企业社会责任:“真心”抑或“幌子”?——基于高管内幕交易视角的研究

企业承担社会责任究竟是“真心”还是“幌子”?与现有研究聚焦于考察社会责任对企业行为的影响不同,本文基于高管个体行为视角,实证检验企业社会责任对高管个体证券交易行为的影响。基于2008～2014年中国沪深A股上市公司高管10338个内幕交易样本的实证结果显示:(1)企业承担社会责任不仅能抑制高管内幕交易的规模,更能显著降低高管内幕交易获利性,这表明作为社会责任的谋划者,企业高管并未以社会责任为“幌子”牟取个人证券交易的私利,在一定程度上提供了企业“真心”承担社会责任的证据;(2)进一步从“信息模型”和“声誉模型”双重视角探究发现,在企业信息不透明和高管个人声誉较差的情况下,企业社会责任对高管内幕交易获利性的抑制作用更为显著;并且相较于高管个人声誉较差的情况,企业社会责任在信息不透明的情况下对高管内幕交易获利性的抑制作用更强。总之,本研究从高管个体行为视角提供了企业社会责任具有积极治理作用的证据,不仅丰富了企业承担社会责任经济后果的研究,同时,对利益相关者也具有实践指导意义。

Corporate Social Responsibility: “Sincerity” or “Veneer”? A Study Based on Executive Insider Trading

Both the sustainable development goals (SDG) issued by the United Nations and China's “13th Five-Year Plan” highlighted the importance of corporate social responsibility. Nonetheless, doubts about corporate social responsibility and even major negative incidents involving social responsibility efforts still occur from time to time. Therefore, many enterprises' social responsibility behaviors have been criticized as ineffective, hypocritical, or purely for show, and the legitimacy and rationality of corporate social responsibility have been seriously challenged.Many studies have examined this topic from the perspective of corporate investment, financing, and earnings management. The results show that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a positive moral behavior accepted by stakeholders (e.g.Chen et al., 2018). However, some studies also find that Chinese enterprises engage in social responsibility activities primarily to cover up or divert public attention from their misconduct, and they argue that management engages in CSR out of self-interest (e.g.Gao et al., 2012). However, these studies mainly focus on the impacts of corporate social responsibility on corporate behaviors, and few explore how corporate social responsibility affects the individual behavior of executives. Clearly, whether CSR affects the individual behaviour of planners and promoters can indicate whether it is “sincerity” or “veneer.”This paper chooses A-share listed companies in China from 2008 to 2014 as a research sample to empirically examine the governance role of corporate social responsibility on the insider trading of senior executives, and it further explores the impact of corporate social responsibility on the insider trading of executives in different situations. This study finds the following: (1) Fulfilling corporate social responsibility has a significant governance effect on the scale and profitability of internal trading, and executives of CSR enterprises show stronger self-discipline in internal trading. (2) Evidence from the dual perspectives of the “information model” and “reputation model” indicate that in the context of opaque corporate information or executives with low personal reputation, corporate social responsibility plays a more significant role in restraining senior executives' insider trading. (3) When corporate information is opaque, corporate social responsibility plays a more significant role in restraining insider trading than in the case of executives with lower reputation. The results of this study have the following important implications. First, the evidence shows that enterprises should actively undertake social responsibility. When corporate information is opaque or the reputation of executives is lower, corporate social responsibility has a more significant governance effect on insider trading. Thus, this paper suggests that corporate social responsibility can best be understood from the perspective of sincerity, and it provides empirical evidence for promoting and encouraging corporate social responsibility. Second, from the perspective of the “information model”, regulatory authorities should guide, encourage, and standardize information disclosure on corporate social responsibility, and improve the related supervision and evaluation system. Therefore, in the future, regulators should focus on encouraging listed companies to disclose social responsibility and enhancing the incentives for voluntary disclosure. At the same time, regulators should standardize social responsibility disclosure and improve the authentication and evaluation system of corporate social responsibility information to better enhance its quality and transparency. Finally, from the perspective of the “reputation model,” enterprises should increase top management's ideological and ethical standards by engaging in social responsibility. In view of this, enterprises should actively utilize social responsibility activities to cultivate a good corporate culture, which will ultimately improve the moral standards of top management. Thus, both the information model and reputation model show that by effectively fulfilling social responsibility, corporations can restrain insider trading by executives, improve the efficiency of economic operations, and promote market fairness.