Sustainable development: A quest for logistics social responsibility among Chinese manufacturing 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 largely scale survey was conducted in China and a total of 162 firm-level questionnaires were returned. The results from a pilot study were reported. The contributions and implications of these findings are discussed further.