Tnc Social Responsibility

Since economic reform and the adoption of opening-up policy, China has achieved extradinary economic success. From 2003, the GDP growth of China has been over 10% for four successive years. In 2006, GDP per capita was 41 times as that in 1978 when reform and opening-up get started. Outward-oriented economic policy is considered as one of the most important factors in contributing to China's success. Optimistic economic prospect make China an attractive destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). As more and more multinational corporations flood in, China is considerably benefited from FDI in the sense that they brought about increase of employment, accumulation of human resource, enhancement of competiveness of China's products on international market and improvenment of industrial structure.Meanwhile, apart from economic growth, multination corporations also bring about adverse effect and a series of social problems. For example, some transfer their plants which produce massive pollutants to China and severely damage the environment and ecological balance. Some violate consumers' basic rights by lowering the standard of product and service they provide. It can be observed from the corporate scandals like "dirty chicken" of Haagen-Dazz and "Sudan Red" of KFC, multinational corporations in China doesn't seem to be as responsible as they are in their home countries.Furthermore, multinational corporations are frequently criticized for their sweatshops by the public and international organizations. China is endowed with abundant labor resource and enjoys comparative advantage in labor-intensive products, therefore it is reasonable to assume that wage rate of Chinese labors is lower those of developed countries. However, some workers who work in multinational corporations are paid at such a low level that it can not be explained merely by the difference of supply of labor. In some cases, their behaviours are direct ignorance of basic human rights. In the short term, this will impair the reputation of China's products. In the long term, this will exploit and overdraft the human resource and tends to compromise China's long term economic success.This research provides in-depth and systematic exploration on the topic of social responsibility of multinational corporations.The research is composed of three parts and ten chapters. The first four chapters constitute the first part focusing on the basic concepts and influencial theories in the field of corporate social responsibility. More specifically, the second chapter divides the evolution of the concept of corporate social responsibility into three stages each of which is given systematic description. The third chapter introduces and analyses the most influencial theories related to corporeate social responsibility such as social contract theory, stakeholder theory and etc. . The fourh chapter shifts the perspective to multinational corporations concentrating on analyzing the role multinational corporations played under the background of world economy. It is argued that multinational corporations are special in the aspects of corporate strategy, power structure and risk management. This chapter expands the current theories by incorporating these peculiar features and adapts them to analyzing multinational corporations. At the end of this chapter, a comprehensive theoretical framework is lodged so that all the theories mentioned previously can be integrated together. It is pointed out according to this theoretical freamework that difference between ethical and economic perspectives gives rise to the internal conflict of the concept of corporate social responsibility and it is this conflict that makes corporate social responsibility become a topic issue and put on the top of agenda.The second part consists of chapter five and six focusing on efforts made by international organizations and governments to guide and regulate corporate social responsibility. Chapter five describes how international organizations and the governments of developed countries guide and regulate corporate social responsibility. This chapter compares various international organizations in terms of coverage of social responsibility, initiating agencies, authority and assesses the effectiveness of codes of conduct published by these organizations. The rest of this chapter describes how developed countires regulate corporate social responsibility and to what extend are their measures different from each other.Chapter six analyse how Chinese government manage and regulate corporate social responsibility. Like many other countries, there are no laws designed for corporate social responsibility only. Therefore, this chapter summarizes the articles which are related to corporate social responsibility and divides them into five categories. After comparing these articles with those in developed countries, it is pointed out that although there has been progress in government's effort to promote corporate social responsibility, a lot of regulatory work still has to be done in the future. As for non-legal measures for promoting corporate social responsibility, limited policy tools and in lack of coordination among government agents are thought be the biggest problems which need to be addressed.The last four chapters constitute the third part revolving around the analysis and research of corporate social responsibility practice. Chapter seven describes generally the social responsibility practice of multinational corporations across the world. More specifically, this chapter illustrates corporate social responsibility practice in the aspects of corporate policy of social responsibility, design of social responsibility department, stakeholder strategy. On this basis, this chapter also analyzes the effect of corporate social responsibility on the economy, society and the government poliy. Chapter eight carried out a comprative analysis of social responsibility practice of multinational corporations. It is pointed out in this chpater that to some extent multinational corporations promote the development of corporate social responsibiliy in China. However, multinational corprations in China has a limited understanding of corporate social responsibility and some of them set different standards when are required to behave responsibly. This problem requires closer cooperation among corporations, governments and the public society.The analysis of chapter is based on empirical study carried out in Tian Economic Development Area (TEDA). Questionnaires are distributed to 64 multinational corporations therein and some of them are interviewed based on semi-structured questions. The findings further prove the previous conclusions, i.e. multinational corporations make contribution to the development of corporate social responsibility in China but they don't behave as responsibly as they do in home countries. One of the most important reasons is that governments are not sufficiently involved in corporate social responsibility promotion which means that the institutional constraint on corporates' behaviour is not strictly enough. The last chapter summarizes the main conclusions of the whole research and makes relevant policy recommendations for the government.