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| Disconnection between Cogniton and Practice:How Does Institutional Complexity Affect the Behavior of Firms Coupling |
| Yu Hao,Liu Wenhao,Ji Qionglan,Zheng Juncheng |
| (School of Management, Zhengjiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China) |
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Abstract The Chinese government has set concrete targets and made comprehensive plans to address climate change and aims to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Firms play an essential role in fulfilling the “30·60” national commitments, and the implementation of corporate social responsibility is the only way to promote the high-quality development of the national economy. In the background of the "dual carbon" policy, Chinese firms shoulder the historical mission and the responsibility of energy conservation and emission reduction. The management cognition of responsibility is effectively embedded in the practical behavior of social responsibility, so there is a separation of "cognition-practice". Decoupling behavior is regarded as a process rather than a result, and it is an effective buffer mechanism for enterprises to make strategic changes in response to multiple institutional pressures. Therefore, decoupling behavior is one of the important strategies to respond to institutional complexity, and enterprises can effectively avoid multiple institutional pressures by adopting symbolic means.#br#Then what strategic behavior do Chinese firms adopt to respond to institutional complexity in the context of the carbon peaking & neutrality policy? This study takes manufacturing, construction, building materials, electricity and environmental protection enterprises in cities such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai as the survey objects. The survey for this study lasts for 14 months from February 2021 to April 2022. Through a questionnaire survey of 304 energy-transformed firms in Yangtze River Delta region, this study investigates the impact of an organizational field with multiple institutional logics on coupling behaviors by combining the macro perspective of institutional theory and the micro perspective of identity, and further explores the motivation of decoupling behaviors.#br#The results show that (1) in the field of institutional complexity, firms adopt the strategic behavior of "sayings and not doings" to alleviate multiple institutional pressures, i.e., there is a positive relationship between institutional complexity and firms decoupling; (2) organizational identity, as a mediating variable, has a mediating effect on the relationship between institutional complexity and firm decoupling; (3) managers' social capital is a moderating variable, and managers' political capital has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between institutional complexity and firms decoupling, while the moderating effect of business capital has not been verified yet. The findings of this paper provide relevant theoretical basis and empirical experience for firms to shape their strategic behaviors in response to institutional complexity.#br#Different from the previous literature,the theoretical contributions of this study are as follows. It enriches the research on theories and mechanisms related to the strategic behavior of enterprises in response to institutional complexity.It reveals the motivation behind the decoupling behavior of enterprises in the institutional context, and enriches the role of social capital in institutional theory and corporate strategic behavior. The practical implications of this research are that it is essential to drive enterprises to realize paradigm innovation from "commercial" to "hybrid" organizations;government departments should speed up the establishment of supervision platforms to innovate the practice paradigm of corporate social responsibility in China. At the same time, firms should also actively embed themselves in the corresponding social responsibility supervision platform to achieve an ecosystem with multi-party participation. #br#Meanwhile,there are some limitations in this study, and future research can make improvement from three aspects.First,it is suggested to use a longitudinal tracking design scheme or multiple ways to collect data to achieve "triangular verification", and use more objective evaluation indicators or secondary data to measure variables. Second, future research can include the influence of social logic, religious logic, professional logic and other institutional logic on the strategic behavior of enterprises, and further explore the state in which multiple institutional logic is most conducive to the survival and development of enterprises. Third, in addition to questionnaires, future research can use case studies or fsQCA analysis to further discuss the spiral and gradual change process of enterprise strategic behavior from "coupling, decoupling and coupling" under the dynamic change of multiple institutional logic, and improve the universality of research conclusions.#br#
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Received: 13 May 2022
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