Research On The Relationship Between Internationalization And Corporate Social Responsibility Of Chinese Enterprises

With the promotion of "going global" trend,the scale of overseas investment of Chinese enterprises is constantly expanding,and the process of internationalization is obviously accelerated.By the end of 2020,China’s OFDI enterprises had reached 45,000,covering 189 countries and regions,and more than 80%of the world’s countries and regions had Chinese investment.Thus,it has been seen that internationalization of Chinese enterprises has entered in-depth development stage.Internationalization not only brings economies of scope and scale to enterprises,but also forces firms to face more complex institutional environment and nonmarket challenges,and puts forward higher legitimacy demands for enterprises to achieve institutional embeddedness and overseas survival.As a specific non-market strategy,CSR can help enterprises from emerging economies overcome institutional voids of home country and liability of foreignness,and enhance legitimacy in host countries.In addition,through strategic synergy of internationalization and CSR,the synergistic effect of "1+1>2" can be exerted to promote overseas survival and overall value creation of enterprises.As the global and regional environment becomes dynamic and complex,Chinese enterprises need to consider not only internal factors such as resources and capabilities,strategic motivation,but also non-market challenges and multiple institutional demands caused by external institutional environment in the process of internationalization.In view of this,based on institutional theory,institutional logic,stakeholder theory and other theoretical perspectives,this study focuses on the core issue of "The relationship between internationalization and corporate social responsibility of Chinese enterprises " and explores three key issues:(1)The driving mechanism of multinational enterprises’ social responsibility(configuration analy sis of CSR influencing factors);(2)How internationalization affects corporate social responsibility decisions;(3)Strategic synergy between internationalization and corporate social responsibility and its impact on performance.Through the answers to above questions,we can better understand interactive relationship between MNEs’ internationalization and corporate social responsibility,and enrich studies on integration of market strategy and non-market strategy in the field of international business.The specific research contents of this paper are as follows:The first study is"Corporate social responsibility driving mechanism:A fuzzy-set based qualitative comparative analysis ",which focuses on the question of "What factors drive multinational enterprises to adopt positive social responsibility strategy?" and explore the configuration and path of multinational enterprises from emerging economies to achieve high level of CSR.On the basis of existing research,this paper explores the interaction and "joint effect" of five factors including entry mode of internationalization,home country institutional embeddedness,host country institutional environment,industry competition,and NGOs through by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA).Three effective configurations to achieve high level of CSR are identified and refined:Global integrated social responsibility,Local embedded corporate social responsibility,Home-oriented corporate social responsibility.Through theoretical explanation of relevant configurations and analysis of typical cases such as Huawei,Hisense and China Nonferrous Mining Corporation,this study further provides a solid practical basis for the division of theoretical dimensions of CSR and subsequent sub-studies.The second study is "The influence of internationalization on corporate social responsibility",this part analyzes and explores the influence mechanism of internationalization(internationalization scope,internationalization rhythm,internationalization speed)on corporate social responsibility(responsive CSR&strategic CSR)based on theoretical dimension division of internationalization and corporate social responsibility.The research questions are as follows:(1)With the diversification of geographic distribution of internationalization,how can enterprises achieve convergence of "cognitive map" through CSR;(2)With the change of internationalization expansion trajectory or regularity,how to make CSR decisions and effectively balance power relationship between stakeholders and enterprises;(3)With rapid change of the scale of international expansion,how can enterprises exert specific CSR practices to achieve optimal balance of non-market advantages of external legitimacy and internal efficiency?The empirical results show that:internationalization scope is positively related with responsive CSR;The pace of internationalization is significantly related with strategic CSR.The speed of internationalization promotes responsive CSR and strategic CSR.Through empirical test on the moderating effects of institutional field boundaries(positive&negative institutional distance)and CSR diffusion effect(CSR industry density),we find that positive&negative institutional distance restrain and promote the positive relationship between internationalization scope and responsive CSR,respectively.Positive institutional distance strengthens the positive relationship between internationalization rhythm and strategic CSR.Negative&positive institutional distance promote the positive relationship between internationalization speed and responsive CSR(strategic CSR).The CSR industry density weakens the positive relationship between