Empirical Study On The Driving Mechanism Of Chinese Mining CSR From Organizational Legitimacy Perspective

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of mining companies is closely related tosustainable development in the mining area. The topic, concerning harmoniousdevelopment of the mining area and rational use of resource and protection ofenvironment, has been a hot academic research field and attracted the attention ofgovernment and media. However, there is no clear definition and standards, no moremolding of the implementation of the path for CSR of mining companies so far. Andthe research of driving mechanism of CSR is still in the initial stage.Therefore, it’s anurgent need to achieve sustainable development to protect environment and maximizethe use of resources. Research on CSR system and diving mechanism of Chinesemining companies, making companies playing a positive role is particularly importantto create a win-win situation of mining, resources, environment and society, andpromotes construction of green mining and harmonious mining.This paper reveals the driving mechanism of CSR of Chinese mining companies,from organizational legitimacy perspective. Firstly, it reviewed sustainable use ofmineral resources, CSR and legitimacy theory, and analyzed the current researchstatus and development direction. Secondly, based on analyzing the developmentprocess and institutional background and current status of CSR of Chinese miningcompanies, it proposed the CSR system, which is applicable for Chinese miningcompanies. This CSR system includes mining corporate social strategic response andmining corporate social performance. Thirdly, it constructed a research model ofcorporate social strategic response and corporate social performance under thelegitimacy of the existing institutional environment, and proposed19hypotheses.Fourthly, it established fundamental variables of mining corporate social strategicresponse, corporate social performance and legitimacy pressure, and tested itsreliability and validity. The total amount of valid questionnaires was237. Fifthly, itresearched the impact of legitimacy pressures on corporate social strategic response and corporate social performance based on hierarchical regression analysis, verifiedthe mediation effect of corporate social strategic response on legitimacy pressure andcorporate social performance.The research results show that:(1) Legitimacy pressure to mining companies hasa direct or indirect positive impact on corporate social strategic response andcorporate social performance.(2) Legitimacy pressure to mining companies can bedivided into regulative legitimacy, normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy.These legitimacies have different effects on corporate social strategic response andcorporate social performance, and the significance level is different as well.(3)Corporate social strategic response has a positive driving effects on corporate socialperformance, playing a partly or totally intermediate role between different types oflegitimacy pressure and corporate social performance.(4) Although the motivationunder dimensions of legitimacies has different effects on corporate social strategicresponse and corporate social performance, all the effects are positive.Based on the above results, this main suggestions are as follow: in order topromote corporate social responsibility of mining companies, it is necessary to playactive role among stakeholders of governments, communities, non-governmentalorganizations, media and financial institutions, make comprehensive use of the powerof government regulation, social norms and cultural cognitive, and build thesustainable utilization of mineral resources of multiple governance system.