Corporate Social Responsibility in Variegated Political Environments: A Comparative Study of CSR Disclosure between China and Sweden
(2021) SOCM04 20211Sociology
Department of Sociology
- Abstract
- Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a widely publicised corporate practice that has become widespread across the globe in the context of globalisation. Still, past research has found considerable variation in the understanding and practice of CSR among companies in different national contexts. China and Sweden, two countries with very different political and economic environments, have been cooperating on CSR promotion since 2007, as unanimously advocated by the United Nations. However, there are still significant differences in the understanding and practice of CSR between the two countries’ companies. I conduct a comparative study of CSR disclosure by thirty listed companies in China and Sweden from the perspective of institutional... (More)
- Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a widely publicised corporate practice that has become widespread across the globe in the context of globalisation. Still, past research has found considerable variation in the understanding and practice of CSR among companies in different national contexts. China and Sweden, two countries with very different political and economic environments, have been cooperating on CSR promotion since 2007, as unanimously advocated by the United Nations. However, there are still significant differences in the understanding and practice of CSR between the two countries’ companies. I conduct a comparative study of CSR disclosure by thirty listed companies in China and Sweden from the perspective of institutional theory. Through a thematic analysis of the content of CSR reports from both countries and analyses of conditions of symbolic compliance and standard references, two CSR ideal types, authoritarian-state-oriented and democratic-global-oriented, are summarised. This study complements existing institutionalist research that has overemphasised the analysis of national market economies from a comparative capitalist approach by focusing on the impact of national political-institutional contexts on firms’ understanding and practice of CSR. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly becoming a global consensus, whether in politics, business and among the general public. Due to differences in local political and economic, and even cultural backgrounds, CSR is understood and practised differently by companies from different countries. In other words, the institutional environment in which a company operates impacts its understanding and practice of CSR. To contribute to the knowledge of the differences in CSR between developed and developing countries, I conducted a comparative study between China and Sweden by collating and analysing the CSR reports of thirty Chinese and Swedish companies, starting with an analysis of the semantic themes of the content, the quality... (More)
- Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly becoming a global consensus, whether in politics, business and among the general public. Due to differences in local political and economic, and even cultural backgrounds, CSR is understood and practised differently by companies from different countries. In other words, the institutional environment in which a company operates impacts its understanding and practice of CSR. To contribute to the knowledge of the differences in CSR between developed and developing countries, I conducted a comparative study between China and Sweden by collating and analysing the CSR reports of thirty Chinese and Swedish companies, starting with an analysis of the semantic themes of the content, the quality of the content and the adoption of standard frameworks. The study found that there were significant differences in the importance given to the national government in the reports of the two groups of companies and that the important role of government and the nature of the government to which they belonged further influenced their specific CSR practices, for example, Chinese companies were more perfunctory in the area of labour and human rights than their Swedish counterparts in their reports and made extensive reference to local standard frameworks that excluded national human rights responsibilities due to the influence of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government. This confirms that it is not only the institutional factors at the economic level but also the political-institutional environment that significantly influences companies’ understanding and practice of CSR. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9050241
- author
- Kang, Xu LU
- supervisor
-
- Olle Frödin LU
- organization
- course
- SOCM04 20211
- year
- 2021
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Corporate social responsibility, institutional theory, political-institutional environment, corporate governance, China, Sweden
- language
- English
- id
- 9050241
- date added to LUP
- 2021-06-07 11:11:22
- date last changed
- 2021-06-07 11:11:22
@misc{9050241,
abstract = {{Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a widely publicised corporate practice that has become widespread across the globe in the context of globalisation. Still, past research has found considerable variation in the understanding and practice of CSR among companies in different national contexts. China and Sweden, two countries with very different political and economic environments, have been cooperating on CSR promotion since 2007, as unanimously advocated by the United Nations. However, there are still significant differences in the understanding and practice of CSR between the two countries’ companies. I conduct a comparative study of CSR disclosure by thirty listed companies in China and Sweden from the perspective of institutional theory. Through a thematic analysis of the content of CSR reports from both countries and analyses of conditions of symbolic compliance and standard references, two CSR ideal types, authoritarian-state-oriented and democratic-global-oriented, are summarised. This study complements existing institutionalist research that has overemphasised the analysis of national market economies from a comparative capitalist approach by focusing on the impact of national political-institutional contexts on firms’ understanding and practice of CSR.}},
author = {{Kang, Xu}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Corporate Social Responsibility in Variegated Political Environments: A Comparative Study of CSR Disclosure between China and Sweden}},
year = {{2021}},
}