The Isomorphism Of Corporates' Philanthropy:From The View Of New Institutionalism

“Corporate Philanthropy”,as a global theme,has been discussed widely across the world.Due to the geographic heterogeneity and culture difference,such as different economic and political system,religion worship and habits,the driving force for Corporate Philanthropy in different countries are significantly different.Through studying the Corporate Philanthropy in China,on one hand we can contribute to the globalized philanthropy study vision.On the other hand,we can help the whole society to realize the importance of many entrepreneurs' philanthropical spirit,further motivating the corporate philanthropy activities in an organized way with consideration for harmonizing the Chinese society.According to the view of new institutionalism,the organized actives including philanthropy is not only owe to the individual internal inspiration,but also caused by the interactions with societal environment and thereby institutionalized with external factors.Following this principle,this study uses all the data obtained from national wide various enterprises to examine that whether politics,economics,laws and other factors will significantly affect the Corporate Philanthropy,meanwhile further studying some impact of religion on philanthropical activities.There is a very important concept called “homogeneity” in new institutionalism study,which refer to the fact that most organizations will tend to have similar behaviors within the similar societal culture environment if they share the same internal or external motivations.Consequentially,this study put the Chinese Corporate Philanthropy in a globalized context with focusing on the similar evolution path of many Chinese enterprises' philanthropy.Firstly,this study tracks the original source and development of Philanthropy in western and Chinese societies.Simply speaking,the Chinese philanthropy culture mainly comes from the belief of “born to be goodness” in Confucianism and other similar philosophy in local religions.In contrast,the philanthropy in western countries dates back to the Christian and individualism.Additionally,this study covers the development of philanthropy in history from pre-Qin dynasty.The philanthropy in China undergoes some preliminary development mainly in Han dynasty and arrives mature in Tang and Song dynasty,eventually reach climax in Qing dynasty.But in modern China,with many chaos and disasters in historical development,philanthropy is usually underestimated or neglected until recent years when more and more charity activities are encouraged by government to benefit education,healthcare and saving the poor.By observing the whole philanthropy development in society,enterprise and corporates are the main forces since they increase a lot in economic revenue and awareness of their responsibility to society.The Corporate Philanthropy in China correlate closely with the national industrialization and the development of information technologies with the globalization background.Secondly,by using the data in “National Private Enterprise Survey(2012)” and empirical analysis,the study concludes that: 1)the political correlation is the important factor affecting the enterprise's philanthropy activity,and the more relationship will bring more resources to show the charity appearance in society;2)the economic policy significantly affect the enterprise's philanthropy activity,which can be taken as a feedback to the economic policies made by various government organizations;3)the law setting also help the enterprise's philanthropy activity but not in a significant degree,since the general law making can not contribute directly to driving private enterprise to obey the soft requirement as long as without any violation.Generally speaking,in the current political,economic and law environment,the enterprise's philanthropy activity depends on the institutionalism of policy-making,namely this dependency can feedback private enterprise more societal resources.In other words,the enterprise's philanthropy activity is more or less taken as a strategy to build the fame and stability of itself with more recognition from external environment.Thirdly,by combining the statistical data in “National Private Enterprise Survey(2012)” with interview of entrepreneurs,the study also makes several conclusions as follows: 1)the religion has positive impact on enterprise's philanthropy activity;2)the religious idea has positive impact on the decision-making in the business strategy with the condition that the economic benefit will not be harmed.The entrepreneurs would like to participate in the philanthropy activities as long as their business profit can be guaranteed.Following these two points,we believe the informal institutionalization will supplement the formal institutionalization of enterprise's philanthropy activity.Both of them affect the charity and societal environment.Sometimes,the entrepreneurs may avoid some informal institutionalization in philanthropy activity to reduce the involvement in non-business strategy.Lastly,through the comparison between China and America's philanthropy activity,we found that American entrepreneurs considers more for the formal institutionalization with most motivation coming from political system,economic system and culture system and market development requirement.In contrast,Chinese entrepreneurs are mainly affected by the culture of Confucianist.Meanwhile,these two philanthropy systems in both countries refuse the direct payback of philanthropy activity with intention of immediate benefit.Even more,some enterprises that prefer to such immediate benefit will be earmarked as hypocrisy.In the trend of globalization,most international companies will be similar to each other with reasonable consideration for more philanthropy activities.The recognition from consumers and government will provide more space for the potential philanthropy institutionalization in the society.Besides the impact of philanthropy on shareholders,the strategical philanthropy activity will also affect the employees,customers,government and the whole society to some different degree in a positive way.