The world’s people and their leaders face a complex and multifaceted set of ‘eco-social questions’. As the productivity of humanity increases, the negative external environmental effects of ...production and consumption patterns become increasingly problematic and threaten the human welfare. As the regulating power of national and international governments is limited, this challenge has generated a strong interest in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of companies. Firms find it increasingly important to meet the expectations of stakeholders with respect to the company’s contribution to profit, planet, and people. The primary aim of this book is to introduce the reader to the impacts and drivers of CSR, with a special focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Research into the social and environmental impacts of CSR is rare. This is a serious gap because if CSR were to fail to have favourable social and environmental impacts on society, the whole concept may become redundant. If societal impacts of CSR are substantial, it is important to know the drivers of CSR. This book considers (1) factors internal to the company, (2) the competitive environment of the company, (3) institutions external to the company, and (4) how the impacts of institutions are mediated or moderated by company internal factors. This book will fill this gap by estimating various types of models that integrate external and internal factors driving CSR and its impacts on environment, innovation, and reputation, making it a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and students in the fields of business management and CSR.
Based on persuasion knowledge theory, attribution theory, and a qualitative investigation of authenticity, this study investigates employees' CSR authenticity evaluation in four CSR domains ...(customer-, employee-, environment-, and philanthropy-oriented). Four antecedents of employees' CSR authenticity evaluation are examined: the evaluation of CSR advertising, the perceived fit between corporate culture and CSR engagement and two perceived CSR motives. Additionally, employees' involvement in CSR as an individual difference variable is analyzed. Results are reported from a study with the employees (n = 432) of a large European energy provider. Findings reveal that the evaluation of the CSR advertising and the perceived corporate culture fit have a higher impact on employees' CSR authenticity evaluation than do the perceived CSR motives. While CSR authenticity in the customer-, employee- and environment-oriented CSR domain are mainly influenced by perceived corporate culture fit, CSR authenticity in the philanthropy-oriented CSR domain is mainly affected by the evaluation of CSR advertising.
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•Corporate culture fit and ad evaluation are vital for employees' CSR authenticity evaluation.•Perceived company motives are less relevant.•Involvement in CSR moderates these relationships.•Four CSR domains (customer, employee, environment, philanthropy) are investigated.•Real-world dataset was gathered from a large European energy provider.
In spite of accruing concerted scholarly and managerial interest since the 1950s in corporate social responsibility (CSR), its implementation is still a growing topic as most of it remains ...academically unexplored. As CSR continues to establish a stronger foothold in organizational strategies, understanding its implementation is needed for both academia and industry. In an attempt to respond to this need, we carry out a systematic review of 122 empirical studies on CSR implementation to provide a status quo of the literature and inform future scholars. We develop a research agenda in the form of an integrated framework of CSR implementation that pronounces its multi-dimensional and multi-level nature and provides a snapshot of the current literature status of CSR implementation. Future research avenues relating to multi-level studies, theoretically supported research models, developing economy settings, and more are recommended. Practitioners can also benefit through utilizing the holistic framework to attain a bird’s eye view and proactively formulate and implement CSR strategies that can be facilitated by collaborations with CSR scholars and experts.
Researchers and companies are paying increasing attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and the reaction to them by consumers. Despite such corporate efforts and an expanding ...literature exploring consumers' response to CSR, it remains unclear how consumers perceive CSR and which "Gestalt" consumers have in mind when considering CSR. Academics and managers lack a tool for measuring consumers' perceptions of CSR (CPCSR). This research explores CPCSR and develops a measurement model. Based on qualitative data from interviews with managers and consumers, the authors develop a conceptualization of CPCSR. Subsequently, model testing and validating occurs on three large quantitative data sets. The conceptualization and the measurement scale can assist companies to assess CPCSR relative to their performance. They also enable managers in identifying shortcomings in CSR engagement and/or communication. Finally, the paper discusses implications for marketing practice and future research.
Drawing on signaling and social identity theories, we analyze how liking of the company's CSR advertisements, message credibility, and cause-company fit influence employees' evaluation of their ...organization's CSR engagement and how this relates to employees' job satisfaction, organizational pride, and word-of-mouth about CSR. CSR is analyzed in four different domains: customer-oriented, employee-oriented, environment-oriented, and philanthropy-oriented CSR. Results of a study with the employees (n = 432) of a large European energy provider reveal that the cause-company fit of CSR engagement has the highest impact on evaluation of the CSR engagement in all CSR domains. Message credibility is important for the evaluation of CSR in the customer-oriented, environment-oriented, and philanthropy-oriented domains, while, noticeably, ad liking only shows an impact in the employee-oriented domain. CSR evaluation influences job satisfaction, organizational pride, and word-of-mouth in all four CSR domains, with some domain-related differences. Implications for CSR advertising, directions for future research and limitations are discussed.
