Spelling out the “R” in CSR-Assessing the Impact of Radical Transparency on Gig Workers’ Motivation

Abstract

We study how transparency regarding the negative societal impacts of an employer’s activities influences the performance and effort of gig workers on an online labor platform. Building on research that transparency is central to the formation and maintenance of stakeholder trust, we explore across multiple experiments if, and how, such “radical transparency” elicits favorable employee performance and effort. We find that radical transparency is associated with increased employee trust relative to a generic corporate social responsibility (CSR) condition, which mediates a positive effect on worker performance and effort, but that overall, radical transparency does not increase worker motivation compared with CSR alone. However, we also identify conditions under which radical transparency combined with CSR elicits higher worker performance compared with CSR alone. These findings have important implications for research on corporate social responsibility, transparency, and greenwashing.