다국적기업 자회사의 사회적 책임 활동 범위와 깊이: 상징성과 자원의존이론을 중심으로

The expansion of global markets and the rise in global economic standards have served to increase the consumer’s expectations from businesses. Further, higher standards of corporate ethics and responsibility have driven businesses to undertake CSR activities to ensure sustainable corporate activity. Globalization, in particular, has brought the ethical responsibility of businesses into national and international focus. This study examines the drivers of CSR activities from the perspective of the resource dependence theory. We first looked at how the visibility associated with a firm’s size and level of localization affect the depth and scope of CSR activities. Next, we examined the effect of the symbolic and substantive behavior of firms on the level of their CSR activities. This study collected and used Chinese corporate data and the statistical indicators for each Chinese province and city. A total of 709 CSR scores pertaining to 168 firms were collected and analyzed for the period covering 2008 to 2016. Our results show that a higher visibility of firms has a positive effect on the level and scope of CSR activities. The symbolic behavior of firms is found to negatively affect CSR performance, and thus demonstrates decoupling. The substantive behavior of firms is found to positively affect CSR performance.