Will the Governance of Non‐State Shareholders Inhibit Corporate Social Responsibility Performance? Evidence from the Mixed‐Ownership Reform of China’s State‐Owned Enterprises

Abstract

Fulfilling social responsibilities in order to sustain development has increasingly become a strategic choice for companies. Good corporate governance can guarantee high corporate social responsibility performance. This paper selects state‐owned enterprises listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A‐Share market from 2013 to 2019 as samples and uses a panel data OLS regression model to empirically test the impact of the governance of non‐state shareholders on the social responsibility performance of state‐owned enterprises from two aspects of shareholding: structure and high-level governance. The results show that, first, the governance of non‐state shareholders helps to improve the social responsibility performance of state‐owned enterprises; second, that mechanism analysis indicates that non‐state shareholders improve the social responsibility performance of state‐owned enterprises by improving the internal control quality; and third, the impact of the governance of non‐state shareholders on the social responsibility performance of state‐owned enterprises is heterogeneous in three aspects: the degree of marketization, the level of product market competition, and the corporate profitability. This paper not only helps to clarify the factors which influence the social responsibility performance of state‐owned enterprises, but also enriches studies on the economic consequences brought by non‐state shareholders through participating in the governance of state‐owned enterprises.