Explaining Enterprise Litigation Success with fsQCA: The Role of Local Economic Environment, Policy Preferences, Case Complexity, and Party Capability

Since the initiation of reforms and the opening-up policy in China, enterprises have played a pivotal role as a key pillar of local economic growth. Within the context of harmonious labor relations, the effective means of assisting enterprises in safeguarding their particular interests during labor disputes remains unresolved. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is able to capture a higher degree of complexity by testing theory-based conditions and environmental effects rather than focusing on a single effect of a single variable. Therefore, coming from a new institutionalist perspective, this study employed fsQCA to explore the causal relationships among factors including local economic environment, policy preferences, case complexity, party capability, and enterprise litigation success. Analyzing data from 28,685 labor dispute cases from Guangdong Province between 2015 and 2019, and utilizing enterprise data from the China Economic Information Network and the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, we found that: (1) it is difficult for enterprises to succeed substantially in a single-antecedent condition; (2) There are four pathways to forming high enterprise victory, each involving different configurations of eight conditions; and (3) Judicial preference, employee legal representative, and enterprise legal representative are central elements in all aforementioned pathways, even if they are not necessary conditions for the success of high enterprises. The research results enrich our understanding of the current style of institutionalism, providing a valuable reference point for effectively improving the legal success of enterprises and improving the harmonious development of labor relations, with far-reaching implications for the further study of the judicial protection of enterprise rights under the socialist system.