Impact of CSR on organizational resilience across Chinese listed firms: combination of process-oriented and outcome-oriented perspectives

Abstract

The firms are confronted with increasingly uncertain environment. Their ability to endure, recover and bounce back from a major disturbance is essential for firms’ survival and development. Therefore, how to cultivate organizational resilience has become an important issue. The paper operationalizes organizational resilience into two parts. One is the process of forming organizational resilience in pre-adversity period, another is the manifestation of organizational resilience in post-adversity period. Using the panel data from 2010 to 2019 and cross-sectional data in 2020 of listed firms in Chinese stock market, the paper employs fixed effect and OLS estimations to study the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on organizational resilience by combining process-oriented and outcome-oriented perspectives. The results show that in context of China, CSR performance has mixed effects on organizational resilience. Specifically, CSR practice impacts organizational resilience through reducing financial volatility, instead of through improving economic strength in the process of formation. Furthermore, CSR practice shows no significant impact on the manifestation of organizational resilience when an adversity happens. The findings support the insurance-like effect of CSR practice. The study is the first attempt to interpret organizational resilience as a compound capability which is developed at tranquil period and manifested at adversity period. It is also one of the few empirical studies concerning the influence of CSR on organizational resilience with the background of a recently happened crisis. It contributes to the body of literatures on determinants of organizational resilience and suggests that CSR practice is a practical way to build up organizational resilience and maintain business sustainability.