Mapping the Relationship Among Political Ideology, CSR Mindset, and CSR Strategy: A Contingency Perspective Applied to Chinese Managers

The literature on antecedents of corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies of firms has been predominately content driven. Informed by the managerial sense-making process perspective, we develop a contingency theoretical framework explaining how political ideology of managers affects the choice of CSR strategy for their firms through their CSR mindset. We also explain to what extent the outcome of this process is shaped by the firm’s internal institutional arrangements and external factors impacting on the firm. We develop and test several hypotheses using data collected from 129 Chinese managers. The results show that managers with a stronger socialist ideology are likely to develop a mindset favouring CSR, which induces the adoption of a proactive CSR strategy. The CSR mindset mediates the link between socialist ideology and CSR strategy. The strength of the relationship between the CSR mindset and the choice of CSR strategy is moderated by customer response to CSR, industry competition, the role of government, and CSR-related managerial incentives

Ownership, Corporate Governance and Top Management Pay in Hong Kong

Top management pay has been the focus of intense scrutiny and debate in many countries. Important issues include how compensation is decided and whether it is a function of performance. The purpose of this study is to examine top management pay in Hong Kong and to investigate how it is affected by firms' ownership and governance characteristics. A distinguishing characteristic of many listed firms in Hong Kong is the large proportion of share capital owned by the directors, and we argue that this moderates top management pay. We also investigate the role of institutional ownership and board composition in the determination of pay. We find that director and institutional ownership moderate compensation but that there is little evidence that they encourage pay-for-performance reward schemes. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.