Search results

This study examines the effects of a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative on its employees’ organizational attachment and intent to leave. We propose that employees’ perceived authenticity of their firm’s CSR activity mediates the effects of a firm’s CSR initiative on employees’ attachment to the firm and intent to leave. We also hypothesize that employees understand the authenticity of their firm’s CSR initiative based on internal and external attribution mechanisms. We propose that internal attribution enhances authenticity, while external attribution reduces it.

We surveyed a sample of 450 employees from 38 Korean companies that were included in the 2009 Dow Jones Sustainability Index Korea (DJSI Korea). To test the theoretical model, we employed a linear structural equation modeling which allows the causal estimation of theoretical constructs after taking into account their measurement errors.

As predicted, internal attribution significantly increases employees’ perceptions of their firm’s CSR authenticity, whereas external attribution significantly reduces such perceptions. Employees’ perceptions of authenticity, in turn, increase their affective attachment and decrease their intent to leave. In addition, the effects of the two attribution mechanisms on organizational attachment and intent to leave were mediated by employees’ perceptions on authenticity.

Research on authenticity has been case studies or narrative ones. This is one of the first studies investigating the role of authentic management empirically.

We demonstrate that a firm’s CSR initiative is a double-edged sword. When employees perceive inauthenticity of their firm’s CSR initiative, the CSR initiative could be detrimental to employees’ attachment to the firm. This study calls attention to the importance of authentic management of CSR.

Informational transparency through social network services become the foundational reality to the contemporary management. To maintain competitive edge in this changing world, every stakeholder of a firm including managers, employees, customers, shareholders, government, and communities should collaborate and help each other live the principle of authenticity.

Extant studies on corporate social responsibility (CSR) have mainly focused on established corporations; the context of new ventures remains largely unexplored. This study aims to address this gap by exploring the patterns of socially responsible activities in new ventures.

This study uses the perspective of stakeholders to differentiate external CSR activities (efforts directed toward external stakeholders) from internal CSR activities (efforts directed toward employees) and performs empirical tests using a sample of 3,650 Chinese private firms.

This study empirically shows that new ventures are more involved in external CSR activities and less involved in internal CSR activities than mature firms. New ventures prioritize their limited resources to fulfill the expectations of external stakeholders rather than those of internal stakeholders. External stakeholders are considered primary stakeholders because of their potential to satisfy critical organizational needs at the start-up stage. However, new ventures tend to cut the spending on employee benefits, ignoring the potential effect of this investment on their long-term growth. After testing the moderating effect of financial resource availability, we find that new ventures with high financial resource availability are inclined to implement external CSR strategy rather than internal CSR strategy.

This study focuses on new ventures and reveals the influence of organizational life cycle on CSR decisions. The findings may be limited to the context of China or emerging markets. Thus, further research is needed to compare the patterns of CSR activities in new ventures under different institutional environments.

This study indicates that new ventures are inclined to implement external CSR strategy rather than internal CSR strategy. This choice may be rational in the short term, but insufficient investment in employee benefits may affect the long-term growth of these firms. Therefore, they must also focus on their internal CSR activities.

This study is one of the few studies to investigate the patterns of socially responsible activities in new ventures in a transition economy. The findings in this study can help reconcile the seemingly contradictory views on whether new ventures are socially responsible and contribute to our understanding about CSR strategy in these firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on internal employee motivation.

A survey was conducted among 274 employees from medium and large enterprises engaged in CSR activities in Lithuania. The research hypotheses were tested using correlation and regression analysis using factor scores from a principal component factor analysis.

The findings suggest that internal and external CSR activities positively correlate with internal employee motivation. Internal CSR was found to be stronger related to internal employee motivation than all the external CSR dimensions. Regarding the external CSR, customer‐related activities indicated stronger correlation with internal employee motivation than local communities and business partners related CSR activities. The weakest relation was found between internal employee motivation and business partners related CSR activities.

This study is limited to one country under investigation, therefore further research needs to be extended to other countries. The survey is conducted in the period of economical recession. In order to assess the generality of the findings, it is suggested to repeat the research in a stable economy situation.

