۱- Introduction

۲- Theory and hypotheses

۳- Methods

۴- Results

۵- Discussion and conclusions

References

Abstract

Recent literature argues that corporate social responsibility (CSR), especially the social-oriented type, may enhance collaborative innovation. However, these studies overlook other CSR dimensions that may also benefit collaborative innovation; in addition, they mainly study these activities in developed economies, few has considered those in developing countries, where CSR might affect collaborative innovation through a different mechanism. Therefore, this paper aims at exploring the impacts of different CSR dimensions (i.e., environmental CSR, social CSR, and corporate governance) on collaborative innovation. It also reveals the mechanism through which CSR affects collaborative innovation in developing countries by exploring the moderating effects of government support (i.e., direct and indirect government support) on these relationships. Based on a panel data analysis covering the period 2008 to 2016 in China, our findings indicate that social CSR may not enhance collaborative innovation in developing countries, which contrasts findings from developed countries; moreover, both direct and indirect government support could enhance the positive effect of environmental CSR on collaborative innovation, while the indirect one could also promote the positive effect of corporate governance on collaborative innovation. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of whether firms can improve collaborative innovation through socially responsible manners.

Introduction

Firms have received greater attentions on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) with the growing public concerns on environmental and social issues in recent years (Ludbrook et al., 2019). Accordingly, how CSR could facilitate sustainable development of firms has become one of critical subjects in the CSR field (Burke and Logsdon, 1996). Existing research maintains that innovation is the key pathway through which CSR achieves sustainable development of firms (Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Specifically, recent literature argues that CSR are more likely to promote collaborative innovation (Dingler and Enkel, 2016). However, these studies primarily consider the social dimension of CSR, ignoring other CSR dimensions that may also create collaborative opportunities (Graessley et al., 2019). In fact, CSR involve not only the social aspect but also other dimensions such as environmental CSR and corporate governance, which are called ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance CSR) (Friede et al., 2015) e the variety of CSR activities may lead to different impacts on collaborative innovation. Prior literature has tentatively studied the impacts of different CSR on innovation, such as environmental CSR (Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998) and corporate governance (Honore et al., 2015) respectively. However, these studies have yet to extend to the understanding of different impacts of heterogeneous CSR on collaborative innovation. Moreover, current literature mainly discusses the impact of CSR on collaborative innovation in developed countries, few has extended such relationship in developing countries.