University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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The wealth capacity-building in Denmark was much more conducive than that for
China due to the differences in socio-economic and political environment. China has
a relatively harder task in ensuring the welfare of its citizens compared to Denmark,
as Chinese population is far greater than that of the Danish and China suffered
economic failures during Mao’s era. Furthermore, Denmark went through
modernization much earlier than China thus Danish corporations were found to be
specializing into specific areas and are considered front runners in CSR development,
while Chinese corporations focused on labour and product quality issues in a broader
sense.
Although Danish corporations have a longer history of reporting but the Chinese
corporations were at par when it came to the level of reporting. This is due to the
strong commitment of both Danish and Chinese corporations in ensuring their CSR
actions are made known. Both the Danish and Chinese corporations are also
following closely to either UN Global Compact or GRI guidelines or CSC9000
which provide good reporting information. Once committed to either of these
initiatives, companies endeavour to abide by the reporting guidelines, thus there
appear to be not much discrepancies between the two in terms of reporting.
Danish and Chinese corporations approach CSR from a different origin. For Danish
companies, it appears that the intrinsic desire to contribute to society steered the
development of CSR but it later developed further due to increased environmental
awareness and knowledge it acquired from the international arena. For Chinese
corporations, the informal CSR practices in the olden days was a way to improve the
stature of merchants, while formal CSR practices was greatly influenced by
government pressures. In turn, the Chinese government, with its open door policy,
made itself more susceptible to international pressure. Thus, it seems that
globalisation works in a different way in China and it plays an indirect role in
shaping Chinese corporations but it is really the government which carries the brunt
of these pressures. Globalization seemed to have influenced the development of CSR
in Denmark, with Danish companies being aware of international market needs, but
the environmentalism movement also helped steer the direction of CSR.
In order to fortify this research, the authors recommend that perhaps an investigation
on a country with similar characteristics as Denmark, especially on the individualism
shown in economic matters, would be helpful in determining if the same behaviours
are projected. Other Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway and Finland could be
good candidates. Subsequently, the question on whether certain social behaviours in
a society can get translated into organizations could then be discussed further.