Taking a hit to save the world? Employee participation in a corporate social initiative

• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Jasjit Singh,Christiane Bode
• Date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2762

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Taking a hit to save the world? Employee

participation in a corporate social initiative

Christiane Bode

1

| Jasjit Singh

2

1

Department of Management and Technology,

Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

2

Strategy Department, INSEAD, Singapore

Correspondence

Christiane Bode, Bocconi University, Via

Roentgen 1, 20136 Milan, Italy.

Email: christiane.bode@unibocconi.it

Research Summary: Companies often justify their corpo-

rate social initiatives by citing talent management benefits.

We examine the extent of, and the reasons for, employee

interest in such an initiative in a global management consult-

ing firm. We find a large fraction of employees to be inter-

ested in participation in the initiative even when

participation requires a personal sacrifice in the form of a

salary cut. However, this interest is driven not just by proso-

cial motivation: Expectations regarding private benefits,

such as improved career prospects from new skills acquired,

also play a role. Considerations of social impact and private

benefits are equally salient when no salary cut is required,

but private considerations become more prominent when

participating employees are asked to accept a salary cut.

Managerial Summary: Many companies are moving from

stand-alone corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects to

social initiatives integrated into strategy. Providing

employees with the opportunity to participate in such initia-

tives is said to help attract, motivate and retain talent. In this

study, carried out in collaboration with a management con-

sulting firm, we examine how much and why employees

value participation in a corporate social initiative. Based on

interviews and survey data, we find that employees are not

only interested in, but often even willing to accept, a tempo-

rary salary cut for the opportunity. However, altruistic moti-

vation is not the only driver of this interest: Employees also

expect and value the possibility that the experience would

lead to private benefits, such as developing skills likely to

enhance their career prospects.

KEYWORDS

careers, corporate social responsibility (CSR), employee

engagement, management consulting, strategic human

capital

Received: 30 March 2015 Revised: 4 September 2017 Accepted: 17 September 2017 Published on: 5 February 2018

DOI: 10.1002/smj.2762

Strat Mgmt J. 2018;39:1003–1030. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smj Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1003

1|INTRODUCTION

In response to pressures from various stakeholders, firms are becoming increasingly involved

in helping address major societal issues (Henisz, Dorobantu, & Nartey, 2014; Margolis &

Walsh, 2003). As many as 95% of the world’s largest firms not only engage in some form of

prosocial activity, but also provide detailed reporting on these activities (KPMG, 2011).

Managers and academics alike have argued that corporate social engagement can often go

hand-in-hand with commercial performance (Eccles, Ioannou, & Serafeim, 2014). Rather than

being marginal, societal considerations are therefore becoming an integral part of business strat-

egy, manifested in terms such as stakeholder strategy,base-of-the-pyramid strategy,social

innovation,creating shared value,andstrategic CSR [corporate social responsibility] (Crane,

Palazzo, Spence, & Matten, 2014; Freeman, 2010; Porter & Kramer, 2011; Prahalad, 2009).

The debate on the role of business in society has progressed beyond whether firms should

engage in societal issues to how they can best engage. Our study contributes to the literature

on how a corporate social initiative can create value from a human capital management per-

spective. Specifically, we explore employee interest in, and possible willingness to even accept

a salary cut for, participating in a corporate initiative that explicitly aims to pursue societal

goals. While the literature on corporate social engagement focuses almost exclusively on the

prosocial motivation of employees (Bode, Singh, & Rogan, 2015; Burbano, 2016; Carnahan,

Kryscynski, & Olson, 2017; Flammer & Luo, 2017; Glavas & Godwin, 2013; Grant, 2007),

our findings indicate that employees also expect and value private benefits associated with their

participation, such as career advancement through knowledge and skills they acquire through

the experience.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of corporate initiatives providing employees with an

opportunity to be involved in projects with explicit social impact goals, often in partnership with

nonprofit organizations (Gatignon, 2015; Marquis & Moss Kanter, 2009; Murray, 2016). For exam-

ple, 8,000 employees participated in diverse projects in one such cross-sectoral initiative, which

involved leading companies like Google, IBM, Intel, John Deere, JP Morgan Chase, Medtronic,

Merck, and PWC (Pyxera, 2014). In the past, employee participation in such projects was typically

short—ranging from a few hours to a few days a year. But, increasingly, corporate programs allow

longer-term involvement, letting employees focus on social impact work for weeks or even months

at a time. Our research context is one such corporate social initiative.

Regardless of the length or intensity of their social initiatives, companies typically expect

the participating employees to derive an enhanced sense of fulfillment and meaning from their

engagement, and a perceived “fit”between their own values and the values of the organization

(Chatman, 1991;Greguras, Diefendorff, Carpenter, & Treter, 2014;Wilson, 2000). Past empiri-

cal research has demonstrated that a firm’s corporate social engagement can indeed facilitate

recruitment (Jones, Willness, & Madey, 2014), and improve employee identification (Glavas &

Godwin, 2013) and retention (Bode et al., 2015; Carnahan et al., 2017). From a strategic human

capital point of view, participating in corporate social initiatives might thus provide intangible

rewards for employees, such as personal meaning (Glavas & Kelley, 2014). These types of ini-

tiatives are therefore increasingly seen as an important lever for talent management, especially

in human capital-intensive settings like professional service firms—where reliance exclusively

on financial rewards has its limits (Anand, Gardner, & Morris, 2007; Chatain & Meyer-

Doyle, 2017).

1004 BODE AND SINGH