The Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility And R&D:Evidence From Listed Companies In China

Since 2013, China has been confronted with greater downward pressure on the economy. The old model of relying on fixed asset investment to promote economic growth has many problems, such as overcapacity, too high inventory. Making full use of mass entrepreneurship and innovation, or implementationing of innovation driven development strategy with enterprise R&D innovation to find new growth area, has become one of the solutions to maintain economic growth. Enterprises are the backbone of the scientific and technological innovation, but Chinese enterprise R&D expenditure is mainly used for internal development, while external R&D expenditures is accounted for less than 7%. On the one hand, it tells us that the knowledge and creativity advantage of the masses in China has yet to be developed. On the other hand, it also shows that companies do not take full advantage of external public and stakeholders to promote their own innovation. In order to achieve that, enterprises need to have a better performance of social responsibility, which make it possible to establish a good relationship with stakeholders and to obtain their support. But for the moment, the performance of corporate social responsibility in our country is generally poor and most of the qualified level is below grade. In this context, we will explore how to broaden the corporate R&D innovation through the external public channels and how to use R&D innovation to improve corporate social responsibility, which have become the two important issues to Chinese enterprises.Using the sample of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2013 and theoretical analysis, case analysis and empirical research methods, we explore China listing company the relationship between corporate social responsibility and R&D investment and this relationship in the state-owned enterprises and private enterprises, financing constraints and non-financing constraints of enterprises were compared.First of all, the paper discusses the relationship between R&D investment and corporate social responsibility by resource based theory. Then with the help of stakeholder theory, principal agent theory, previous research and pactical cases, the article constructs the theoretical framework of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and R&D investment. Then, according to the differences in the relationship between social responsibility and R&D investment, this paper describes the regulatory effects of these two factors on the basis of different ownership and financing constraints. On the basis of theoretical analysis, this paper puts forward the corresponding research hypothesis.Secondly, in order to test the research hypothesis, this paper constructs three simultaneous equations model and defines all variables involved in the model. Then the paper makes a preliminary analysis and discussion on the sample data.Finally, through the two stage least squares method of fixed effects, we test the relationship between R&D investment and social responsibility, and the moderating effects of ownership and financing constraints on the relationship between CSR and R&D. The main results are as followings:(1) Corporate social responsibility and R&D investment in Chinese listing corporation have a significant positive relationship with each other.(2) The difference of ownership on the relationship between CSR and R&D is significant, which means that we should include this factors into consideration.(3)The intensity of CSR and R&D is low in the group of high financing constraints, and this is the disadvantage for them to use the positive relationship between CSR and R&D, compared with the group of low financing constraints.