On The Establishment Of Corporation Social Responsibility System In Pesticide Enterprises

Agriculture is the foundation of national economy. It is beyond all doubt that pesticide contributes greatly to the development of world agriculture. Although the production, transportation and use of pesticides have side-effect on environment, pesticides are still necessary for plant protection in the 21st century and approximately 70% of pesticide markets are currently dominated by innovated chemical pesticides. The pesticide industry has developed very quickly since the founding of People's Republic of China. There are more than 2600 enterprises now and the annual output of pesticide in 2005 is as high as 1039 thousand tons, being placed the first in the world. However, pesticide enterprises in China face serious problems of lack of corporation social responsibility (CSR), such as environmental pollution, weak occupational health and unsafe production. According to statistics, 4 tons of chemical materials are exhausted when producing 1 ton of rude chemical pesticide, which will make 3 tons of waste. 2.37 billion m~3 of waste gas and 0.1billion m~3 of waste water are discharged every year in China. 7% of the waste water was harnessed but only 1% of it reached a set standard. It is required that the pesticide enterprises should take into consideration the environment and social benefit in their decision-making, giving up the goal of only seeking for profit. As a corporation citizen, the pesticide enterprise should bear the relevant social responsibility.CSR of pesticide enterprises was chosen as study object in this research to discuss whether the pesticide enterprises should take CSR; what CSR they have; how to take CSR; how to evaluate CSR performance; what gaps exist between developed countries and developing countries in implementing CSR and how to speed up the formation and practice of CSR in China under the context of sustainable development.Responsible Care (RC) was first conceived by the national trade association of Canadian chemical manufacturers (CCPA) and put forward in the 1980s to address public concerns about the manufacture, distribution and use of chemicals. It is the chemical industry's global voluntary initiative. While CSR and corporation sustainable development (CSD) are frequently used in recent 20 years, there are close relationships among RC, CSR and CSD in spite of their difference on definitions and contents of study. It is necessary to figure out the relationships among them at the beginning of this research. The results showed that health, safety and environment (HSE) is the core of RC. RC is an important part of CSR. And both of them are for improving competition and sustainable development of enterprises. In addition, CSR is one of the methods to promote CSD and both definitions are blendedly used in some degree.Pesticide production is relative to human health and ecological environment safety. Based on the comparison of benefit and costs of pesticides in plant protection and the analysis on stakeholders of pesticide enterprises, the dissertation discusses the necessities and principles for taking CSR, gives a definition of CSR for pesticide enterprises, elaborates social responsibility of stakeholders and defines economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility and philanthropic responsibility of pesticide enterprises. In addition, based on the legal line, it draws demarcation line among the core level, extending level and surpassing level and describes the relationship and differences among all responsibilities, expounding briefly the connotations and extending meaning of social responsibilities, which helps us better understand what CSR is in pesticide enterprises.In the fourth part of the dissertation, it first reviews the development situation of the world pesticide markets, then it makes an analysis of CSR information disclosed about the multinational pesticide corporations which annual sales are ranked as the top 8 in the pesticide international markets. The obtained information shows that those corporations are fully aware of the importance of CSR and they believe a globally competitive corporation should be a corporation which is responsible for society. The comparative CSR strategies used by BASF, Dow Chemical and Sumitomo Chemical show that specialized departments have been established in multinational pesticide corporations to do CSR programming and to take responsibility of CSR affairs since last century. They have begun to attach importance to the administration of the enterprises and put emphasis on systematic environment reports and sustainable development information. All the facts illustrate that social issues were focused on CSR, stakeholder management was improved, CSR information disclosure was complete and independent CSR reports were issued. In terms of CSR practice in pesticide industry, we can see that people have enhanced their awareness of social responsibility. And economic responsibility and legal responsibility are being perfected. Ethical responsibility and philanthropic responsibility are being strengthened. Through the case study of Syngenta, the dissertation makes a profound analysis of the implementation of CSR and the characteristics of its practical operation and management in multinational pesticide corporations as well as the consequence of performance. The analyses of CSR scarcity in Chinese pesticide industry illustrate the following problems: (1) poor quality of products, low qualified rate of label, bad after -sale service; (2) weak innovation, more infringement; (3) weak awareness of production safety, poor occupation health; (4) over waste emission, serious environment pollution, and strained relationship with community. Theory analysis shows: (1) as a rational economic person, pesticide enterprises always try their best to low the costs and optimize output when they are in profit-seeking, and they often seek for profit without considering their responsibilities; (2) The motivation of taking CSR is weaken because of market failure owing to negative externalities and information dissymmetry; (3) The situation has turned worse due to the inefficiency of government regulation and the weak enforcement of law. Case study of Minfeng Agrochem Co. LTD testified that CSR scarcity in Chinese pesticide enterprises is closely related to profit-seeking, market failure and government regulation inefficiency. In conclusion, the author argues that in the developing countries, governments play an important part in guiding the enterprises to take social responsibility.In this research, the author made an investigation in some pesticide enterprises to testify their understanding of CSR awareness. Questionnaires were prepared about the awareness of the definition of CSR, environment protection, employee benefits and the innovation and development of the enterprises. The survey shows that common understanding of CSR should be reached; the idea of taking CSR should be fostered; the capacity of corporation innovation and the awareness of environment protection must be improved in pesticide sectors. Based on the survey of 84 pesticide enterprises in China, the further study using Logistic regression shows that the factors of annual output of pesticide, corporation assets scale, the condition of IPO and the condition of exportation of goods had significant impact on the issue of taking CSR while the nature of the enterprises didn't have notable influence on it.The assessment system of CSR is the guideline and principle of implementing the responsibility, the information tool of guiding and standardizing the enterprise performance and the bridge and tie linking the qualitative research and quantitative research, theory and practice. According to the principles of science rationality, industry focus, weak relativity, maneuverability and typicality, a comprehensive evaluation index system of CSR for pesticide enterprises has been established and its design was considered from different aspects such as economic performance, innovation capacity, product quality, after-sales service, environment protection, employee equity, community relationship and charity activities. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to weigh the relative importance of different purposes and indexes and comprehensive evaluation method was also introduced then.Finally, the dissertation explores the interior and exterior control mechanism established for implementing CSR effectively in China. It points out that pesticide enterprises should avoid bearing more responsibilities beyond their capacity and using CSR as public relation skill. They should be practical and realistic and try to do solid work. The exploration on exterior macro-control of bearing social responsibility show that the guidance of government, the supervision of public media, and business partnership have great impact on CSR development in short term. However, viewing in long term, to speed up the formation of social responsibility depends on making good use of guidance function of market by the customers, promoting the formation of social responsible investment channel in financial market and relying on supervision of social communities. Responsibility-orientated CSR model, strategy-orientated CSR model and legislation-orientated CSR model were given for pesticide enterprises to select according to their size and capacity.The innovations of this research are as follows: the connotations and extending meaning of social responsibility was expounded briefly; a matrix of stakeholder , social responsibility and "three levels based on the legal line" were designed, making a basic framework for the implementation of CSR ; the survey on awareness of CSR in pesticide enterprises was done first time in China and significant results was received; a comprehensive evaluation index system of CSR was established and responsibility-orientated CSR model, strategy-orientated CSR model and legislation-orientated CSR model were given in this research.The conclusions of this research help to guide pesticide enterprises in CSR practice and CSR framework establishment. This study is also a reference for other CSR research and it contributes to adhering to the idea of sustainable development and building a harmonious society.