Development of a Scale on Individual Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility Constructs: Based on Microfoundation Theory

Abstract

The authors develop a scale to measure individual perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) constructs based on microfoundation theory. To develop the microfoundation based CSR scale, the research methodology involved two stages (qualitative research followed by quantitative research). In qualitative research, Focused Group Discussion (FGD) was conducted to extract items for survey questionnaire development. Subsequently, quantitative analysis was carried out. The data were subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The study sample comprised of 407 management students of Indian business schools who enrolled in CSR and sustainability courses. The developed scale comprised of four variables namely Customer Product Preference (CPP), Customer Firm Preference (CFP), Investor Preference (IP) and Employability Preference (EP). The results were arrived at by undertaking Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and CFA. The scale developed and extended the theoretic conversation on CSR from the organizational level discussion to an individual level discussion based on microfoundation theory. This is one of the first studies to develop a scale on individual perspectives on CSR constructs based on micro-foundation theory.

Explicating micro foundations of corporate social responsibility: a moderated-mediation study of customer, investor and employee roles

“…Individuals’ ideas and opinions have mattered in management literature, specifically in the domain of leadership (Bryman, 1992), whistleblowing (Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005), change management (Kavanagh and Ashkanasy, 2006), technology (Verma and Sekhar Bhattacharyya, 2016) and innovation (Vaccaro et al , 2012). However, the concept and practice of CSR had rarely been looked into at an individual level (Hafenbrädl and Waeger, 2017; Bhattacharyya et al , 2019). Hafenbrädl and Waeger (2017) broached this debate from a micro foundations approach.…”

“…Hafenbrädl and Waeger (2017) broached this debate from a micro foundations approach. Generally, firm-individual interaction was captured in the past in a wide range of studies, which were fragmented in nature (Bhattacharyya et al , 2019). One could essentially argue and categorize these firm-individual interactions in the context of CSR in five major categories, with individuals as: Customers and consumers of a firm’s products and services (Podnar and Golob, 2007; Martínez and del Bosque, 2013).…”

“…During earlier times, mostly and generally the agenda of firm-individual interactions were set by the firm, with individuals as mere recipients of firm managers’ decisions and actions (Matten and Moon, 2008; Waddock, 2004). Presently, however, in a micro foundation based thinking, an individual was expected to set the interaction agenda (Bhattacharyya et al , 2019; Hafenbrädl and Waeger, 2017).…”

“…The authors, thus, in this study, flipped the dialogue from an “inside out” (from organization to environment) to an “outside-in perspective” (from the environment to the organization) perspective. Here the environment has been conceptualized to be constituted of individual societal members as customers, investors and prospective employees consistent with the literature (Bhattacharyya et al , 2019; Hafenbrädl and Waeger, 2017). It has been argued that increase in the future, the individual orientation of CSR would compel organizations to operate from the civil stage as espoused by Zadek (2004).…”

“…The theoretical work developed surrounding this has been christened as micro foundations theory (Foss, 2011). The general discussion on CSR has been primarily about firms and stakeholders (Bridoux and Stoelhorst, 2014), but again the notion of a micro foundation’s based approach in CSR required attention (Foss, 2011; Bhattacharyya et al , 2019). Hafenbrädl and Waeger (2017) had carried out one of the first work on micro foundations based approach in CSR.…”