Research On The Influence Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Innovation Performance

As China’s economic development has entered a new normal,the importance of innovation in economic development has been raised to a new height.The 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also emphasized the need to accelerate the implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy.In the context of economic globalization and the "new normal" of China’s economic development,innovation has become an important means for enterprises to build their core competitiveness.At the same time,China’s economy has developed rapidly in the past decades and people’s living standards have been significantly improved.The public began to pay more attention to enterprises not only their economic profits,but also whether enterprises can actively undertake social responsibilities.Moreover,the transformation of our economy from the pursuit of rapid development to the pursuit of high-quality development and sustainable development has aroused the attention and reflection of corporate social responsibility from all walks of life.Then,as a business strategy choice that enterprises cannot ignore,how will corporate social responsibility affect enterprise innovation performance? Therefore,it is very important to clarify the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate innovation and explore the influencing factors of its mechanism from different perspectives.At present,more and more Chinese enterprises conform to the tide of economic globalization and go abroad.Based on the theory of resource view and organizational learning,enterprises can obtain more resources needed for innovation through the implementation of internationalization strategy and obtain rich information and knowledge through learning and cooperation,so as to help enterprises realize the growth of innovation performance.According to stakeholder theory and signal transmission theory,CSR fulfillment can not only coordinate and unify the relationship between enterprises and stakeholders,but also transmit positive signals to the market and establish a good corporate reputation,which will help enterprises to establish competitive advantages in foreign markets and thus help enterprises to carry out international operation.This indicates that CSR can exert a positive influence on innovation performance indirectly by promoting the implementation of internationalization strategy in theory.According to the institutional theory,the enterprise is a part of the social system,and its operation and development will inevitably be affected by the change of the external institutional environment.Therefore,the impact of CSR performance on innovation performance may be influenced by the current institutional environment of the enterprise,resulting in different results of innovation performance.Therefore,in order to clarify the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate innovation performance and verify the impact of internationalization strategy and institutional environment on the influencing mechanism,this paper takes corporate social responsibility,internationalization strategy,institutional environment and innovation performance as research variables on the basis of referring to existing studies.Combined with stakeholder theory,signal transmission theory,resource-based theory,organizational learning theory and institutional theory,China’s A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2020 are selected as research objects,and multiple regression models are constructed for empirical testing.The following conclusions are drawn:(1)An enterprise’s active fulfillment of social responsibilities to all stakeholders is conducive to the growth of innovation performance;(2)Internationalization strategy plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between CSR and innovation performance.According to the non-parametric percentile Bootstrap test with deviation correction,the indirect impact of internationalization strategy on CSR and innovation performance accounted for27.3%.(3)The influence of institutional environment on innovation performance can exert a moderating effect on the mechanism of CSR performance on innovation performance,that is,the better the institutional environment the enterprise is in,the greater the promoting effect on the positive relationship between CSR and innovation performance.(4)The political environment and financial environment of institutional environment have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between CSR and innovation performance,but the moderating effect of legal environment is not significant.Through the regression analysis of innovation performance divided into invention patent,utility model patent and design patent,it is found that the legal environment only shows a positive moderating effect in the invention patent group with a higher degree of originality and stronger protection.Therefore,the moderating effect of legal environment on CSR and innovation performance is not obvious,because legal environment only has a moderating effect on the positive relationship between CSR and invention patents,while the moderating effect on utility model and design patents is not significant.This paper explores the influence mechanism of social responsibility on innovation performance from the perspectives of internal strategic choice and external institutional environment.Based on a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and innovation performance,this paper empirically studies the mediating role of internationalization strategy and the moderating role of institutional environment.It not only enriches the theoretical achievements in related research fields,but also provides certain practical enlightenment and application value for enterprises to pay equal attention to economic and social benefits and actively improve innovation performance.