An Empirical Research On Private Enterprise Employer Social Responsibility Management

The expectations of Society for enterprise are rising, and corporate social responsibility(CSR) has become an international trend. The international communities pay much attention to CSR especially for employee. Some rules such as ISO26000 and SA8000 are established and multinationals response quickly and promote the implementation. With the shortage of labor and losing of demographic dividend, Chinese society and enterprises also pay great attentions to employee relations management. Labor contract law is established and implemented. Private enterprise HRM is institutionalized and standardized gradually. Such being the case, the work related to employee responsibility management is receiving attention of broader scope, higher level, and more intensity than ever before. How to distribute and solve the employees responsibility between society and enterprise, how to management relevant responsibility of private enterprise, become an urgent theory problem for further studying.However, the interest conflict between shareholder and other stockholders is also growing, and the relevance of the various interests is insignificant, which lead to a mutual exclusion among many responsibilities. For example, there is much disputation for researches and practices on relations between employee and employer, is no uniform theoretical basis and standpoint among the related subjects, which lead to be lack of unity and effective resolve mechanism.Many scholars have begun to study labor relations based on CSR and stakeholder theories comprehensively in recent years. They bring forward CSR theory on the perspective of employee. On the whole, the existed researches can be classified into three categories. They are normal, descriptive/empirical, and strategic. There are many terms on the same subject such as corporate employee social responsibility, CSR based on employee perspective, and other ten more, which is uniform and liable to misunderstand. Learning from the theory of CSR, the paper put forward a new term—Employer Social Responsibility(ESR) firstly, to clarified the terms of the malfunction. That is as an employer, corporate should be responsible for its most important inner stakeholders—employee. The key of the ESR is to take into account the interests of employee and enterprise. ESR is beyond the employer law responsibilities, including moral and ethical responsibility etc. ESR is based on employee needs, carry out humanism management to achieve employee rights, which can realize a synergy development of employee right and business interests.We need to be sure of following questions to realize the synergy development object. What is the employee needs based on their rights and development? How to satisfy the employee and what responsibility should be taken by different stages private enterprise? How about relationships among ESR and employee behaviors and attitudes and enterprise performance? How to management the responsibility? The paper tries to answer questions above integrating normative and empirical analysis process. The following three parts are the main work of the paper.(1)The paper bring forward framework theory by integrating HRM and IR analysis of social and employer social responsibility based on CSR. Based on macro-data of 2007 global financial crisis, the paper analysis the employee relations management factors of state-owned enterprises better performance than private enterprise during financial crisis. Learning from state-owned enterprises employee management experience, and the system management theory and strategic CSR theory, the paper put forward an analysis framework. That is private enterprise should undertake the inner-active responsibility to strengthen outer-medium responsibility ability, in order to get outer-medium factors inflow, to get the mechanism and path ofresponsible competitiveness and sustainable development. (2) Getting a questionnaire by scientific method, obtaining adequate data by depth interviews and questionnaires.We do an 8 months on-site investigation about 1145 private enterprise employees from 110 towns in 28 provinces national wide. Because of lack of present employee questionnaires based on CSR which can integrate HR and IR, the paper must make a questionnaire firstly. A HR director and many employees of 1 private enterprise, and 9 scholars form 6 universities were investigated. We design a preliminary questionnaires by experts assesses. Second, another two rounds of questionnaire were designed. A questionnaire got 89 valid questionnaires by network. B questionnaire got 754 valid questionnaires by network and on spot. A questionnaire is an initial survey extracted from employee feeling, including the main factor were designed about the responsibility behaviors, and the link among influencing factor and ESR its results. B questionnaire is the final questionnaire to large scale investigation, to test the reliability and validity, to construct SEM. So we also test need-hierarchy theory of Chinese private enterprise employee.(3) Revealing the logic characteristics of ESR by empirical analysis. Based on normative analysis and experience data,the paper uses Factor Analysis, SEM,Game Theory to analyze ESR. Main conclusions are as follows.First, the link between ESR and organizations performance indicates that private enterprise ESR behaviors should base on the life cycle. For private SME, most of them are in their initial stage of life cycle, should take organization competitiveness into account firstly. Employee achievement and basic needs should be met to attract labor talent by adopted treatment and environment and career strategy. For private large and medium-sized enterprises, most of them are in their mature stage of life cycle, should take employee KSA and corporate atmosphere and organization competitive into account. Not only Employee achievement and basic needs, but their work-family balance and fair and equity