Exploring the antecedents of logistics social responsibility: A focus on Chinese firms

With globalization, especially after China's entry into the WTO, an increasing number of Chinese firms have experienced social responsibility barriers such that they lose international orders due to failure in meeting the requirements of environment, human rights or safety standard. This study attempts to shed some light on the mechanism underlying logistics social responsibility (LSR) in China. In particular, based on the five-dimensional structure of LSR framework, we propose that clan culture, business ethics, pressures from customers, suppliers, competitors and law/regulations are important antecedents of five dimensions of LSR. A mail survey was conducted in China and a total of 162 firm-level questionnaires were returned. Structural equation modeling was employed to test our theory. The results support our hypotheses that clan culture and business ethics of a firm have significant impacts on all the five dimensions of LSR. However, pressures from customers, suppliers, competitors and law/regulations only have effects on some dimensions of LSR. The contributions and implications of these findings are discussed further.