The Relationship Between CSR And Growth In Agribusiness

Agribusiness is one of the important subjects of agricultural industrialization.It plays an important role in terms of guaranting supply of agricultural products,leading farmers to increase employment,promoting agricultural economic development.In the background of highly uncertain market and the rapid development of agricultural science and technology,agricultural enterprises face more difficulties in the growth process because of weak anti-risk ability,strong policy of agricultural industrialization.CSR,which can help getting recognition from stakeholders,accumulating of reputation and accessing to resources has become an important means of promoting business growth.Thus agribusiness CSR has become the academic attention.However,most of the existing research focused on aspects of financial performance,business value and competitive advantage,which is from the short-term perspective.It has been ignored either the long-term perspective or the differences in connotation and the role of corporate social responsibility among different industries.So the existing studies of CSR cannot effectively explain the effectiveness.To solve the above problems,first of all,this paper summarizes the research in related fields and analysis of the properties of domestic agricultural production and operation.Secondly,it summarizes the connotation and characteristics of domestic agribusiness CSR basis on "Pyramid Model" and the background of multifunctional agriculture.Thirdly,we introduce RBV into the agribusiness CSR research and construct of the analytical framework of “CSR——Growth Determinants——Enterprise Growth” to explain the mechanism of CSR and enterprise growth.Fourthly,this paper discusses the mechanism of social capital intermediary between CSR and enterprise growth.Finally,we propose mediation variables based on enterprise life cycle theory and new institutional theory.Empirical process consists of two parts: the survey of research and existing statistical data analysis.Part 1,we investigated 304 agricultural enterprises,which help analyzing mechanism on CSR and enterprise growth,the intermediary role of social capital in which and the regulation of enterprise capability,growth stage and institutional pressure.Part 2,we collected balanced panel data from 2004 to 2013 of 41 listed companies,then establish variable intercept fixed effects model to inspection the direct role of CSR for enterprisegrowth and the regulation of industry.The empirical analysis shows that:(1)The CSR connotation in agribusiness and general corporate are different.CSR has a positive active role of agricultural enterprises growth.Different CSR dimensions have different actions.(2)The social capital connotation in agribusiness and general corporate are different.Social capital has a positive active role of agricultural enterprises growth.(3)Social capital plays an important intermediary role in the relationship between CSR and agricultural enterprise growth.(4)Enterprise capabilities have a positive regulatory role in the relationship between CSR and agribusiness growth performance.When agricultural enterprises have the greater capacity,effectiveness of CSR is stronger.(5)The CSR effectiveness of maturitial agribusiness is much stronger than the one in start-up.(6)When the agribusiness sensing more institutional pressure the CSR effectiveness is much stronger than the one senses less institutional pressure.(7)The CSR effectiveness in processing enterprises is much stronger than the traditional agricultural enterprises.This paper attempts to innovate in the following areas and make the appropriate theoretical contributions: Firstly,breaking the traditional perspective of targeting the large sample of companies.This paper defines and analysis the connotation of agricultural CSR based on the "Pyramid Model" and proposes explorative measure of agriculture CSR scale.Secondly,we explain the CSR mechanism with identification and access to resources,which from a long-term perspective.Thirdly,combining with enterprise competence theory,life-cycle theory,the new system theory,we reveal situational characteristics of organization and structure of the agribusiness.Last but not least,breakthrough predicament of just relies on cross-sectional data or sequence data to empirical analysis CSR effect.In this paper,we use both the cross-sectional survey data and panel data of listed company.Based on the above findings,we discussed inspiration to management practices and attempt to provide a theoretical basis and empirical support for solving the difficult problem of agribusiness growth.