The Status Quo Of Social Responsibilities Taken By State-owned Publishing Enterprises And Suggested Measures For Improving

The notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (hereinafter referred to as CSR) came into being in early 20th century and marked its development with on and on theoretical controversies and practical explorations. Moreover, with the formulation, implementation and unification of various criteria and systems for CSR attestation, CSR has gained global recognition and support. In China, CSR theories have been widely propagated and recognized, and especially in recent years, a lot of effort has gone into the study and practice of CRS by some large central-government-owned businesses, boosting the development of CSR in Chinese context and generating an important force for business enterprises to protect the rights of their stakeholders and to facilitate their own sustainable development.Chinese state-owned publishing enterprises, with their products dually featured of being spiritual and material, have been shouldering the important responsibility of theoretical publicity of the ruling Party and the state, and therefore, have always stuck to the principle of"prioritizing social benefits while integrating economic benefits with social benefits". As for publishing enterprises, the pursuit of social benefits is to some extent very similar to the fulfillment of social responsibility. A subtle difference between the two is that the former emphasizes exterior influence, i.e. the impact of publishing on the society, while the latter tries to balance the influences on both inside and outside the enterprise, characterizing a more comprehensive concept. Theoretical researches on CSR of publishing enterprises in China are still at the beginning state, and even less has ever been done by Chinese publishers to practice CSR. Consequently, it is necessary to study the status quo of social responsibilities taken by Chinese state-owned publishing enterprises, find out current problems and difficulties, and put forward some measures to improve the whole situation, so as to promote research and practice of CSR in Chinese state-owned publishing enterprises and better facilitate the social benefits of publishing.The formation and development of CSR has always been accompanied by controversies over its theoretical values and how to put them into practice, which reveals the real difficulties people have to face. Based on a review for the academic researches on CSR and an analysis of the characteristics of publishing enterprises, this thesis proposes a definition of CSR for Chinese state-owned publishing enterprises, i.e. the publishing enterprises voluntarily take on responsibilities for such relevant stakeholders as the government, readers, employees, business partners, communities and the environment, so as to facilitate sustainable development of themselves and the society. With the Stakeholder Theory as its basis, this thesis also clarifies the contents of CSR for state-owned publishing enterprises, i.e. to bear responsibilities for the government (stockholders), readers, employees, business partners, communities and the environment, providing the publishing enterprises with a definite scope and focus of CSR and enabling the state-owned publishing enterprises to bring about a shift in CSR from theory to practice.Meanwhile, the actualization of state-owned publishing enterprises practicing CSR depends heavily on efficient societal governance. On the one hand, publishing enterprises must strengthen their CSR management, boost the sense of responsibility, build up smooth channels for communication between departments, formulate the standards of responsibility and merge the shouldering of CSR into daily corporate governance; on the other hand, the public must improve and optimize the government functioning, the legal and public surveillance, and other exterior environments, and with the supervision and urge of exterior force, gradually transform the shouldering of CSR by publishing enterprises into their voluntary actions.