Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Outcomes: A Moderated Mediation Model of Organizational Identification and Moral Identity.

Wei Wang,Ying Fu,James H Moore,Zhongming Wang,Huiqing Qiu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01906

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research is not new, but its importance to today’s socially conscious market environment is even more evident in recent years. This study moves beyond CSR as simply the socially responsible actions and policies of organizations and focuses on the complex psychology of CSR as it relates to individuals within the organization. Given CSR can positively affect both the individuals within the organization and the organization itself, better understanding and leveraging the mechanisms and conditions of CSR that facilitate desired employee outcomes is crucial for organizational performance. However, scholars lack consensus in determining a theoretical framework for understanding how and under what conditions CSR will make an impact on employees and ultimately organizational performance. This study adds clarity by exploring the effect of perceived CSR on a more comprehensive set of employees’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions (i.e., turnover intention, in-role job performance, and helping behavior) via the mediating mechanism of organizational identification and the moderating condition of moral identity. Hypotheses were derived using social identity theory. Results were based on data obtained from 340 Chinese manufacturing employee-supervisor dyads. This study found that employees’ perceived CSR had an indirect relationship via organizational identification with each of the variables: (1) turnover intention, (2) in-role job performance, and (3) helping behavior. Specifically, the negative relationship between perceived CSR and turnover intention was stronger when employees had higher moral identity and the positive relationship between perceived CSR and in-role job performance and helping behavior was amplified by moral identity. Our findings show how the mediating mechanism of organizational identity and the moderating condition of moral identity work together to improve organizational effectiveness. The findings reveal several ways in which organizations can strategically focus their CSR and human resource efforts, such as applying this model and focusing on moral identity as a key indicator when evaluating employees.

Highlights

In today’s socially conscious market environment, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly important topic among organizations (Serenko and Bontis, 2009; Wagner et al, 2009; Du et al, 2010) and has become an important area of study for scholars in strategy and management (Aguinis, 2011; Rupp et al, 2011)
This study moves beyond simple definitions of Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as just the actions and policies of organizations and focuses on the complex psychology of CSR as it relates to individuals within the organization, for such actions and policies are implemented and influenced by the individuals of the organizations
Rupp et al (2013) already tested the moderating role of moral identity between CSR and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), but this study aim to provide a more specific and inclusive model that reveals the mechanism between CSR and employee outcomes, in which moral identity has its moderating effect on those employee outcomes through organizational identification

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In today’s socially conscious market environment, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly important topic among organizations (Serenko and Bontis, 2009; Wagner et al, 2009; Du et al, 2010) and has become an important area of study for scholars in strategy and management (Aguinis, 2011; Rupp et al, 2011). Given that employees’ positive perceptions of CSR initiatives promote their organization identification, the favorable perceptions possessed by employees should further facilitate their responses associated with organizational identification In line with this view, this study uses a social identity perspective and proposes that the relationship between perceived CSR and employee outcomes is mediated by organizational identification. This study proposes the moderating role of moral identity to be as follows: Hypothesis 3: Moral identity will moderate the indirect effect of perceived CSR on turnover intention (H3a), inrole job performance (H3b), and helping behavior (H3c) through organizational identification, and the effect will be stronger when moral identity is high than when it is low Based on these hypotheses, we propose a new moderated mediation model that outlines the context where the effects of CSR initiatives on employee outcomes are likely to be influenced by their individual differences related to morality.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS

Limitations and Future

ETHICS STATEMENT