Abstract: The new trend of bringing corporate social responsibility has become a hot topic in CSR studies, but for the delimna of social involvement faced by new firms, the academic attention to the inherent mechanims of this trend is rather limited. Based on a sample of 1142 new Chinese private firms, this paper explores how formal and informal institutional embeddedness influences new firms’ social involvement and then investigates the moderating role of firm competence. Empirical results show that, both formal and informal institutional embeddedness promotes new firms’ participation in social issues in which the latter plays a more important role. Further research proves that innovative competence weakens this linkage. Exploring laws of new firms’ social involvement, this paper has both theoretical and practical implications for the new trend of bringing corporate social responsibility forward and new firms’ growth.

Key words: new firm, institutional embeddedness, growth stage, innovative level, corporate philanthropy, legitimacy