The influence mechanism of organizational slack on CSR from the perspective of property heterogeneity: Evidence from China’s intelligent manufacturing

Abstract

It has become an important strategy for Chinese manufacturing companies to actively fulfill social responsibility. However, it is subject to the profitability of economic organizations and resource specificity, slack resources are the main source of fulfilling corporate social responsibility; And due to differences in management systems of enterprises in different natures, there are significant differences in the level and path of using slack resources to fulfill corporate social responsibility. In order to deeply explore the impact level and internal mechanism of organizational slack on corporate social responsibility in China, this paper conducts empirical research on the panel data of 373 listed intelligent manufacturing companies in Chinese A-share from 2013 to 2017, from the perspective of property heterogeneity. The research results show that organizational slack is widespread and presents the characteristics of property heterogeneity. Non-state-owned companies tend to reserve more slack resources due to more strict resource constraints. Organizational slack has a positive effect on improving corporate social responsibility performance, and its transmission is to improve the level of corporate responsibility performance and increase the quality of social responsibility information disclosure, but will not promote enterprises to take social responsibility into strategic considerations. There is a heterogeneous difference in the level of influence of organizational slack on the fulfillment of corporate social responsibility. The effect is more significant on the State-owned companies, nevertheless, its mechanism of action is not affected by the heterogeneous conditions of property. The research conclusions of this paper could make contribution for government agencies to improving the legal system of corporate social responsibility, accelerating the reform of factor markets, and formulating different incentive policies of property rights for fulfilling corporate social responsibility.

Keywords

Organizational slack corporate social responsibility property heterogeneity listed manufacturing companies

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