Research On The Impact Of Geographical Dispersion On Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility is the focus of society,while the current social responsibility awareness of Chinese enterprises is relatively weak,especially in the food industry.In recent years,some food companies have unilaterally pursued the scale and development speed of corporate.The food safety issues such as abuse of food additives and pigment,counterfeit and inferior foods,and residues of fertilizer and pesticide have been very serious,bringing endless negative effects to society.In the situation where corporate social responsibility receives much attention from the state and society,tapping the factors that affect corporate social responsibility and improving the level of corporate social responsibility in China has become a practical matter to be resolved.With the development of enterprises,geographical diversification has gradually become an important strategy to expand enterprises'markets.Many enterprises have developed subsidiaries nationwide and overseas,which makes them geographically distributed and influences their decision-making behaviors.Studies have found that geographical dispersion has a negative impact on the social responsibility of American companies.However,this research has not yet been launched in China.Therefore,it is of certain value to start a related research on corporate social responsibility in China from the point of view of geographical dispersion.Therefore,this paper take Chinese A-share listed food industry companies from 2012 to 2018 as the research sample,based on theory of stakeholder,information asymmetry,principal-agent as well as idle resource,and use OLS regression method to analyze and verify the direct and indirect effects of geographical dispersion on corporate social responsibility.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Geographical dispersion is related to the social responsibility of food companies.That is,geographical dispersion of enterprises hinders the fulfillment of social responsibility of food companies.(2)Geographical dispersion is significantly positively related to the institutional environment differences,and significantly negatively related to the quality of internal control.Both the institutional environment differences and the quality of internal control play an significant intermediary role in the relationship between geographical dispersion and corporate social responsibility.The robustness test found that the results of the above study did not change substantially.(3)The inverse relation between geographical dispersion and internal corporate social responsibility is clearly stronger than external social responsibility.That is,the impact of geographical dispersion on the social responsibility of food companies is mainly reflected in internal social responsibility.In a theoretical sense,this study not only enriches the research on the influencing factors of corporate social responsibility in China,but also verifies the "discount" effect produced by the implementation of geographical diversification,enriching the research on the consequences of geographical diversification and geographical dispersion of enterprises.In a practical sense,this study will help companies and governments see and examine the present situation of social responsibility of food companies in China and its causes,and trigger rational thinking for companies and government regulators to rationly and effectively implement the strategy of regional diversification.At the same time,it also provides an significant method and ideas for improving the level of corporate social responsibility in the food industry in China.