A Study On The Correlation Between Corporate Social Responsibility,Political Connection And R&D Investment

With the rapid development of China's economy,a series of corporate social responsibility issues have emerged,and corporate social responsibility has become more and more concerned at the international and domestic levels.In 2013,China issued the "China SME Social Responsibility Guide" for the first time to put forward new requirements for the implementation of social responsibility of SMEs;in early 2017,the draft amendment to the Corporate Income Tax Law proposed that enterprises will enjoy more tax incentives for charitable donations.At the same time,in the process of business management and development,the company's R&D investment has become an important strategic decision to promote its self-upgrading and continuous improvement of innovation capabilities.The innovation ability of small and medium-sized enterprises is particularly important for their development.According to the theoretical basis of asymmetric information,stakeholder theory,and the reference to relevant domestic and foreign literatures,it can be seen that the commitment of corporate social responsibility will have an impact on stakeholder decision-making.The R&D investment of enterprises often needs the financial support of stakeholders.Therefore,this paper is based on China's basic national conditions,focusing on the impact of social responsibility commitment on R&D investment of small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises;and on this basis,we further study the role of political connections in regulating the relationship between social responsibility and R&D investment.This paper uses the small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises that disclose social responsibility scores in 2012-2016 as a sample,and uses the difference test method and multiple regression analysis methods to empirically test whether the enterprise's improvement of social responsibility level can help to raise the level of R&D investment.And introduce political connections to explore its role in regulating the main effect;the results show that corporate social responsibility and R&D investment are significantly positively correlated,and political connections have a negative regulatory effect on the relationship between social responsibility and R&D investment.The conclusion of the study confirms that corporate social responsibility is a kind of capital investment.Improving the level of social responsibility helps to promote enterprise innovation;but political connection will weaken the effect of social responsibility on innovation ability.The dependence of enterprises on political resources erodes the spirit of innovation and inhibits the motivation of innovation.Therefore,this paper believes that small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises should actively undertake social responsibilities,thus providing advantages for further enhancing their innovation capabilities and enhancing their core competitiveness.At the same time,the government should pay attention to the adverse effects of political connections on corporate R&D activities,and adopt a combination of encouragement and supervision to mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprise innovation.In addition,small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises should introduce indicators of innovation performance when assessing politically-related executives,thus curbing the “negative externality” effect of executive political connections on corporate R&D investment.The research conclusions enrich the relevant research in the field of corporate social responsibility and enterprise innovation,and provide incremental empirical evidence.It is of great significance to corporate governance and social responsibility decision-making.