CSR: The Best of Both Worlds: Driving Returns to the Business and its Employees: An Abstract

Abstract

Worldwide, companies should give due care to managing stakeholders’ perceptions and reactions to business practices pertaining to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). A basic belief underlying this sea change in corporate action and thinking is that if done right, CSR can generate “win–win opportunities” for companies, the environment, and stakeholders (Carvalho et al. 2010). Employees, not only considered as internal stakeholders but also as credible spokespersons to and for other stakeholder groups, have gained increasing attention in the marketing literature in the past decade (Diehl et al. 2015; McShane and Cunningham 2012). In particular, there is a dynamic stream of research analyzing the outcomes of CSR practices on employees (Roeck and Maon 2018).

Using social identity to guide our research, we build on and extend the growing body of literature exploring how companies profit internally from business practices and policies pertaining to CSR. In particular, our overall objective was to develop and empirically test a CSR-Outcome-Model. A cross-departmental investigation with the employees from a national division of a global company selling fast-moving consumer goods is reported (n = 135). In order to test the conceptual model, the data were analyzed with Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using smart PLS 3.0 software.

We tested employees’ evaluation of perceived CSR as well as CSR authenticity as it is related to employees’ organizational pride and to firm-beneficial as well as individual-beneficial outcomes in the workplace. Firm-beneficial outcomes are directly linked to the company’s performance and prosperity. Individual-beneficial outcomes are linked to the employee’s personal welfare. The firm-beneficial outcomes include loyalty to the company, trust in management, and positive word-of-mouth, whereas individual-beneficial outcomes include job satisfaction and emotional well-being. Furthermore, employees’ involvement in CSR is regarded as a moderator that intervenes in the relationships.

Our results suggest that employees’ evaluation of perceived CSR and perceived CSR authenticity strongly impact their sense of organizational pride. In turn, outcomes beneficial to the firm (trust in management, positive word-of-mouth) as well as individual-beneficial outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional well-being) are enhanced with an increase in organizational pride. Finally, employees’ involvement in CSR has a moderating role in the perception–social identity mechanism. Implications for internal CSR management, directions for future research, and limitations are discussed.