Drivers of Global CSR Integration and Local CSR Responsiveness: Evidence from Chinese MNEs

• Published in: Business ethics quarterly Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 317 - 345
• Main Authors: Miska, Christof, Witt, Michael A., Stahl, Günter K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01-07-2016; Cambridge Journals on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics
• Subjects: Adaptation; Climate change; Community; Comparative analysis; Economic growth; Globalization; International business; Legitimacy; Management teams; Mergers; Mirroring; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Multinational corporations; Responsiveness; Special Section; Stakeholders; Top management; Transnationalism; China; Africa; emerging-market MNEs; institutional theory; local CSR responsiveness; global CSR integration; state-owned enterprises; China
• ISSN: 1052-150X; 2153-3326
• DOI: 10.1017/beq.2016.13

What drives Chinese MNEs’ global CSR integration and local CSR responsiveness? Drawing on institutional theory, we argue that both antecedents reflecting globally isomorphic patterns of adaptation and antecedents mirroring the distinct characteristics of China’s institutional context are relevant. We support our argument using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 29 of China’s globally most influential companies. We find that state influence and global CSR associations affect global CSR integration, whereas presence in the West and internationalization through mergers and acquisitions predict local CSR responsiveness. Our study thus suggests that home-country characteristics are an important co-determinant of the CSR approaches of emerging-market MNEs. We further find that multicultural experience in top management teams is associated with both global CSR integration and local CSR responsiveness, supporting notions of transnational CSR.