A Study Of Corporate Socially Responsible Investment Strategy From The Perspective Of The Combination Of Key Stakeholders

As the concepts of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility have become a broad consensus in the international community,fulfilling social responsibility for enterprises is more than an implicit moral pursuit but also an optimal strategic choice to expand market share,achieve competitive advantage and promote corporate image.However,in reality,many companies weaken their competitive advantages because they assume too many social responsibilities,giving some irresponsible companies the opportunity to exploit this loophole.If things go on like this,it will not only harm the advancement of corporate social responsibility but also go against the progress of the entire society.Blindly investing in social responsibility or ignoring it among enterprises are not what we intended,for the former is detrimental to corporate sound development and the latter goes against sustainable progress of the society.Therefore,exploring how can an enterprise create value for itself and the whole society by fulfilling social responsibility becomes an issue that both academia and business circles pay close attention to.A large number of theoretical and empirical studies indicate that there are possible correlations between corporate socially responsible investment and corporate value,including positive correlation,negative correlation or nonlinear correlation.In existing studies,most of related scholars studied from the perspective of a single stakeholder,but this single perspective have some limitations and are unable to reflect the influence of the combination of many corporate stakeholders on corporate behavior.Based on this research background,to effectively solve the problem about how to do socially responsible investment,this article took the combination of key stakeholders as the starting point of the study from the perspective of configuration theory,took “combination of key stakeholders-corporate socially responsible investment strategy-corporate value” as the mainline,and discussed the following four problems in details: first,the composition and characteristics of the combination of key stakeholders based on corporate stakeholder theory;second,when enterprises conduct socially responsible investment in different combinations of key stakeholders,whether the increase or decrease in corporate value yields different results;third,under the influence of single-scenario heterogeneous condition,whether there is a difference in the selection of corporate socially responsible investment strategy;fourth,influenced by the condition of multi-scenario heterogeneous combination,whether there is a difference in the selection of corporate socially responsible investment strategy.Revolving around the abovementioned problems,this article first made clear the connotations of the combination of key stakeholders by reviewing theories and researches related to corporate social responsibility and corporate stakeholder,and conducted a detailed analysis of the characteristics of the combination in terms of diversity,hierarchy,complementarity and inhibitiveness.Then,from the perspective of the combination of key stakeholders,this article made a detailed analysis of corporate socially responsible investment in type,amount,source of value and value transfer,and constructed a corporate socially responsible investment model.Next,this article took a number of companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges as the objects of study and utilized qualitative comparative analysis for empirical study.At last,the results of empirical study provide Chinese enterprises with specific guidance on socially responsible investment strategy.Main research conclusions of this article are as follows:1.The combination of key stakeholders not only can influence corporate production and operating activities but also are influenced by corporate behavior.Stakeholders in this combination can complement,replace and restrain each other,and these interactions will more effectively facilitate(or restrain)the influence of this combination on corporate behavior.2.Corporate socially responsible investment has positive gains as well as negative costs,and different results come from different combinations of key stakeholders selected by enterprises.The investment strategies of only investing in single stakeholder or averagely investing in all stakeholders both cannot increase corporate value.An enterprise needs to recognize the combination of key stakeholders and invest with priorities according to their own status to internalize income from investment to make up for cost and resource consumption.3.The research results show that the impact of the same stakeholder on the enterprise in different periods is different,and the impact of different stakeholders on the enterprise in the same period is also different.At the same time,the investment strategy for enterprises to obtain high value returns is not the only one.The research results provide enterprises with several equivalent alternative investment strategies.Nor is there only one way of investing that leads to low value,but the most important reason is the lack of investment in the shareholder dimension.4.Single-scenario heterogeneity has an influence on the selection of corporate socially responsible investment.Enterprises select different investment strategies at different stages of life cycle.For example,enterprises at the initial stage should focus on relying on shareholders,employees and consumers to promote their own growth,but the change in the growth stage requires the adjustment of socially responsible investment strategy in a timely manner.Especially after entering the maturation stage,enterprises need to invest in environment or community as much as possible and promote their corporate image by virtue of their favorable social performance on the premise of safeguarding the interests of shareholders.Moreover,the selection of investment strategy varies with corporate nature.For example,state-owned enterprises need to undertake more community-related responsibilities since they are intrinsically closely connected with the government,while efforts to community are unnecessary for private enterprises.The selection of investment strategy varies with corporate size,for example,small-sized enterprises need to use their limited resources in their economic growth,while large-sized enterprises need to balance the relationship between economic benefit and social benefit and energetically bear the heavy burden of improving social happiness index while developing.5.Multi-scenario heterogeneous combination has an influence on the selection of corporate socially responsible investment strategy.Under the combination of corporate life cycle*corporate nature,investment strategy acquiring high corporate value shows the characteristics of dual influence,while investment strategy with low corporate value only displays the characteristics of the influence of corporate nature.Under the combination of corporate life cycle*corporate size,investment strategy acquiring high corporate value also shows the characteristics of dual influence,while investment strategy with low corporate value only shows the characteristics of the influence of corporate size.Under the combination of corporate nature*corporate size,investment strategy obtaining high corporate value only show the characteristics of the influence of corporate size,while investment strategy with low corporate value only shows the characteristics of the influence of corporate nature.This article has the following innovations:1.The research perspective of this article is rather novel.This study which took the combination of key stakeholders as the starting point not only took combined influence of six variables into consideration but also studied the interactions between variables,changing the perspective of a single variable in previous studies and filling the void of the theoretical study of this part.2.This article constructed a corporate socially responsible investment model from the perspective of the combination of key stakeholders,which provides the studies of corporate social responsibility with a new perspective for exploration.The study not only expounds on the source of value of socially responsible investment and stresses positive gains and negative costs in the investment,but also reveals the new law of the difference between results acquired by corporate socially responsible investment models in China.3.This article studied the influence of multi-scenario heterogeneous combination.This research framework provides the exploration of the influence of the combination of multiple factors with references.Previous studies about the influencing factors normally focused on the net effect of a single factor,but in reality,companies usually are influenced by the combined effect of multiple factors.The exploration of the influencing mechanism of multi-factor combination in this article provides a possibility for follow-up related theoretical and practical studies.4.The research method used in this article is new and original.Empirical study part did not use traditional regression analysis method,but it innovatively applied qualitative comparative analysis to the study of corporate social responsibility.The use of regression analysis requires no collinearity between antecedent variables in data analysis,to identify thenet effect of each variable.Hence,the interactions between multiple antecedent variables cannot be handled.Qualitative comparative analysis has intrinsic conveniences in solving complicated antecedent conditions and dealing with the interactions between several antecedent conditions.Meanwhile,traditional regression analysis pays no attention to problems leading to equivalent results,while qualitative comparative analysis provides a possibility for studies to explore a variety of paths resulting in the same result.This article's innovation in method used provides a possibility for other fields to conduct an exploratory study of complex causalities.