行业协会提高了企业社会责任表现吗?——来自中国民营企业调查的微观证据

Do Industrial Associations Improve Corporate Social Performance?——Evidence from China's Private Enterprises Survey

转型期中国的行业协会能否真正发挥行业自律、推动企业履行社会责任的作用?这是一个社会各界高度关注的问题。本文采取中国私营企业调查2010年数据进行基准分析,同时使用2006年、2008年、2012年数据逐年进行稳健性检验,实证检验和分析了行业协会对企业履行社会责任的影响效应,给出了正面的回答。结果发现,行业协会可以显著提高企业社会责任表现,即参加了行业协会的企业在善待员工、保护环境、慈善捐助等社会责任方面的投入明显比未参加行业协会的企业要高。即便在考虑了内生性问题、变量的不同测度方式、不同子样本影响之后,结果仍然稳健。进一步的分析表明,行业协会可以通过党组织这一途径干预企业的社会责任行为,反映出提高社会责任也是企业对社会、政治要求的一种策略性反应。本文结论提供了行业协会可以构成稳定地影响企业行为的制度性力量的经验证据,具有明显的政策含义。

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between industrial associations and corporate social responsibility(CSR).The paper hypothesizes that firms which join an industrial association demonstrate higher levels of CSR,and Communist Party of China(CPC)is likely to be one of the important channels through which an industrial association can exert influence upon firms'CSR initiatives.A unique data set from China's Private Enterprises Survey in 2010 was employed to empirically test the hypotheses.The data set in 2006,2008 and 2012 were used to confirm the robustness of the results.It is found that industrial associations can foster firms to engage in CSR initiatives,including charitable donations,staff training,environmental protection and some other dimensions as well.The results are robust to alternative measures of CSR,different types of industrial associations,and different sub-samples.Further econometric analysis finds that CPC control in terms of establishing a primary Party Organization in a firm and the business owner being a Party member has a significantly positive effect on the firm's social performance.The findings suggest that CSR can be a strategic response of a firm to counter the demands of the society and the politics,and that even in the context of transitional China,industrial associations can be a stable institutional factor affecting the behaviors of firms.The key limitation of the study is that it focuses solely on the overall index of CSR,which cannot reveal the specific impacts of an industrial association on certain aspects of a firm's social behaviors.The implication derived from the empirical analysis is that policy makers should pay enough attention to the roles of industrial associations and CPC control in improving the overall level of CSR in private firms.This study is among the first to use nationally-representative survey data from the China to analyze the effects of industrial associations on CSR.It not only enriched the empirical research on CSR,but also offered a new perspective to fully understand how industrial associations in China exert their influences on firms'behavior.