Corporate Social Responsibilities, Psychological Contracts and Employee Turnover Intention of SMEs in China

Zhang Hui

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.754183

Abstract

As an important organizational strategy and action that affects employee perception and attitude, corporate social responsibility is essential for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to reduce turnover rate and achieve sustainable growth. This paper integrates social identity theory and social exchange theory to construct an external reputation mechanism and internal trust mechanism to explore the influence mechanism of corporate social responsibility on employee turnover intention and the intermediate transmission mechanism of psychological contract. The research results show that corporate social responsibility has a significant negative impact on employee turnover intention. Compared with external corporate social responsibility, internal corporate social responsibility has a stronger negative impact on employee turnover intention; corporate social responsibility has a significant negative impact on employee transactional psychological contract, while corporate social responsibility has a significant positive impact on employee relational psychological contracts; transactional psychological contract has a significant positive effect on employee turnover intention, while relational psychological contract has a significant negative effect on employee turnover intention; psychological contract has a significant and complete mediating effect on the relationship between external corporate social responsibility and employee turnover intention, and the psychological contract plays a significant part of the intermediary role between the internal corporate social responsibility and the employee turnover intention. The conclusions enriches the complex relationship between corporate social responsibility and employee turnover intentions, and provides a reference for SMEs to effectively perform internal and external social responsibilities and reduce employee turnover rates.

Highlights

As an important part of the socialist market economy, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important force to promote the economic and social development of China (Du et al, 2020)
Regression analysis results show that external corporate social responsibility has a significant negative impact on employee transactional psychological contracts (β = −0.675, p < 0.001), that is, the more employees perceive the company’s performance of external social responsibilities, the more likely it is to form transactional psychological contracts, so H3 passes the test
The regression analysis results show that transactional psychological contract has a complete mediating effect between the external corporate social responsibility and the employee turnover intention, so the hypothesis H9a passes the test

Summary

INTRODUCTION

As an important part of the socialist market economy, SMEs are an important force to promote the economic and social development of China (Du et al, 2020). This type of information can enhance employees’ positive evaluation of corporate reputation and sense of social identity (Elakremi et al, 2018), enhance employees’ selfworth and satisfy their psychological needs such as a sense of belonging (DeRoeck et al, 2014), thereby forming a relational psychological contract On this basis, employees are more willing to work for companies with a sense of social responsibility (Rupp and Mallory, 2015), actively consider the long-term interests of the company, adopt more attitudes or behaviors that are conducive to the development of the company, and reduce their turnover intention (Behroozz et al, 2018).

ICSR 2 ECSR 3 TPC 4 RPC 5 ETI 6 Gender 7 Age 8 Education 9 Year Average SD

Findings

Conclusion