A Cross-Cultural Perspective On Corporate Social Responsibility

Since the first industrial revolution in the 17th century, capitalism has been expanding at a rapid speed. To some extent, it shows the advantage of private ownership. However, after capitalism developed to a certain stage, its disadvantages have emerged obviously. Because in-born profit-driven capitalists seek for profit with all necessary means, the conflicts between productivity and social system become tenser. To solve the problem, adjustments have been made—with initiatives from enterprises and organization, ethical code of conducts has been set up to regulate the behaviors of companies. Companies undertake more social responsibility to alleviate the problem and maintain sustainable development. With its leading management skill, Wal-Mart, as one of the biggest retailers, was onceranked the first on Fortune 500. In spite of its giant financial strength, Wal-Mart also has a variety of problems with its stakeholders. It has been agreed by the business to take some social responsibility and balance interests among different stakeholders, in order to build a positive corporate image and seek sustainable corporate development. With its business operations scattering around many countries and regions all over the world, Wal-Mart is influenced by a variety of cultures in implementing its corporate social responsibility. How do these cultural factors affect Wal-Mart? To what extent is Wal-Mart influenced by these cultural factors? Attention should be paid on these questions to measure differences and commonalities.In this thesis, Wal-Mart's operations in US and China are studied with the help of western researchers'cultural models and theories, such as Hofstede's four dimensions, Trompenaars'universalism and particularism as well as with the help of some Chinese traditional values and ethics. The author compares how Wal-Mart is influenced by different cultural values and traditions. American culture is a typical individualistic culture, while China's culture is mainly characterized by collectivism. Being influenced by Confucianism for thousands of years, Chinese traditional values such as sincerity and harmony exert a strong influence on modern society.In this thesis, according to different cultural backgrounds, a set of hypotheses are proposed by the author. Data are collected through on-site survey and have been analyzed.Conclusion is made to see how Wal-Mart is influenced by different cultural factors in its implementation of corporate social responsibility.Studies on an individual corporation are rare and reference materials are also very limited. As the first touch on this area, the thesis must have a lot of places to improve. Here, comments and recommendations are sincerely welcome by the author, so as to conduct more individual cases in CSR area.