ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
This article is part of the Research TopicBuilding Resilient Healthcare: Integrating Economic and Health Policies for Pandemic PreparednessView all 5 articles
Administrative embedding and employee health protection in China
Provisionally accepted
- Shandong University, Weihai, Weihai, China
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This study examines the impact of public health shock and administrative embedding on employee health protection in privately listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2011 to 2021, focusing on the COVID-19 shock. The findings show that private enterprises with administrative embedding significantly enhanced health protection measures post-shock, highlighting the role of administrative oversight in corporate governance and social responsibility. The effect is stronger in eastern China, densely populated regions, and large companies. Robustness checks confirm the results. The key mechanism is that the health shock prompted firms to prioritize employee health, with urban healthcare and social security conditions acting as positive moderators. Administrative embedding further encouraged firms to take on more social responsibilities. This research provides new insights into the interaction between government and market forces, corporate governance, and social responsibility in the post-shock era.
Keywords: Public health shocks, Administrative embedding, Employee health protection, Privateenterprises, COVID-19
Received: 06 Oct 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Meng and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiangxu Meng
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