Review Of Corporate Social Responsibility In China

Corporate social responsibility has been subjected to all kinds of arguments concerning its definition and essence since the date of its birth. According to the traditional theory of company, company's operational objective is to achieve profit and interest maximization for shareholders; however, because of its for-profit nature, the excessive pursuit of profit, accompanied by the asynchronism between economic and social development, result in some companies'ignoring or even opposing the legitimate rights and interests of non-shareholders. The corporate social responsibility corrects the traditional goal of profit maximization. In this respect, it is a matter of importance for us to tackle how to coordinate business goals for profit maximization with the social responsibility.It has been two or three decades for the study of corporate social responsibility in our country, which being a western import has witnessed both for and against from scholars. Because of the value of the traditional company philosophy and of the institutional arrangements of traditional legal system, it is still uncertainty and, thus, should be examined through practice that whether too much emphasis on corporate social responsibility will have some impact of corporate system in China or whether the transition will affect China's economic and social development. Therefore, it is reasonable to be treated with caution and question by scholars. But there is no room to deny that corporate social responsibility indeed can restrain the excessive profit maximization and avoid its social problems. In this view, the theoretical clarification of the current controversy over corporate social responsibility issues is necessary, such as:What does it means by corporate social responsibility? What is the nature of corporate Social Responsibility? what kind of relationship between corporate profit maximization and corporate social responsibility is? Does China already have the soil which can afford the introduction of the system of corporate social responsibility? On what level of company law should we achieve corporate social responsibility? Only after these problems solved can we say there is some substantial effect on development and implementation of China's corporate social responsibility.The new "Company Law" takes the corporate social responsibility as a principle which provides the rules at the state level and serves as a legal basis for the social responsibility, but there is still some doubts concerning whether it could assure the implement of the corporate social responsibility. Therefore, it is needed for us to seek more theoretical and institutional support to corporate social responsibility in practice. This paper started with the searching of the origin of corporate social responsibility, which is followed by the disputes and controversies over it during its development, and then we come up to the definition and nature of corporate social responsibility, then we analyze legal and moral attributes and properties and explore the relationship between the operational objectives and social responsibility. On this basis, through the studies of the analysis of the development situation and existing problems of corporate social responsibility in our country and the controversial nature of the provisions of corporate social responsibility in the new "Company Law", we can come to some recommendations about proper implementation mechanism of corporate social responsibility after the analysis of the rules of corporate governance and other related laws and seek some balance between corporate profit maximization and corporate social responsibility which promises a win-win situation.