Executives could use the results of the research to resolve practical dilemmas by giving priority to the areas of CSR which facilitate employee internal motivation enhancement.

By revealing the importance of CSR activities to employee internal motivation enhancement, this study contributes to the CSR investigation arena.

This paper aims to examine whether and how two firm-level factors jointly moderate the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and firm performance: (1) the “alignment” between a firm's CSR activities and risk preferences and (2) performance measurement systems (PMS).

Using survey responses from top managers of private Italian companies and matching archival data on the financial performance of these companies, the authors show that the positive effect of CSR activities on firm performance is contingent upon CSR–risk alignment, which creates competitive advantages, and the extent to which the firm's PMS are supportive of its strategic initiatives.

The findings suggest that to extract economic benefits from CSR activities, firms must align CSR activities with their risk preferences and rely on PMS to overcome the causal ambiguity between CSR activities and competitive advantage.

Overall, this study contributes to both the CSR–firm performance and consequences of PMS literature and holds significant practical implications.

While some work on how employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) affect behavioral outcomes has been examined, less work simultaneously investigates whether employee perceptions of internal and external CSR influence the behavioral outcomes of incumbent employees working in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to draw on social exchange theory arguments to investigate the direct and indirect effects of internal and external CSR practices on employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and intention to quit.

An empirical study was conducted among 664 employees working in the banking sector in Kuwait. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to test the suggested hypotheses.

The results reveal that both internal and external CSR activities are positively related to OCB and OCB is negatively associated with intention to quit. Results also show that distributive justice moderates the relationship between OCB and intention to quit.

These findings extend the literature on CSR and demonstrate that organizations engaged in CSR activities (internal and external) can enhance citizenship behaviors among employees and thereby increase retention rates.

This research demonstrates the importance of CSR activities in tax-free countries, particularly, in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Since employees in GCC countries are increasingly concerned about the CSR behaviors of organizations, CSR activities can allow local organizations to signal that they are good corporate citizens. Hence, CSR could be considered as a particularly critical source of competitive advantage for businesses in the region.

Little attention has been given to the effects of returnee entrepreneurs on external and internal corporate social responsibility (CSR). This study aims to investigate whether returnee entrepreneurs engage in more external or internal CSR and to further explore the contingency effects of foreign market embeddedness and local government endorsement.

This study uses 11,967 startups in China to examine the relationship between returnee entrepreneurs and external and internal CSR. The authors use an ordinary least square regression and propensity scoring matching approach to analyze the data.

The empirical results show that returnee entrepreneurs are more likely to undertake external CSR but less likely to undertake internal CSR. Foreign market embeddedness and local government endorsement have opposite moderating effects on these relationships.

This study has important implications for returnee entrepreneurs’ strategic choice between external and internal CSR and also provides theoretical support for policymakers to make effective and enforceable CSR policies.

This study discusses how returnee entrepreneurs implement external or internal CSR in China, answering the call to distinguish between external and internal CSR. Drawing on a legitimacy perspective, the authors find interesting and seemingly counterintuitive effects of returnees on external and internal CSR, which also necessitates distinguishing between these two types of CSR. In addition, the authors find different moderating roles of foreign market embeddedness and local government endorsement.

The purpose of the current study is to revisit the relationship between CSR and firm market performance. The authors examine whether a gap between the firm's internal and external CSR moderates the CSR-firm market performance relationship. Additionally, the authors propose that the moderating effect of the CSR gap on this relationship is mediated by firm visibility.

The initial sample is the Fortune 500 firms during the years 2004–2013. The final panel data sample consisted of 1,300 firms and 6,128 observations from 2004 to 2013. The authors obtained data from five different sources: Compustat North America Fundamental Annual, GMI Ratings, Execucomp, IBES and KLD Stats.

The results of this research find evidence that both internal CSR and external CSR were positively related to firm market performance, but that the relationship was stronger for firms with equal emphasis on external and internal CSR activities. Furthermore, the negative moderating effect of the CSR gap was mediated by the firm visibility.

