Consistency Matters! How and When Does Corporate Social Responsibility Affect Employees’ Organizational Identification?

• Author: Assâad El Akremi,Kenneth De Roeck,Valérie Swaen
• Date: 01 November 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12216
• Published date: 01 November 2016

Consistency Matters! How and When Does Corporate

Social Responsibility Affect Employees’

Organizational Identification?

Kenneth De Roeck

a,b

, Ass^aad El Akremi

c

and

Valerie Swaen

a,d

a

I

ESEG School of Management (LEM-CNRS UMR 9221;

b

University of Vermont, Grossman School

of Business;

c

Universite de Toulouse 1 Capitole;

d

Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain School of

Management

ABSTRACT Despite the increasing attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the

management literature, little is known about the mechanisms and boundary conditions

explaining employees’ responses to CSR. Drawing on social identity and cue consistency theory,

we develop a mediated moderation model that explains how and under which conditions

perceived CSR affects employees’ organizational identification. We test the model by carrying

out a three-wave longitudinal study on employees of an international utility company. The

findings indicate that perceived CSR interacts with overall justice to predict organizational

identification through the successive mediation of perceived external prestige and organizational

pride. The study clarifies and advances some of the theoretical foundations surrounding the

micro-level approach of CSR and has key implications for management research and practice.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, organizational identification, organizational pride,

overall justice, perceived external prestige

INTRODUCTION

In the face of global challenges (e.g., resource depletion, global climate change) and

recent corporate scandals (e.g., Volkswagen car emissions, the Rana Plaza collapse) the

integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a major aspect of firm-level strat-

egy and daily operations has become an essential component for bringing business and

society back together (Porter and Kramer, 2011). Concurrently CSR research has

grown exponentially to become a mainstream topic of investigation for management

scholars (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012). To date, most research has been conducted at the

Address for reprints: Kenneth De Roeck, School of Business, University of Vermont 55 Colchester Ave.,

Kalkin Hall, Burlington, VT 05405, USA (kderoec@bsad.uvm.edu).

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 53:7 November 2016

doi: 10.1111/joms.12216

institutional and organizational levels of analysis and mainly considers the financial con-

sequences for organization to adopt a more socially responsible business model (Aguinis

and Glavas, 2012; Orlitzky et al., 2003). Furthermore, a burgeoning management litera-

ture has emphasized the importance of investigating the role of CSR as a strategic tool

to improve the relationships between business organizations and their stakeholders

(Flammer and Luo, 2016; Habel et al., 2016; Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006). Hence,

CSR represents a form of relational competitive dynamics that considers multiple stake-

holders with heterogeneous motives in developing competitive initiatives and that strives

to achieve win-win relationships with them (Bosse and Coughlan, 2016; Bridoux and

Stoelhorst, 2014; Chen and Miller, 2015).

In line with this perspective, micro-level research analysing employees’ psychological, atti-

tudinal, and behavioural responses to perceived CSR has recently expanded within CSR lit-

erature (Morgeson et al., 2013; Rupp and Mallory, 2015). Perceived CSR reflects an

employee’s perception of the impact of his/her organization’s discretionary actions intended

to improve the well-being of external stakeholders (including the natural environment),

which from an employee-centric approach to CSR, corresponds to a form of third-party

justice (Glavas and Godwin, 2013; Rupp et al., 2013; Vlachos et al., 2014).

Reviews and conceptual endeavours analysing the micro- (employee-) level conse-

quences of CSR (Bauman and Skitka, 2012; Glavas and Godwin, 2013; Gond et al.,

2010; Rupp and Mallory, 2015) as well as empirical studies (e.g., Brammer et al., 2007;

Carmeli et al., 2007; De Roeck et al., 2014; Jones, 2010; Kim et al., 2010; Peterson,

2004; Turker, 2009) indicate that social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978) is one of the most

influential frameworks to explain and predict employees’ responses to CSR. Empirical

studies have highlighted the key role of organizational identification, defined as a ‘per-

ception of oneness with or belongingness to an organization, where the individual

defines him or herself in terms of the organization(s) in which he or she is a member’

(Mael and Ashforth, 1992, p. 104), in mediating the impact of some specific CSR prac-

tices on employees’ job satisfaction (De Roeck et al., 2014), commitment (Kim et al.,

2010), job performance (Carmeli et al., 2007), intention to stay, and organizational citi-

zenship behaviours (Jones, 2010).

However, despite the presumed association of perceived CSR with organizational

identification, a critical review of this literature also indicates that the precise nature of

this relationship (i.e., the mediating, moderating, and temporal mechanisms) is not yet

fully understood (Bauman and Skitka, 2012; Glavas and Godwin, 2013). Jones (2010)

argues that organizational pride can mediate the relationship between employees’ atti-

tudes toward volunteering programmes and their organizational identification, while

Kim et al. (2010) suggest that employees’ perceptions of their organizational involve-

ment in the community relates to the perceived external prestige of their organization,

which in turns correlates with their level of organizational identification. De Roeck et al.

(2014) highlight the mediating role of employees’ perceptions of overall justice in the

relationship between their perceptions of CSR initiatives directed at customers and their

level of organizational identification.

Taken together, these studies suggest that perceived CSR can highlight attractive and

distinctive identity attributes of a firm (e.g., its level of justice and prestige) in the eyes of

employees, these then foster their pride of membership and willingness to identify with

1142 K. De Roeck et al.

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies