A Theoretical Study Of The Legislation Of Enterprises' Social Responsibilities

Enterprises are organizations which use social savings to create social wealth. The society just supplies the enterprises with natural resources, human resources, institutional resources and other elements. Since enterprises exist and develop in the society, it's very natural that during their productive and managerial activities, the enterprises are bound to impose both positive and negative effects on social production. For example, the enterprises just provide the society with employment opportunities, meet the material and cultural needs of consumers and play an active role in creating taxes, meanwhile, they are the main inciters of social problems, for example, the enterprises may over-exploit natural resources, make use of the economic advantages to monopolize the prices, produce shoddy goods, discriminate against small and middle-sized enterprises, impair legal rights of employees, pollute the environment, resort to bribery and other unhealthy tendencies. Also, the doubt on the "dual criteria"and "pollution transference"adds international backgrounds and complexity to the issue of enterprises'social responsibilities. Enterprises'owners and managers are becoming more aware of the fact that how to perform the enterprises'social responsibilities has due effects on the enterprises'future development. Obviously, the implementation of the enterprises'social responsibilities is a step-by-step process. The jurisprudence society becomes more focused on some critical issues: whether it is necessary to enact criteria for enterprises'social responsibilities or not? What criteria? And whether it is necessary to formulate a systematic legislation concerning enterprises'social responsibilities? Though there are various opinions on enterprises'social responsibilities in the circles of sociology, management and economics, yet from the perspective of law, especially from the perspective of legislation, the most important thing is to standardize the enterprises'social responsibilities with certain law. We deem that to set the enterprises'social responsibilities with law has its realistic significance; we suggest that certain compulsory rules be made to guarantee the enterprises to realize the due rights and the enterprises should bear certain consequences if they violate the rules. The main problem which China's enterprises universally face is how to survive and how to build the modern enterprise system, meanwhile, we'd realize that some enterprises neglect their social responsibilities, impair the legal rights of' parties concerned, and thus set barriers to the development of the themselves and society at large. We'd borrow some advanced overseas experience from "Corporate'Law", this not only takes the fact that we'd be farsighted in legislation, but also meets the increasing needs that the making of law shall keep in line with the international practices after China's entry into the WTO. What should be clearly pointed out is that when suggesting the enterprises perform their social responsibilities, we don't deny the profitability of the enterprises, we deem that in their running, the enterprises shall take the legal rights and interests of the parties concerned into consideration, and thus the profitability shall serves the society better. The theoretical researchers in the jurisprudence society of our country have conducted specific exploration and examination with regard to social responsibilities of enterprises. So far,among the principal researchers are, Li Lianyu, engaging in pursuing an effective approach for the implementation of enterprises'social responsibilities from the aspect of administration structure of a corporation; Li Junhai, who holds the opinion that social responsibilities of enterprises, qualified as an important part for the eventual establishment of modern enterprise system, should be highlighted and enhanced; Lu Daifu, who has made specific analysis and examination on social responsibilities of enterprises from aspects of jurisprudence and economics; Also there are some other researchers who have published some essays discussing enterprises'social responsibilities on the academic journals. From different aspects of discussion, all of the said researchers have suggested paying due attention to social responsibilities of enterprises. We believe that the said researchers, each with a proposal of a different framework or point of view, have not successfully presented a sound theoretical basis or core, and that is why all these theories have not succeeded in the breakthrough of the promotion of an eventual legislation process. At the time being, the progress of the legislation of our country as regard to the issue of social responsibilities of enterprises is witnessed by the various presentation of special or separate laws and regulations. Furthermore, they are simply stipulations in the form of some clauses or articles, and some hollow legislative clichéwith little operation but much indication, instead of the embodiment of social responsibilities of enterprises. In view of the said observations, we will propose in the paper our theory named as entrustment of social responsibilities assumed by enterprises, at the initialization of the integration of system theory, enterprise theory and jurisprudence theory. The essential parts of the theory include: modern enterprises involve the entrustment between the shareholders and the business operators, as well the entrustment between the society and the enterprises themselves. The former is about how to bring an enterprise under control by means of the enhancement of internal structure framework, the latter is the target of external control. From the aspect of external control, an enterprise is an institution entrusted by the society that performs social responsibility as a member of the entire social system. Social responsibilities of enterprises just lay emphases on the mutual development of social members. In accordance with contract argument, an enterprise is a kind of legal entity established by the various contracts and deals concluded between the parties concerned. That is to say, an enterprise is an integration of a bunch of contracts, which may include obvious contracts and recessive contracts. Inaccording to the principles of new system economics, an enterprise is a joint of a