research on CSR differentiation is still lagging behind compared to the practice.Based on this,the thesis seeks to explore the antecedent variables of CSR differentiation from the perspective of internal and external governance(CSR governance and media attention)through an empirical approach,based on corporate governance and stakeholder theory.Meanwhile,the reform and development of market-oriented economy to improve the operational efficiency of enterprises has also led to the increasing improvement of corporate governance structure.This further suggests that the fulfillment of CSR by enterprises must also adapt to the development of the times and meet the needs of market economy development.Therefore,this thesis further explores whether internal and external governance mechanisms have different effects on CSR differentiation under the influence of marketization level and industry competition conditions.The thesis adopts CSR data of Shanghai and Shenzhen listed companies in the CSMAR database from 2009 to 2020.First,drawing on the conceptual network approach,the thesis calculated the CSR differentiation for each year,followed by testing and analyzing the relevant hypotheses using a fixed-effects model.The research results show that the internal CSR governance mechanism,as a direct governance mechanism,can promote the differentiated CSR practices after profoundly participating in corporate governance.Media attention,as an external governance and indirect disciplinary force for companies,can also motivate companies to pay more attention and commit to CSR investment,thus differentiating them from their peers.In addition,the level of marketization and the degree of industry competition,as proxy variables for market situations,enhance the positive effects of CSR governance and media attention on CSR differentiation.The thesis argues from an empirical study that internal CSR governance and external media attention do have an impact on CSR behavior and that they promote CSR in a direction conducive to differentiated competition.The study enriches the antecedent research on CSR.At the same time,it confirms the importance of integrating CSR into the corporate governance framework and further enriches the management practice of how companies should practice CSR.It has high research value in both theory and practice.