“It’s Like Hating Puppies!” Employee Disengagement and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been linked with numerous organizational advantages, including recruitment, retention, productivity, and morale, which relate specifically to employees. However, despite specific benefits of CSR relating to employees and their importance as a stakeholder group, it is noteworthy that a lack of attention has been paid to the individual level of analysis with CSR primarily being studied at the organizational level. Both research and practice of CSR have largely treated the individual organization as a "black box," failing to account for individual differences amongst employees and the resulting variations in antecedents to CSR engagement or disengagement. This is further exacerbated by the tendency in stakeholder theory to homogenize priorities within a single stakeholder group. In response, utilizing case study data drawn from three multinational tourism and hospitality organizations, combined with extensive interview data collected from CSR leaders, industry professionals, engaged, and disengaged employees, this exploratory research produces a finer-grained understanding of employees as a stakeholder group, identifying a number of opportunities and barriers for individual employee engagement in CSR interventions. This research proposes that employees are situated along a spectrum of engagement from actively engaged to actively disengaged. While there are some common drivers of engagement across the entire spectrum of employees, differences also exist depending on the degree to which employees, rather than senior management, support corporate responsibility within their organizations. Key antecedents to CSR engagement that vary depending on employees' existing level of broader engagement include organizational culture, CSR intervention design, employee CSR perceptions, and the observed benefits of participation.

The Dark Side of Stakeholder Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility: Tensions and Micro‐level Undesirable Outcomes

“…The thin boundaries marking traditional stakeholder groups seem increasingly porous, such that we need an individual-oriented, wide-ranging approach to understanding stakeholders and their reactions (Greenwood and Freeman 2011;Hejjas et al 2018). For example, a consumer might react to a specific CSR initiative in the marketplace with bad word of mouth or reduced purchasing, or else engage in other behaviors such as avoiding employment with the organization (Greening and Turban 2000).…”

Different Drivers: Exploring Employee Involvement in Corporate Philanthropy

“…CP, including corporate fundraising and corporate volunteering, is often studied as one form of the much broader concept of CSR (as, for example, in Hejjas et al 2018). It is typically defined as the voluntary private contribution of resources in the form of money, time and/or expertise by corporations to benefit the public good (Gautier and Pache 2015;Schuyt et al 2015).…”

Reputation stability vs anti-crisis sustainability: under what circumstances will innovations, media activities and CSR be in higher demand?

“…Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a trend of modern management. The popularity of CSR practices increases as well as their complication and bureaucratization, which naturally leads to an increase in the amount of research in this scientific field (Hejjas et al, 2018;Gangi et al, 2018;Vo et al, 2017;Burianová & Paulík, 2014). CSR, as a necessary and indispensable condition for the formation and maintenance of reputation, and therefore as a component of the reputation management system, is explained in studies (Caruana et al, 2018;Duhé, 2009;Vallaster, 2017).…”