Social Status and Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from Chinese Privately Owned Firms

Abstract

In countries such as China, where Confucianism is the backbone of national culture, high-social-status entrepreneurs are inclined to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities due to the perceived high stress from stakeholders and high ability of doing CSR. Based on a large-scale survey of private enterprises in China, our paper finds that Chinese entrepreneurs at private firms who have high social status are prone to engage in social responsibility efforts. In addition, high-social-status Chinese entrepreneurs are even more likely to engage in social responsibility efforts as they become more politically connected and as the region becomes more market-oriented. These findings extend the upper echelons perspective of CSR into Chinese context by shedding light on antecedents of CSR from a new perspective (i.e., entrepreneurs’ social status) and clarifying the boundary conditions of the social status–CSR link from the institutional perspective.