A Study On The Implementation Of Public Benefit CSR Projects:Partnerships, Structural Embeddedness, And Performance

The existing researchs on corporate social responsibility (CSR) mainly focused on the framework of "CSR drivers→CSR strategy→CSR outcomes", few attention were paid on CSR implementation. By investigating in the implementation of CSR projects this study found that there appeared new forms of public welfare projects implemented by firms. For example, companies help the rural in industrial development (nothing to do with companies’ main business) to increase farmers’ income and employment, and increase the market advantage of local agricultural products; enterprises to carry out charitable donation project through internet technology, to create an open and transparent online charity platform and so on.However, the systematic analysis on the implementing behavior and effects of such projects are still relatively rare. Based on four public benefit CSR projects with the enterprise’s hands-on promotion, deep-involvement and multi-party cooperation, this paper explores the "how to do" issues of CSR implementation in the multi-case study approach.This study will combine the social embeddedness perspective with the social partnerships theory to answer the following questions:in the process of implementing public welfare CSR projectshow companies design and manage social partnerships, what kind of structural features will be shown in the cooperative network,what about the performance of each project, what are the relationships between partnerships, network structural embeddednessand project performance?Firstly, through analysis of the cases, this paper distinguished two types of public welfare CSR projects:industrial development CSR projects and charitable donation CSR projects.Secondly, this study found that when companies were implementing different types of public welfare CSR projects they need different kinds of resources and supporting conditions, thus the partnerships they formed and the network they embedded in would have different features, and ultimately would affect the performance of CSR projects.Specifically, there may be the following several effect relationships. First, the effects of partnerships on project performance. The higher the trust and the level of consistency of goals between enterprises and their key partners, the better the project performance. The greater the corporate influence on the project decision making the higher the project performance.Second, the effects of structural embeddednesson project performance. In implementing a public welfare CSR project, the higher the network density of partnering, which means the more smooth the flow of information and resources within the network, will make it easier to take collective action, so that result in higher project performance. As a firm promoting the implementation of the CSR project, taking the central position in the network is helpful to achieve higher project performance.The lower the structural hole index of other key actors, the higher the project performance.Third, the relationships among constructs of partnerships, structural embeddedness and project performance. When companies choose to cooperate with the local government to implement industrial development (public service) CSR projects, their status in the network will reduce, then the government and other partners will have higher structural hole index than the companies, so that the performance of CSR projects will be lower. When companies cooperate with nonprofit organizations to implement charitable donation CSR projects, they may take higher positions in the network, the key partnersmay have lower structural hole index, the performance of CSR projects will be higher. Additionally, the networks of industrial development CSR projects involvea bigger amount of and more types of actors, which make their project network larger than charitable donation project, as the possibility of establishing a direct link between members of the network is low, it will result in lower network density, and make the project performance lower than charitable donations projects’performance.This studydivided the public welfare CSR projects into industrial development CSR projects and charitable donation CSR projects, compared their features in project implementation, which makes up the gaps between CSR strategy and CSR outcomes within the existing framework of CSR researchs. It is also a new perspective to apply social embeddedness theory in exploring the implementation of public welfare CSR projects in this study. This paper argued that different network structures were respectively meaningful to certain types of CSR projects, only as the enterprise took a dominant position in the network could the successful implementation and higher performance of the project be guaranteed, these ideas bridge the debate of the effects of loose network vs. close network on enterprise behavior in the field of CSR projects implementation, and also make theoretical contribution by extending or supplementing the present studies on structural embeddedness theory.This paper explored the characteristics of partnerships in implementing public welfare CSR projects in the contexts of China,combined structural embeddedness with social partnerships theory and analyzed their impacts on the performance of CSR projects, which extends the theory of social partnerships.