Purpose The growing focus on socially responsible supply chain management (SRSCM) has made it crucial to extend corporate social responsibility (CSR) to upstream suppliers. Drawing on resource dependence theory, this study aims to examine how supplier dependence upon socially responsible buyers impacts suppliers' CSR performance and how this relationship is moderated by network prominence and demand uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach The proposed hypotheses are tested using regression analysis with Heckman's two-stage model and a dyadic supply chain dataset constructed based on publicly traded Chinese firms between 2008 and 2016. This time window is selected due to a one-year lag of the dependent variable and the change in evaluation methods of the database providing CSR performance in 2018. Findings The empirical results indicate that supplier dependence upon socially responsible buyers is positively associated with suppliers' CSR performance. However, this positive relationship is attenuated when suppliers occupy a prominent position in the network or when they face high demand uncertainty. Originality/value This study extends knowledge about the role of relationship dependence in implementing SRSCM by highlighting its positive impact on suppliers' CSR. Thus, this study contributes to the buyer–supplier relationship literature and the power and relationship dependence literature. This study further advances the understanding of the factors that influence suppliers' behavior by exploring the moderating roles of network prominence and demand uncertainty. The results have several practical implications for managers and policymakers.

In this study, we investigate the effects of mandatory social and environmental regulations (MSER) on firm innovation. In 2008, the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China published regulations that mandate some public firms to disclose their social and environmental governance information in their annual reports. As the MSER apply only to selected firms, this provides an ideal setting for us to observe the effects of MSER on firm innovation. Using a difference-in-differences with propensity-score-matching methodology, we find that the treatment firms experience a significant increase in innovation in terms of the number of total patents and invention patents. More importantly, we further explore three possible mechanisms underlying this association, that is, the corporate social responsibility (CSR)-improving effect, information-disclosing effect, and market-reaction effect, and demonstrate that this positive relationship is mainly driven by the CSR-improving effect and market-reaction effect, manifesting in an improvement in CSR performance and a decline in transient institutional investors for the treatment firms, respectively.

Downstream firms must pay more attention to social issues in supply chain, as stakeholders always hold them responsible for activities of their suppliers or sub-suppliers. Although many researchers have studied corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the relationship between CSR and supply chain, there is a dearth of research in the literature on how power asymmetry and joint dependence in Chinese supply chain affect the social responsibility practices of suppliers or customers and further whole supply chain. Based on resources dependence theory, this paper empirically investigated the influence of downstream power adventage (DPA) on suppliers' and whole supply chain's social performance. We also examined if joint dependence (JD) affects the social performance of the whole supply chain. We test the model using data collected from all manufacturing companies that are listed on Shenzhen or Shanghai Stock Exchange in China during 2009-2015. The results show that downstream power advantage (DPA) is positively associated with the social performance of whole supply chain and the usage of power of downstream firms can positively affect the social responsibility behaviors of their suppliers. It is interesting that there is a negative and significant relation-ship between joint dependence (JD) and downstream firms' social performance. At last, some implications of the results are discussed.