internationalization scope and responsive CSR.As the CSR industry density increases,the positive relationship between pace,speed of internationalization and strategic CSR will be strengthened.The above research conclusions reflect the non-market challenges and multi-institutional demands of Chinese enterprises’internationalization,as well as the differences of CSR decisions.The third study is " internationalization and corporate social responsibility strategic synergy and its impact on performance",through analysis necessity and motivation of internationalization and CSR strategic synergy of multinational enterprises from emerging economies,this chapter preliminarily puts forward and defines three types of strategic synergy:breadth strategic synergy,depth strategic synergy and cross strategic synergy.This study analysis and test the positive influence of strategic synergy on corporate performance and legitimacy(internal&external legitimacy),and the mediating role of legitimacy between strategic synergy and firm performance,which is based on logic chain of "strategic synergylegitimacy--corporate performance".Through above theoretical analysis and empirical test,this study mainly makes innovation and theoretical contributions to the research on relationship between internationalization and CSR of Chinese enterprises in three aspects:First,this paper defines and distinguishes internationalization and CSR theoretically,reveals complexity of Chinese enterprises’ internationalization non-market challenges and essential difference of CSR decision-making,and breaks through bias of single dimension in previous studies on the relationship between internationalization and CSR.Taking Chinese enterprises with international behaviors as research samples,with deeply analysis of complexity of internationalization of Chinese enterprises,this paper emphasizes the differences in scope,rhythm and speed of internationalization in institutional environment and institutional demands,which cause enterprises to show different CSR decisions for non-market challenges.In addition,unlike previous studies that regarded CSR as a single overall concept.this paper defines two typical CSR of multinational enterprises:responsive CSR and strategic CSR based on systematic summary of the research literature on types and dimensions of CSR,and further describes the essential differences of multi-dimensions of corporate single practice activities in different institutional contexts.Through the theoretical differentiation of key variables such as internationalization and CSR in this study,the more complex internal relationship and mechanism of internationalization and CSR of multinational enterprises from emerging economies can be further analyzed.Secondly,this paper puts forward and demonstrates the core arguments of internationalization and CSR strategic synergy and its impact on performance based on realistic context of Chinese enterprises’ internationalization,and enriches the theoretical system of research on market strategy and non-market strategy integration in the field of international business.As an important part of corporate strategy,internationalization not only shows a single direction of causal relationship on CSR,but also has potential strategic synergistic effect with CSR.This paper discusses necessity and motivation for Chinese enterprises to realize synergy of market strategy and non-market strategy in internationalization from three aspects:embeddedness of home country institutional voids and global multi-institutional environment,the dynamic change of internationalization strategy motivation,and the dynamic integration of global market environment and non-market environment.This study further distinguishes three different types of internationalization and CSR strategic synergy:breadth strategic synergy,depth strategic synergy and cross strategic synergy.Through systematic review and summary of mainstream research literature,this paper analyzes and demonstrates the value effect of internationalization and CSR strategic synergy based on logical thread of "strategic synergylegitimacy--corporate performance".The results expand theoretical scope of the core issue of"The Relationship between Internationalization and CSR of Chinese Enterprises ",which is helpful to explore the theoretical and practical value of market strategy and non-market strategy integration of multinational enterprises.Thirdly,this study adopts qualitative comparative analysis to identify the driving mechanism of multinational enterprises’ CSR from emerging economies,and realizes breakthrough and innovation of research methods on the relationship between internationalization and CSR by integrating qualitative and quantitative research paradigms.In this paper,the fuzzy-set qualitative Comparative analysis(fsQCA)method is incorporated into the research method of this study,and further explores the interaction between different influencing factors and the "joint effect" of multinational enterprises’ CSR from emerging economies,which improve "independent--dependent variable" binary relationship between single influencing factors.Through qualitative comparative analysis,this paper identified and refined key configuration and path of multinational CSR,and supplemented by typical case analysis,which further provide solid practical support for subsequent theoretical differentiation of CSR dimensions and relevant sub-studies.By complementing qualitative and quantitative research methods,the limitations of original research methods on the relationship between internationalization and CSR can be solved,thus,the authoritativeness of the research conclusion is guaranteed.