Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of the paper to reveal the linkage between the customer perception of the supplier’s CSR and inter-organisational trust in a B2B context.Methodology/Approach: The paper conceptualises the customer perception of CSR activities as a latent second-order factor composed of three dimensions: CSR towards environment and community; CSR towards employees; and CSR towards customers. Three-dimensional understanding of inter-organisational trust, is applied in this paper. A quantitative study was conducted.Findings: As it was expected, the findings revealed that the customer perception of supplier’s CSR, namely CSR towards environment and community, towards employees and customers, generates inter-organisational trust that could be divided into competence trust, benevolence trust and integrity trust.Research Limitation/implication: Seeing that the paper uses a sample from a single country, it has a limitation due to its restrictive generalisability (especially having in mind that the research was done in a low-trust societal context). Moreover, the paper does not incorporate the characteristics of organisations, and the future research could elaborate on the issues of how the perceived CSR and its impacts on inter-organisational trust vary depending on organisational financial performance, market share, and so forth.Originality/Value of paper: The paper challenges the researchers and managers to move towards more sophisticated assessments concerning the way the customer perception of CSR affects inter-organisational trust in a B2B context, which might lead to improved organisational performance and sustainability.
Highlights
Despite the earlier scepticism prevailing in business about its duty to balance the organisation’s financial performance and its impact on the society and environment (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002), corporate social responsibility (CSR) has lately become of strategic importance for numerous organisations (Kiron et al, 2012)
As it was expected, the findings revealed that the customer perception of supplier’s CSR, namely CSR towards environment and community, towards employees and customers, generates inter-organisational trust that could be divided into competence trust, benevolence trust and integrity trust
The paper aimed at exploring the relationship between the customer perception of CSR and their inter-organisational trust in suppliers in the B2B context
Summary
Despite the earlier scepticism prevailing in business about its duty to balance the organisation’s financial performance and its impact on the society and environment (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002), corporate social responsibility (CSR) has lately become of strategic importance for numerous organisations (Kiron et al, 2012). The business case for CSR relies on the notion that CSR elicits organisation-favouring responses from the stakeholders. It seems that positive responses are evident in the business world, as the survey of 2,874 managers and executives from 113 countries revealed that about 31% of organisations are benefitting from sustainable business practices (Kiron et al, 2012). To date, studies about the returns from CSR in the B2C sector are prevailing (Öberseder et al, 2014; Kim, 2019), the research addressing CSR in a B2B environment is scarce (Kubenka and Myskova, 2009; Homburg, Stierl and Bornemann, 2013; McKnight et al, 2017)
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