Unfulfilled Publicity:Study On Social Responsibility Of China's State-owned Enterprises

Under the socialist market economy system of our country,State-owned enterprises are characterized by its public ownership which brings them the preferential policies and resource advantages.Relying on these resources,state-owned enterprises have contributed a lot to the overall prosperity of our country while strengthening its own power.However,some state-owned enterprises are facing the challenges from public opinions due to their bad performance in production safety,market competition,environmental protection and etc.Frequent accidents revealed have aroused public attention on corporate social responsibility issue of state-owned enterprises.This paper holds the opinion that,as the important demonstration and implementation of public ownership system which is mainstay of our basic economy system,state-owned enterprises inherently have the public attribute of realizing and protecting public interests.It is obvious that state-owned enterprises still have a long way to go to achieve this ideal goal according their current performance.Starting from the point of view of "publicity",this paper defines corporate social responsibility as public good since it is derived from the deep development of market mechanism with the social exchange field expansion process.This perspective is an attempt to jump out of the traditional research paradigm which regards government and market as two independent fields.With the public attribute caught in the public expansion process,enterprises have become an important force to promote and improve public governance.In the discourse system emphasizing cooperative governance,it is a new idea to establish a corporate social responsibility realization mechanism via the interaction and cooperation among multiple governance subjects.Operating in the market economy environment,state-owned enterprises have both economic and public attributes,the values of the public nature of corporate social responsibility along with the inherent public property of state-owned enterprises require state-owned enterprises to coordinate two attributes while focusing on the "publicity"principle.The fundamental goal is to safeguard public interests and promote social welfare by taking the corporate social responsibility.This paper sorts out the development stage of China's state-owned enterprises social responsibility according to the reform process of economic system.Whether it is the functional responsibility of the planned economy period or the responsive responsibility under the market economy system,the inner public characteristic as the essential feature has never changed.However,an investigation on the current social responsibility fulfilling performance of state-owned enterprises has revealed that the "publicity" has not been fully fulfilled though state-owned enterprises has generally accumulated lots of remarkable economic and social responsibility achievement.To some extent,the "publicity"becomes vague due to some existing irresponsibility phenomenon which can be attributed to inherent defects of both the market mechanism and China's specific political and economic system.The principal-agent problem and the administration of the enterprise governance model internally constraint enterprises' social responsibility performance,additionally resulting in that the market competition mechanism and social supervision mechanism cannot play an effective role externally.After analyzing the current predicament combined with the status quo of state-owned enterprises,this paper comes back to the starting point with the "public" perspective to find proper methods to solve the problems.In view of a new governance pattern based on cooperation among multiple social subjects which is shaped by the expansion of public exchange field,this paper puts forward a cooperative mechanism among government,society and enterprise to help improve China's state-owned enterprises' social responsibility performance.Although the "public" perspective may be the innovation of this paper,but after all,it is only a tentative attempt which means it only theoretically carries on some arguments without empirical research.Besides,the discussion on the path of "cooperative governance" only stays at the macro level contributing little to the micro level with limited practical value.