•Firms’ adoption of CSR initiatives positively affected organizational CSR climate.•Organizational CSR climate shaped employees’ CSR-induced intrinsic attribution.•CSR-induced attributions had ...influences on organizational commitment.•CSR climate and CSR-induced intrinsic attribution had serial mediation effects.
Using a multilevel cognitive approach, this study elaborates how firms’ adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influences employees’ organizational commitment. This study integrates both strategic human resource management (SHRM) and attribution theory to explain the cognitive process by which objective CSR initiatives work as social cues to initially shape a firm’s organizational CSR climate, which then affects individuals’ explanations of the motives behind CSR initiatives (i.e., CSR-induced attributions). Finally, employees’ CSR-induced attributions will influence employees’ organizational commitment. Data were drawn from survey and archival data and were collected in two waves. A multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) analysis of data collected from 474 employees of 25 firms supported most of our hypotheses. The results revealed that organizational CSR climate and employees’ CSR-induced intrinsic attribution could serially mediate the relationship between firms’ CSR adoption and employees’ organizational commitment. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.
While practice and research show that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication on social media can have positive effects on corporate reputation, brand attitude and purchase intention, ...consumer engagement with CSR posts has been underwhelming. Companies are not successfully tapping into the inherent potential of social media communication. This theoretical review integrates extant CSR and social media communication research to contribute to a better understanding of the processes involved in CSR effectiveness on social media. We develop a theoretical model of CSR social media communication, that takes into account its specific characteristics-sensitivity to peer influences through norm activation, interactivity, viral CSR message propagation through sharing, CSR empowerment, and humane-oriented appeals in CSR posts. The hypothesized framework connects CSR and social media-specific drivers with two social media CSR communication outcomes: i) CSR effectiveness in terms of CSR associations, corporate/brand attitude and purchase behavior, and ii) social media performance indicators related to propagation on the network-social media endorsement and opposition (liking, positive and negative commenting, and sharing of the CSR post). The model explains the resulting relationships through mediation processes based on CSR credibility and motive attribution, psychological consumer empowerment, moral emotions, as well as social identity and norm activation. Self-construal and community identification are identified as consumer-based contingency factors of these effects. The review framework provides an extended process-oriented agenda for future studies. The paper recommends multi-brand experimental field studies in a real-life social media setting and highlights the requirement of industry collaboration. The expected findings will help companies to choose relevant CSR initiatives, design effective CSR posts, boost viral propagation on the network, and counter and avoid social media opposition through negative feedback.
Can mandated adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) improve firm value? Most CSR adoption is purely voluntary. However, governments regularly encourage CSR adoption with soft regulations ...that vary from simply endorsing and symbolically supporting CSR to requiring the adoption of specific practices. Governments have resisted fully mandating CSR because there is some concern universally that mandated CSR may reduce firm value. There is, however, no empirical clarity as to whether mandated CSR impedes or improves firm value. We address this uncertainty by analyzing the effects of the mandated adoption of CSR that the government of India legislated in 2014. Drawing on a sample of 1,526 publicly traded firms and deploying a combinative analytical framework comprising an event study, regression discontinuity design, and a difference-in-differences technique, we conclude that India’s CSR mandate did, in fact, increase value for all firms bound by the mandate. This value-enhancing effect was greater for foreign firms relative to domestic firms. Our results refute previous research showing that India’s CSR mandate diminished firm value.
While the idea and terminology of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) stem from the 1950s and companies have been practicing CSR and advertising their engagement for some time, the advertising ...literature has had a late start to this topic. More recently, CSR has become prominent in both advertising practice and research. With a specific focus on the role of the International Journal of Advertising (IJA), this paper aims to provide a historical perspective of how CSR advertising has been covered in the past and which topics are the ones being most intensively discussed at present. Our review uses bibliometric co-citation analysis with CiteSpace to identify the most relevant topics in CSR advertising research and IJA's contribution to these topics. Within the CSR advertising topics identified, we highlight under-researched themes, as well as upcoming trends to suggest future avenues for the further development of CSR advertising research.
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