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The impact of incongruent CSR on time theft: an integration of cognitive and affective mechanisms

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Abstract

This study aims to explore employees’ response to incongruent CSR, a phenomenon in which companies allocate more resources to external than internal CSR issues. Drawing on retributive justice theory and the dual-process model, we argue that incongruent CSR may lead to employees’ time theft, a type of minor counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) directed towards organizations. Furthermore, we suggest that both cognitive (e.g., moral disengagement) and affective (e.g., anger) reactions partially mediate this relationship. Using survey data from 314 employees at Chinese firms, results show that incongruent CSR increases employees’ moral disengagement and anger, which in turn increases their time theft. The results also reveal that employee Machiavellianism intensifies the impact of incongruent CSR on employees’ moral disengagement and anger, as well as the indirect effects of these cognitive and affective reactions through which incongruent CSR leads to time theft. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by shedding light on how and when incongruent CSR may trigger minor deviant behaviors among employees.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was financially supported by Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (723QN222), Research Initiation Foundation of Hainan University (kyqd(sk)2022040), Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (523QN214), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (72204195).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management school of Hainan university, Hainan, China

    Xianyi Long & Liang Wang

  2. School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Hubei, China

    Qinwei Cao & Huaqing Feng

  3. Research Institute of Digital Governance and Management Decision Innovation, Wuhan University of Technology, Hubei, China

    Qinwei Cao

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  1. Xianyi Long
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Correspondence to Qinwei Cao.

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Long, X., Wang, L., Cao, Q. et al. The impact of incongruent CSR on time theft: an integration of cognitive and affective mechanisms. Curr Psychol 43, 7810–7825 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04951-0

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