Research On The Influence Of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility On Financial Performance

In the research field of corporate social responsibility,scholars have made extensive research on "what"(i.e.the concept of corporate social responsibility)and "why"(i.e.the reasons for fulfilling corporate social responsibility).However,with the development and evolution of corporate social responsibility practice,the question of "how"(i.e.how to fulfill corporate social responsibility)is still an outstanding and important issue.Since the 1990 s,with the increase of global wealth and the popularization of the concept of sustainable development,people's expectations of corporate social responsibility are increasing day by day.More and more enterprises begin to incorporate their social responsibility planning into business strategies and management objectives.In academia,strategic management theory has been combined with corporate social responsibility theory,which marks the attention of schloars of strategic corporate social responsibility(SCSR).Since our government took the construction of a harmonious socialist society as a strategic ruling idea in 2006,the corporate social responsibility movement in China has developed rapidly.As China enters a new era,the main social contradictions have been transformed into the contradiction between the people's growing needs for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development.The changes of social needs will lead to the structural upgrading of stakeholder structure and demands,and open up a new pattern for the development of corporate social responsibility in China.From the current situation,the global economy downturn and the “New Normal” of China's economic development make the real economy face unprecedented pressures and risks.In recent years.The rate of return on investment and the rate of labor productivity growth of enterprises has shown a downward trend.Faced with the tremendous pressure of transformation and upgrading and quality and efficiency improvement,social responsibility activities of the style of following the trend have become more and more difficult to sustain.How to carry out social responsibility planning to achieve a win-win situation of economic and social benefits has become a realistic problem that managers urgently need to solve urgently.In recent years,SCSR has attrcted a lot of attention in the academic field.However,most of researches focus on the study of western developed countries,and the research of China's SCSR is still at the initial stage.In addition,the existing research of domestic scholars mostly focuses on the theoretical analysis of the realization path and mechanism of SCSR to enhance the competitive advantage of enterprises.There is still a lack of an in-depth study of the practice of SCSR of domestic enterprises and empirical test based on large samples.Based on a comprehensive review of demostic and foreign relevant literatures research results,this paper divides SCSR into internally-oriented SCSR and externally-oriented SCSR according to the degree of relevance between SCSR and the company's own business activities.This study takes “internally-oriented SCSR — — transforming internal value chain — — promoting financial performance” and “externally-oriented SCS — — improving external competitive environment——promoting financial performance” as the logical analysis framework,and selects forward-looking environmental protection and strategic philanthropic activities as the key dimensions of internally-oriented and externally-oriented SCSR based on the triple bottom line principle of sustainable development of enterprises.Based on the data of listed manufacturing companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2011 to 2017,an empirical test on the impact of SCSR on financial performance is carried out.This study includes three aspects as follows.Firstly,the impact of strategic corporate social responsibility on financial performance is studied.It is found that from the perspective of average processing effect,the forward-looking environmental protection of listed manufacturing companies can improve financial performance,while the positive impact of strategic philanthropy on financial performance exists only in direct contact with consumer enterprises;from the perspective of marginal dynamic effect,the impact of forward-looking environmental protection on performance shows a trend of change from negative to positive,while the impact of strategic philanthropy on performance shows a trend of change from positive to negative.This conclusion indicates that there are different influence paths of internally-oriented SCSR and externally-oriented SCSR on financial performance.The internally-oriented SCSR acts on the company's own value chain and can improve financial performance deterministically,and externally-oriented SCSR acts on the external competitive environment so has a heterogeneous impact on financial performance due to different external environmental factors.Secondly,this paper studies the internal mechanism of internally-oriented strategic corporate social responsibility to improve financial performance.It is found that technological innovation plays an intermediary role in the forward-looking relationship between environmental protection and financial performance whether an enterprise is heavily polluted enterprise or not,immediately or for a long time.Thirdly,the conditions of improving performance of externally-oriented SCSR is studied.The marketing ability of enterprises will positively adjust the impact of strategic philanthropy on financial performance.The moderating effect of political connection varies according to the nature of property rights.In the state-owned enterprises,political connections will negatively moderate the impact of strategic philanthropy on financial performance,while in non-state-owned enterprises,political connections will positively moderate the impact of strategic philanthropy on financial performance.The innovations of this research are as follows.Firstly,in terms of research ideas,internally-oriented and externally-oriented strategic corporate social responsibility is included into an analytical framework to explore the mechanism of strategic corporate social responsibility on financial performance,which realize the concretization of strategic corporate social responsibility research.Secondly,in terms of research perspective,this paper takes the strategic corporate social responsibility of sustained investment as the research object from the perspective of long-term orientation,examines the average impact of strategic corporate social responsibility on financial performance and the marginal dynamic effect,and extends the static study of strategic corporate social responsibility to the dynamic study.Thirdly,in terms of research content,this paper uses mediation effect analysis to empirically test the intermediary role of technological innovation in the relationship between forward-looking environmental protection and financial performance,and reveals the internal mechanism of the forward-looking environmental impact on financial performance in the capital market of China.The study also uses moderation effect analysis to empirically test the moderating role of marketing ability and political connection in the relationship between strategic philanthropy and financial performance,thereby identifying the heterogeneous impact of strategic philanthropy on financial performance for marketing purposes and political motivation,which makes the causal relationship between social and financial performance of strategic enterprises more integrated and scientific.In the study,the contingency factors such as industry type and ownership nature of listed manufacturing companies in China are also taken into account,which provides a deeper way and more finer-grained empirical evidences for enterprises to fulfill strategic corporate social responsibility.