Stakeholder pressure and CSR adoption: The mediating role of organizational culture for Chinese companies
Introduction
After joining the WTO, to participate in international trade and gain a competitive advantage, many Chinese companies began to strategically consider the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR).
As so many Chinese companies are now reporting their CSR practices, examining whether those practices are superficial or real is important.
Theory and hypothesis
1.CSR practices
environmental CSR
philanthropic CSR
ethical CSR
stakeholder relation CSR
2.Stakeholder pressure
First, the employee or internal stakeholder has been regarded as an influential factor in CSR practices.
Another pressure comes from regulation
Firms usually need to protect shareholders from the risk of losing their capital investment, since shareholders will suffer on the stock market if a firm receives a bad reputation arising from social problems caused by unethical activities.
3.Organizational culture and CSR practices
organizational culture represents the collective values, beliefs, and principles of organizational members.
Organizational culture is usually regarded as the primary reason for the failure of organizational change programs such as CSR and environmental practices.
A number of papers indicate that organizational culture influences the operational practices and effectiveness of CSR applications.
4.The role of organizational culture as a mediator
From the RBV perspective, organizational culture can be regarded as a kind of firm resource.
Organizational culture is usually regarded as the main failure factor for embedding CSR in an organization.
As stated previously, organizational culture has a positive effect on the adoption of CSR practices and stakeholder pressure is positively related to the cultivation of organizational culture.
Empirical tests have also provided evidence of organizational culture’s mediating effect on the linkage between stakeholder pressure and firm practices.
Methodology
1.Data collection and sample
The data for the empirical test were collected through a questionnaire survey.
The results indicate no significant differences in terms of all items between the two groups, suggesting that the nonresponse bias is not a problem in this study.
2.Measurement
Stakeholder pressure
Respondents measured the levels of pressure imposed by those different stakeholders using a five-point Likert scale.
CSR-oriented organizational culture
Five measurement items were used to measure the level of CSR-oriented organizational culture.
CSR practices
Four CSR practices were considered in this paper: environmental CSR, philanthropic CSR, ethical CSR, and stakeholder-relation CSR practices.
3.Research method
This study uses the two-stage approach.The first stage is a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the validity of the model’s measurement. The second stage begins once the measurement model is validated.
Empirical results
1.Reliability test
Apositive result ofthe reliability testimplies that the proposed method would produce similar results when tested again under the same conditions.
2.Validity test
Validity refers to the extent to which an analysis reveals true information.
The validity analysis for this study includes both content and construct validity.
The CFA is one of the most effective tools for testing construct validity.
3.Hypotheses test
The proposed structural model was assessed and tested the hypothesized relationships between the latent variables.
