Key Influencing Factors of Corporate Social Responsibility Implementation in the Chinese Construction Industry

Abstract

With the increases in general affluence and changes in societal expectations and environmental regulations, construction firms are under constant pressure to minimize their business operations on the environment while contributing to the growth of the communities and economy in which they operate. This leads to the ongoing discussion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the construction industry. Hitherto, a considerable amount of research has documented the drivers, motivations, and barriers regarding the implementation of CSR in construction. However, it seems that little empirical work has been conducted to examine the key dimensions of CSR practices of Chinese construction firms and the collective effects of the key influencing factors on firms’ CSR implementation through the integrated lenses of stakeholders, institutional, and self-determination theories. In addressing this gap, this study aims to investigate the current state of CSR implementation of construction firms in China’s construction industry. With this aim, the specific objectives are to (i) develop and test a conceptual framework of CSR implementation in construction firms; (ii) identify the key dimensions of CSR implementation in construction firms; (iii) identify the key influencing factors of CSR implementation in construction firms; and (iv) examine the inter-relationships among those key influencing factors and their collective impacts on construction firms’ CSR implementation.

A three-phase research process, based on a survey research design, was adopted for this study. Of these, the first phase involved a comprehensive review of the literature and an initial exploratory multiple-case study of the five leading Chinese construction firms’ CSR implementation. These help to contextualize, operationalize, and finetune the measurement items, characterizing CSR practices and their influencing factors, of the structured survey questionnaire. Thereafter, an industry-wide online questionnaire survey of 90 top management from the targeted top-tier Chinese construction firms was undertaken. The data collected was primarily analyzed using the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) methods.

The overall results reveal that CSR implementation by construction firms could be categorized along with eight key dimensions, namely: (i) shareholders’ interests; (ii) government commitment; (iii) CSR institutional arrangement; (iv) environmental preservation; (v) customers’ interests; (vi) employees’ interests; (vii) suppliers’ and partners’ interests; and (viii) well-being of local communities and the public. This finding reflects firms’ efforts to balance different key stakeholders’ conflicting interests to fulfill their diverse expectations and needs. It is found that these key dimensions of CSR implementation can be influenced, to a varying degree, by the different groups of external institutional and internal organizational factors. The results demonstrate the groups of key influencing factors include: (i) identified factors (i.e., the perceived importance of CSR practices); (ii) external institutional factors (i.e., coercive and normative factors, and mimetic factors); and (iii) intrinsic factors (i.e., strategic business direction, resource and capability, and organizational culture). In terms of the inter-relationships among the key influencing factors toward CSR implementation, the results indicate that the coercive and normative factors can largely contribute to contractors’ perceived importance of different dimensions of CSR practices (i.e., identified factors), while the latter can largely shape firms’ practical CSR implementation. Moreover, one of the most salient findings is that compared with the impacts of the intrinsic factors, identified factors and external institutional factors (especially coercive and normative factors) have greater significant positive impacts on most dimensions of firms’ CSR implementation.

In conclusion, both external and internal factors collectively provide meaningful insights into the impacts of firms' CSR implementation. However, coercive and normative factors and identified factors are keys for construction firms to manage diverse stakeholders' expectations and needs, thereby implementing their social responsibility goals. This research informs the firm management of different configurations of considerations and strategies toward improving and building the required dimensions of CSR implementation.