series of contracts, and a network of contract joints. These contracts involve in various forms the owners of investment and the buyers of commodities. The enterprises are tied through contracts not only to the suppliers of human resources (employees, directors and etc), the suppliers of physical capital (shareholders, creditors and etc), as well as the suppliers of raw materials and the purchasers of products, but also bound to the government through government control contract, and to the society through social responsibility contract. The contractor of an enterprise is also subject to alternation. The original contractor may withdraw from the contract on the basis of certain rules, and those originally excluded from the contract may join the contract on the basis of certain rules. In this way, an enterprise may possess potential contract makers apart from the current contract makers. The contract market (such as stock market, bond market, labor service market, and etc.) becomes a systematic arrangement of role switch between current contract maker and potential contract maker. A potential contract maker may go into such a contract by means of a specific contract; similarly, a current contract maker may quit such a market by means of a specific withdrawal contract. Such switch activity indicates: obvious contracts can be subject to legal stipulations in explicit terms, which may specify clearly the rights and obligations of both parties involved in the contracts; however, it is impossible to present in detail every aspect of recessive contracts by means of legal stipulations. Yet from a dynamic point of view, the recessive contracts between the enterprises and the society will gradually be apparent with the development of society, for example, the issues of employment standard, environmental protection, and the recognition of social responsibilities of enterprises have jumped onto the agenda. The enterprises are demanded to take initiatives in the performance of social responsibilities, even though many detailed issues are still subject to further study and discussion. From the aspect of staticefficiency, the development of such contracts may be deemed as difficult and complex, because it is difficult to identify coverage and cost when social responsibility is involved. However, an inevitable incompleteness at the beginning of such development often precedes a process of gradual improvement and betterment. In some sense, social responsibilities of enterprises will promote the eventual orientation of laws, from the current base of essential moral elements, to the adaptation to the social progress. On the basis of such a point of view, we shall in this paper tackle social responsibilities from several aspects, such as the initial proposal of social responsibilities of enterprises as an issue, theoretical review of enterprises'social responsibilities (mainly including the birth of the theory, an overall view of foreign and domestic theories concerning social responsibilities of enterprises), the comparative analysis of traditional enterprise view and modern enterprise theory, the current situation of enterprises'social responsibilities, as well as the necessity of existence of enterprises'social responsibility. On the basis of the reorganization of the principal theories and views developed in this academic field, we have conducted a comparative analysis on Chinese enterprises'social responsibility by incorporating the international trend of economic globalization and the current situation of market economy transformation as we are witness in China, and by alternating from time to time our presentation with some real cases designated to certify our arguments. As regards to the current situation of enterprises'social responsibility, our opinions in this paper include: under the pressure of further intensification of global competition, enterprises are forced to comply with international rules and it has become a necessity to shorten the gap between enterprises. The enterprises in our country, which are currently focusing more on the maximization of profit, have produced unfavorable impact on the society. The emergence of such phenomenon indicates that it has become imperative topromote the sense of social responsibility among enterprises so as to maintain a sustainable development of our enterprises as well as our overall society. It is based on such awareness that we have discussed again in the paper about the necessity of legislation aiming at the guaranteeing the smooth implementation of enterprises'social responsibility. Furthermore, taking the impact of globalization and the current situation of Chinese enterprises'social responsibilities into consideration, we put forward our own scheme on the legislation of enterprises'social responsibilities,. As regards to enterprises'social responsibilities, the legislation projects presented in this paper are mainly composed plans and designs such as theoretical legislation, establishment and improvement of supervision system, as well as the enhancement of implementation. First of all, we hold the idea that enterprises'social responsibility should be stipulated by law, and that we should integrate legal resources so as to regulate and specify social responsibilities of enterprises as well as the penalties in case of violation. Secondly, we propose to establish and improve supervision system. The supervision system on enterprises'social responsibility should be on which basically relies on legal approaches, supplemented by social implements. Apart from the enhancement of legal supervision practice, we should also turn to the robust development of social tools, profiting from the full role of players such as news, press, media, trade organization, international organizations, thus coming into being a supervision with multi-dimension, multi-level and multi-access features. We should improve the external environment which can encourage the enterprises to assume social responsibility. The supervision and control of enterprises'social responsibility are derived from an appropriate relationship between the three parties: government, enterprises and society. A set of complete supervision mechanism will be originated from the good integration of various tools including legal enforcement, economic orientation, administrative intervention, enterprise self-discipline and social supervision.