Why Firms Perform Differently in Corporate Social Responsibility? Firm Ownership and the Persistence of Organizational Imprints

Yi Han and Enying Zheng

Management and Organization Review, 2016, vol. 12, issue 3, 605-629

Abstract: This article analyzes the effects of firms’ founding ownership in shaping their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in China. Drawing on a nationwide survey of 1,037 representative manufacturing firms in 12 cities, we specify the imprinting effects of firms’ founding ownership on labor and environmental protections, two important CSR practices. Our results show that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) founded during the state socialist period, regardless of their restructuring experience in the market reform era, continued to implement pro-labor practices. Moreover, even the SOEs founded in the market reform era provided better labor protection than non-SOEs founded during the same time. In contrast, the founding imprints of environmentalism in the reform era for non-SOEs, especially the de novo private firms, explain why they spent more than SOEs in environmental protection. We extend the organizational imprinting theory by highlighting the importance of firms’ founding ownership imprints and in shaping their current CSR performance.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:maorev:v:12:y:2016:i:03:p:605-629_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management and Organization Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().