Policy empowerment and social impact: empirical evidence from the policy for Chinese specialized, refined, differential and innovative ‘little giant’ enterprises

This paper investigates the role of policy on the social impact of enterprises based on the policy of Chinese specialized, refined, differential and innovative 'little giant' enterprises. Using data from Chinese Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2022, this paper employs the difference-in-difference (DID) approach to examine the relationship between them. The empirical results show that the 'little giant' policy has a positive effect on the enterprise's social impact. Meanwhile, this paper finds that the external factors (business environment) can strengthen the positive effect of the 'little giant' policy, while the internal factor (top manager's myopia) can weaken the positive effect of the 'little giant' policy.