Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China: A contextual exploration

Despite a growing recognition of national contexts in predicting the dynamics of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the limited prior research has failed to disaggregate national institutions to specify the mechanisms between aspects of national institutional contexts and elements of CSR practices. In this paper we offer a framework for analyzing the nature and status of CSR, which is made up of eight elements: history, religions/ideologies, social norms, geography, political structures, the level of economic development, civil society institutions, and the country’s “safety net” provisions. We apply the framework to explain how and why China’s understanding of CSR differs from that in Western countries.