The stakeholder management theory of CSR

Andrea Pérez,Ignacio Rodríguez Del Bosque

doi:10.1108/ijbm-04-2015-0052

Abstract

Purpose– Based on the principles of the stakeholder management theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore customers’ multidimensional perceptions of both banking companies and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientations of these companies. The paper also explores how these multidimensional perceptions affect customer identification and satisfaction towards banking companies.Design/methodology/approach– A structural equation model is tested using information collected from 1,124 banking service customers.Findings– The findings demonstrate that customers’ perceptions of customer-related CSR and broad legal and ethical issues have significant positive impact on both customer identification and satisfaction with banking companies. Perceptions of shareholder-related CSR also significantly boost customer satisfaction. In contrast, perceptions of employee- and community-related CSR do not have a profound effect on customer identification or satisfaction. These findings also confirm the importance of customer identification with the company as a key mediator in their satisfaction responses to the multidimensional perceptions of the companies’ CSR orientations.Originality/value– The contribution of the paper is based on the exploration of a multidimensional approach, relying on the principles of the stakeholder management theory to study customer responses and perceptions of the CSR orientations of banking companies. Previous scholars have reported mixed findings while exploring customer responses to their perceptions of companies’ CSR orientations. However, they frequently considered customer CSR perceptions either as one-dimensional or a reflective second-order construct, thus ignoring the possibility of multidimensional CSR perceptions having multiple effects on customer responses such as identification and satisfaction.

Highlights

After the latest global crisis of 2007–2008, companies seem to have experienced a loss of credibility with capital and consumer markets in terms of their effectiveness
H2a and H5aa are supported by the findings whereas H1a, H3ac and H4a are not supported. It seems that customer satisfaction is significantly and positively influenced by customer perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientated to shareholders (β=0.08, p
The authors show that an interesting justification for the inconclusive nature of these previous findings derives from the conceptualization of CSR perceptions either as a onedimensional or a second-order reflective construct in most studies

Summary

Introduction

After the latest global crisis of 2007–2008, companies seem to have experienced a loss of credibility with capital and consumer markets in terms of their effectiveness. Managers in most industries face the challenge of improving their companies’ image and regaining trust by developing attractive organizational identities (Pérez and Rodríguez del Bosque, 2014). For this purpose, companies have recently focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a way of demonstrating their corporate ethicality and moral standards. As a consequence of this increase in CSR awareness, scholars have started to explore the benefits and consequences of CSR investment for companies. Scholars have revealed an increased interest in the topic over time, with the number of papers published in the area greatly accelerating since the 1970s (Lev et al, 2010; Aguinis and Glavas, 2012). Previous research has demonstrated that some of the benefits of CSR include improvement in employee motivation and commitment, the generation of competitive advantage, better reputation and improved brand image (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006)

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