should be met to achieve sustainable development.Second, the ESR mediation effect between influencing factors and organization performance confirmed that private enterprise preferred to take higher level responsibility. As a mediation variable, ESR is un-notable. Especially in those private enterprises take result as their management oriented. Whether they undertake ESR or not depends on the result variable such as competitiveness. The only notable effect can be found in fair & equity responsibility and corporate atmosphere. In other words, private enterprise can undertake fair & equity responsibility to improve corporate atmosphere. It can explain why some private enterprises prefer to do some charity, contributions, recruit some vulnerable individuals and be kind to discriminated groups when their atmosphere are strained. Because undertaking fair & equity responsibility can improve employee approval for organization and improve its atmosphere as well in short term, when private enterprise don't undertake employee basic responsibility and can't integrate ESR into its daily management.Third, the aim of ESR management is to get harmonious relations between employer and employee, which should be learning from multiple theories and their different conclusions. The main employment relations theory research focused on RHM and oriental management. But for most of the private SME, they have done some simple work and often fall into management astray. Those emphasized on HRM, who only pay attention to institutional management of recruitment and compensation assessment. Too much institution must weaken culture compatibility and employee enthusiasm. Those emphasized on oriental management, who only pay attention to traditional culture function to enterprise management. They often take employee management as ties management by means of personal experience and skills, which weaken the functions of traditional culture and employee values. The experience data has test that intraorganizational relationship management has no direct impact on corporate atmosphere and competitive. Consequently, the effective management of employment relations should integrate HRM with traditional culture based on contextual. Fourth, Harmonious employment relationship depends on not only the behavior of employee and employer, but also external social mechanism. The implementation of ESR is up for HR ability and contribution. However, the internal governance mechanisms of most private enterprise can only meet employees'achievement and basic needs. For most of private enterprise, they could meet employees'family and fair & equity needs, when they competitiveness had been promoted, or when they set their goal at corporate atmosphere. It is inconsequent nowadays. To meet employees'family and fair & equity needs need external mechanisms. However, the economic benefit is the fundamental reason for enterprise to undertake responsibility. Social security system must be established, which works together with legal system and market mechanism to promote the enterprise to undertake fair & equity responsibility ; social networks should be led and constructed, which works together with supportive enterprises culture to realize employees'work-family balance.The innovation and unique points are shown below:(1) Putting forward the concept of ESR and constructing a responsible competitive analysis framework. Private enterprise competitiveness should be promoted sharply by undertaking corresponding ESR. The link between responsibility and competitive is more than an addition. It will be a geometric progression. Competitiveness should be derived from CSR especial ESR in the future.Undertaking ESR of Chinese enterprises particularly in private enterprise is blindness and irrational. Firstly, there is no idea about what responsibility is the most urgent. There are many responsibility for the enterprise, some of them are active, such as the economic responsibilities, the other are passive, such as the legal responsibilities. Lack of strategic and intellectual analysis would turn active responsibility to into passive responsibility.Secondly, private enterprise has to copy external index mechanically because of the lack of suitable responsibility performance index such as sa8000 and employee satisfaction. Some of the relevant indexes are passive, the other are active. How to integrate the responsibility and indexes system and to make management strategies is become the focus and innovation of the paper. (2) A nationwide on-spot investigation based on individual needs makes the research more concrete. Much of the present research is normal. Lack of systematically empirical research makes the responsibility management more abstract. Based on private enterprises workplace survey across the country, the paper studies Chinese private enterprises'best responsibility practices of workplace and employment relations management strategies based on employee needs.(3) Making four factors as the ESR abstract, and taking intraorganizational relationship as an outcome variable. The experience data based on employee perception suggests that ESR should have 5 factors, that is meeting employee basic security, achievements, the word-family balanced, fair & equity and intraorganizational relationship needs responsibilities. The structure equation model (SEM) shows that the link between first four factors and corporate performance is notable, while the intraorganizational relationship and corporate performance is not notable. Therefore we suggest that promotion organizations performance should improve organization atmosphere. But we won't take it as an responsibility behavior, and denied the similar relationship management behavior in many private enterprise. Neither need for employer to handle intraorganizational relationship to improve atmosphere, nor they can do it. To undertake four social responsibilities is the best intraorganizational relationship strategy, which can realize harmonious organization atmosphere.