Difference of CSR Practice for Chinese Automakers – Comparison with Japanese & Korean Automakers

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has already become an important issue in Japan & Korea as well as in China. However, a relatively clear difference of CSR practice of China has existed due to it being government-led CSR practice. The Chinese government actively promotes its CSR standards, the CASS CSR 3.0 while emphasizing Chinese characteristics. This study traces the difference of CSR practice for Chinese firms by looking into twenty-four automakers’ CSR websites and reports in Japan, Korea and China. Firstly, this study analyzes CSR reports and website accessibility from a local language barrier perspective, and does Paired t-Test for comparing two national populations means of accessibility between two groups; Japanese-Korean automakers vs. Chinese automakers by using survey results. Secondly, the coverage rates of each automaker’s CSR report for GRI G4 are examined, and Two-Sample t-Tests are made to compare the two nationalities means of coverage rate between Japanese-Korean automakers and Chinese ones. As a result, the CSR practices of Chinese automakers differ greatly from CSR practices of Japanese-Korean ones. But it needs to be considered that if the major stakeholders of Chinese firms are local people or partners, the core of CSR activities would be oriented for local stakeholders.