Corporate Donations in China: A Strategic- Political Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores how the political identity of top managers influences corporate donations, based on upper echelons theory (UET). The results show that the political identity of the top manager has a significant impact on the donation behavior of a company, especially in areas with poor institutional environments. Corporate donations depend not only on whether the top manager has a political identity but also the type of this identity. Furthermore, the impact differs significantly between companies with different ownership structures. This study enriches our knowledge of corporate philanthropy by demonstrating that corporate donation practices are shaped by a range of contextual factors. Corporate giving behaviors in emerging economies such as China are differently motivated according to the fundamentally different aspects of their institutional settings.

Keywords

institutional environments / ownership type / political connections / corporate donations

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2014 Higher Education Press and Brill