Executives' Background Characteristics,Political Connections And Corporate Social Responsibility

In August 8,2017,a 7 magnitude earthquake occurred in Jiuzhaigou,Sichuan,the rescue work of the disaster stricken areas was involved in the heart of the people all over the country.Under the guidance of the people's government,the order of the disaster areas was quickly restored,and the evacuation of the wounded was carried out smoothly.In addition to the command of the government,enterprises have also played a role that can not be ignored.After the earthquake,Baidu maps updated the reminder of the road control push in application;the Alibaba's "fly pig" allows all the Jiuzhaigou orders to be fully refunded,and the "rookie logistics" has also done a good job of material delivery;Shenzhou automobile and other disaster relief vehicles have been on standby.Jingdong said the first relief supplies were on the way.In the course of the disaster rescue,we not only saw the obligation of the government,but also saw enterprises take their responsibilities as large as possible in various ways as corporate citizens did.In such an era of "supremacy of character",enterprises should not only pay attention to their gains and losses,but also establish a good image of social responsibility.The interface news once collects more than 10000 questionnaires and finds that when the price of the two brands is the same,nearly 80%of the customers will choose the enterprise which have a better social image,that is,the better the"public welfare",the harder it is to refuse.This kind of "public welfare" is called"corporate social responsibility".As a new direction of the future competitiveness of enterprises,corporate social responsibility has aroused widespread concern in the academic and practical circles since its inception.The empirical research on corporate social responsibility mainly involves its influencing factors,economic consequences and evaluation index system.In terms of influencing factors,scholars mainly focus on corporate governance,corporate characteristics and other factors on corporate social responsibility.Although some articles have mentioned the impact of executive team characteristic's backgrounds on the performance of corporate social responsibility,the results of these articles are not the same.The reason may be that the institutional environment gap is larger in different countries and regions,and the role of political relevance as a substitute system is different,and the level of political connection is different in the relevant decision-making.In the study of the relationship between the two,scholars often lack the attention to the regulatory role of corporate social relations,such as political connections,between the executive team characteristics and the performance of corporate social responsibility.And according to the higher order theory,the background characteristics of senior executives will first affect the digestion and understanding of the internal and external information,and then affect the executive behavior.In the process of digestion and understanding of information,the executives may be affected by many social relations factors such as corporate political connections.Therefore,the impact of executive characteristics on corporate social responsibility behavior is somewhat biased.Therefore,the innovations of the articleare as follows,Through the study of the background characteristics of the executive team,the influence of different levels of political association on the performance of social responsibility,and the regulatory role of different levels of political relevance in the background characteristics of managers and corporate social responsibility,we can better explain the influencing factors of the performance of corporate social responsibility.Based on the theory of high order theory and signal transmission theory,the following research is carried out in this paper.First,it reviews and collates the relevant literature and analyzes the relationship between the main variables of the article.Second,based on the literature review and theory,the article is based on the enterprises involved in the 2011-2015 Rankins CSR Ratings.After screening,2271 cross-sectional data were obtained,and the relationship between the average age of the senior management team,the average education level and the corporate social responsibility was verified by the empirical analysis.Third the moderating effect of political association on the impact of corporate social responsibility on the performance of corporate social responsibility(CSR)is examined.It is found that the average age of the executive team is negatively related to corporate social responsibility,but it is not significant.The proportion of women,the average education level and the corporate political connection are positively related to the corporate social responsibility,Moreover,the influence of political connections at the provincial level on CSR performance is greater than that under provincial level.Further studies show that the political connections of state-owned enterprises have a stronger impact on corporate social responsibility than those of non-state-owned enterprises.In addition,the article also finds that apart from political connections have a direct impact on corporate social responsibility,the corporate political association plays a regulatory role between the executive team characteristics and the corporate social responsibility performance,and the regulatory role of the political association above the provincial level is stronger than the regulatory role of the political association below the provincial level.This also explains why different scholars will draw different conclusions when studying the relationship between top management team characteristics and corporate social responsibility.Further studies have found that,compared to non-state owned enterprises,the political association of state-owned enterprises has a stronger regulatory role in the relationship between executive characteristics and corporate social responsibility.Finally,the article puts forward some suggestions on the construction and improvement of the executive team and the mechanism of corporate social responsibility fulfillment and disclosure.