The findings of the study advance our understanding of the CSR-FP relationship. First, the theoretical arguments and the empirical evidence highlight that the CSR-FP relationship exists and that its magnitude is contingent upon the gap between internal and external CSR investments. Second, the authors enhanced theoretical understanding of how and why CSR relates to firm performance by exploring firm visibility as a mediator. Specifically, the authors introduced firm visibility as a mechanism which explains the effect of the interaction of overall CSR with the CSR gap on firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature by examining the influence of a firm’s external CSR activities (efforts directed toward external stakeholders of the firm) and internal CSR activities (efforts directed toward employees) on employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward the environment (OCBE) via organizational pride. The authors also examine the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) between CSR and organizational pride.

A total of 324 questionnaires were collected from the hospitality industry of Pakistan.

The results of this research revealed that dimensions of CSR (external and internal) have a positive influence on organizational pride. Also, organizational pride is found as an underlying mediating mechanism between the relationship of CSR and OCBE. The results also indicated that a higher level of POS strengthens the relationship between CSR and organizational pride.

The findings are limited to only hospitality industry. Organizations can enhance employees’ sense of pride through CSR activities, which subsequently enhance employees OCBE. The findings also suggested that organizational pride contains intrinsic motivation that can help employees to enhance their OCBE.

This research suggests that organizational pride and POS are important factors which influence the relationship between CSR and OCBE. Further, it also empirically tests this model in a developing country context.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on innovation performance and examine the moderating role of social media strategic capability and big data analytics capability. Specifically, the authors explore the effects of both external and internal CSR on innovation performance.

The authors collected data from 221 senior, middle and research and development (R&D) managers of high-tech firms in China, using a questionnaire survey with a six-month interval.

The empirical results show that both external and internal CSR positively influence innovation performance. Furthermore, social media strategic capability has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between CSR and innovation performance, while big data analytics capability moderates the relationship between external CSR and innovation performance.

The data comes from high-tech firms in China, which may limit the generalizability and external validity of the findings. Future studies should replicate this study in other industries and types of organizations.

The study suggests that high-tech firms should engage in both external and internal CSR activities to promote innovation performance. Moreover, leveraging social media strategic capability and big data analytics capability can enhance innovation performance.

This study contributes to the literature on CSR outcomes by empirically exploring the effects of external and internal CSR on innovation performance, thus extending stakeholder theory. Additionally, by revealing the contingency effects of social media strategic capability and big data analytics capability, this study enriching the research on dynamic capabilities theory in the context of digital transformation.

This paper aims to investigate the differential moderating effects of two types (internal/external) of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the relationship between distributive injustice and organization-directed revenge through the mediating role of negative emotions.

This paper conducts two studies. Study 1 was a vignette study based on a sample of 501 part-time master of business administration students in China aimed at testing the moderating effects of different levels of internal (external) CSR. Study 2 involved a laboratory experiment in which 108 postgraduate students were recruited to scrutinize the contrasting moderating effects of different types of CSR (internal vs external) and test the underlying mechanisms of negative emotions. The latest facial expression analysis technology (FaceReader 5.0 software) was used to detect participants’ emotional state.

Study 1 demonstrates that internal CSR buffers the relationship between distributive injustice and organizational revenge behavior through negative emotions. However, the moderating effect of external CSR is not significant. Study 2 reveals that compared with external CSR, distributive injustice induces fewer negative emotions in the presence of internal CSR and the mediating role of negative emotions detected by the facial expression analysis software is also verified.

The authors hope that the findings of this paper can provide theoretical references for enterprise managers to enhance their employee governance, develop more effective intervention policies and formulate corresponding coping mechanisms to prevent and mitigate workplace revenge behaviors.

First, this paper enriches the literature on the relationship between injustice and organization revenge by introducing CSR as an employee governance tool. Second, this paper reconciles prior inconsistent findings about employee response to CSR in the occurrence of negative events by distinguishing between external and internal CSR and examining the differential moderating effects of two types of CSR. Such distinction is derived from the heterogeneous justice perceptions arising from different CSR actions. In addition, the authors measure participants’ negative emotions through a multi-method approach integrating the latest technology for facial expression analysis and the PANAS scale, which represents a method advancement and provides implications for measuring emotions.