'When West Meets East in Elsewhere': Chinese Ways of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in International Construction

Abstract

The global construction market has in recent years witnessed a fast expansion of Chinese international construction companies (CICCs). The statistics from the Engineering News-Record (ENR) (2017) show that 65 Chinese companies were listed on the ENR’s Top 250 International Contractors (TIC225) and in 2016 alone gained a total contracting revenue of $98.93 billion from their overseas construction market. CICCs are emerging as one of the strongest contenders in the global construction market among the many old-line competitors from the U.S., U.K., Japan, and European countries. Meanwhile, CICCs are also at times criticized as relatively irresponsible in assuming corporate social responsibility (CSR), e.g. producing substandard work, offering low pay, and maintaining poor health and safety standards. There are other criticisms, i.e. the previous US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of a creeping “new colonialism” in Africa that foreign companies are interested only in extracting natural resources to enrich themselves; “Local contents” of CSR have been much ignored. This talk aims to probe into how CICCs interpret and implement CSR during their internationalization. The concept of CSR origins on the two sides of the Atlantic and now has travelled to other countries including China. The common discourses today are about corporate global citizenship and creating shared value. Meanwhile, Chinese has a long history of emphasizing similar morals as CSR. It can be traced back to Confucianism two millennia ago and the first mingle of Western and Eastern CSR was experienced in the planned economy era. Their idiosyncrasies of interpreting CSR will thus unavoidably be imprinted with Chinese traditional ideologies. They will also look over the shoulder of their peers - Western international construction companies, another dominant force - in implementing CSR in the international market. The main argument is that CICCs’ Eastern ways of CSR are unnecessarily as poor as some Western commentators have claimed. Chinese traditional culture can be an ally to enrich CSR theories and practices. Yet, CICCs’ eastern ways of CSR are unnecessarily as good as we have defended. We have many CSR drawbacks to overcome to make our built environment a better place.