Attracting employees in developing countries through corporate social responsibility initiatives

• Date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Naoufel Mzoughi,Gilles Grolleau,Latifa Barbara
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2267
• Published date: 01 July 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Attracting employees in developing countries through

corporate social responsibility initiatives*

Latifa Barbara

1

| Gilles Grolleau

2,3

| Naoufel Mzoughi

4

1

MDI Algiers Business School, Chéraga, Algeria

2

Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Burgundy

School of Business-CEREN, Dijon, France

3

CEE-M, Montpellier SupAgro, INRA, CNRS,

Univ. Montpellier, Montpellier, France

4

INRA, UR 767 Ecodéveloppement, Avignon,

France

Correspondence

Naoufel Mzoughi, INRA, UR

767 Ecodéveloppement, Centre de Recherche

PACA, CS 40509, 84914 Avignon Cedex

9, France

Email: naoufel.mzoughi@inra.fr

Abstract

Individuals have mainly preferences for ethical jobs, and companies with bad ethical

reputation have to offer higher wages to recruit. Social responsibility concerns are

context dependent. Individuals' choices are not all predominantly oriented toward

the moral high ground. A significant proportion of respondents refuse to trade-off

ethical preferences for money.

1|INTRODUCTION

Several studies suggest that individuals exhibit other-regarding prefer-

ences and prefer working for ethical and/or responsible firms in order

to extract identity related benefits and fit the image they would like

to give to themselves (Akerlof & Kranton, 2005; Albinger & Freeman,

2000; Brekke & Nyborg, 2008; Frank, 2003; Grolleau, Mzoughi, &

Pekovic, 2012). In other words, individuals may feel better off and

experience increased self-image by choosing socially responsible firms

(Turban & Greening, 1997, 2000). In return, good (bad) levels of cor-

porate social performance can increase (decrease) the attractiveness

of companies for job seekers and lead to a competitive (dis)advantage.

Corporate social performance can signal to prospective employees

better working conditions (Turban & Greening, 1997) and allow them

to select organizations that fit their own values and/or increase their

expected self-concept through their associations with such firms

(Albinger & Freeman, 2000).

Interestingly, Frank (1996) showed that if two companies offer

similar wages, the more socially responsible one would experience an

excess supply of applicants, and, consequently, the less ethical jobs

are expected to offer a compensating wage premium. Using a reservation

pay premium survey, the author found that 88% of socially concerned

individuals would prefer a job for the American Cancer Society rather

than for Camel Cigarettes with an average compensating wage premium

of about $24.000 per year. In the same vein, a study reported in Forbes

(Dolan, 1997, quoted by Albinger & Freeman, 2000), found that “more

than half of 2,100 MBA students indicated they would accept a lower

salary to work for a socially responsible company.”

Despite their interest, such findings have received little aca-

demic attention in the particular context of developing countries.

An understanding of employees' preferences can be, however, very

useful to design relevant recruitment and retention policies in such

countries. Several western plants are (or will be) implemented in

developing countries and we argue it is useful to examine the job

applicants' behavior in such different contexts in order to avoid

exporting without questioning ethical concerns or prescr iptions

that do not fit the local contexts. Indeed, to be successful, corpo-

rate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives require an alignment

between employees' values and vision with those of the organiza-

tion (Collier & Esteban, 2007). Intuitively, this overlap can be facili-

tated by adequate recruitment. Moreover, focusing on a sample

from a developing country allows us to partially address the issue

raised by Heinrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010) about studying

human nature on the basis of samples drawn only from western,

educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. Enlarging

the diversity can definitely enrich the analysis.

Hence, we examine in a developing country context, namely

Algeria (North Africa), whether individuals prefer more or less ethical

jobs and the required wage differentials to switch to the less preferred

one. Algeria is an interesting candidate for such an investigation, given

that it has been repeatedly ranked among countries with an important

level of corruption (Jolly, 2001). Algeria is an export-based economy

*JEL classification codes: J28, J31, M14.

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2267

Strategic Change. 2019;28:255–258. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 255