Illuminating the Signals Job Seekers Receive from an Employer's Community Involvement and Environmental Sustainability Practices: Insights into Why Most Job Seekers Are Attracted, Others Are Indifferent, and a Few Are Repelled

Implementing Sustainable Development Concept: A Typology of Family Firms in Poland

For companies, sustainable development generally represents a long-term business orientation towards social, economic and environmental well-being. The concept has gained momentum among researchers partly due to the necessity of finding a modern approach to business development that does not deprive the next generation of the opportunity to meet its own needs. Based on a sample of 333 Polish family firms, three groups of businesses were isolated (via k-means clustering) on the basis of low, medium and high deployment of pro-sustainability initiatives. This paper aims to investigate whether family firms demonstrating divergent levels of sustainable development express between-group differences. Measuring diversity using ANOVA with post hoc testing produced results associating business growth and higher levels of family involvement (e.g., via increased participation of family members from different generations in firm management) with the increased absorption of sustainable solutions and actions. These findings support notions from social identity theory suggesting that groups significantly shape the individual identities of their members. This means that family members inclined to implement sustainable development initiatives are likely to stimulate each other to introduce particular solutions and actions in praxis.

Can Corporate Social Responsibility Promote Employees' Taking Charge? The Mediating Role of Thriving at Work and the Moderating Role of Task Significance

There is growing evidence to suggest that employees’ perceptions of their employer’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) positively influences their attitude and behavior. An increasing number of scholars have called for further explorations of the microfoundations of CSR. To that end, this study takes the conservation of resources perspective to examine relationships and the perception of CSR by employees, considering areas such as thriving at work, task significance, and employees taking charge. By analyzing 444 questionnaires completed by employees in China and using the conditional process analysis to test a hypothesis, results showed that the association between employees’ CSR perception and taking charge is significantly and positively correlated, with thriving at work mediating the connection. We also found that task significance negatively moderates the mediating effect between CSR and taking charge, such that the lower the level of task significance of a job, the more positive the effect of CSR on taking charge via thriving at work. These findings have theoretical implications for micro-level CSR research and managerial implications for entrepreneurs.

Understanding employee responses to COVID-19: a behavioral corporate social responsibility perspective

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to critically synthesize and integrate conceptual and empirical research on the behavioral perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and explain why it is useful and necessary, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors explain why CSR can result in both positive and negative outcomes and provide future research directions and recommendations for practice and policymaking.

Design/methodology/approach

This study focuses on critical literature review and synthesis.

Findings

CSR policies in response to COVID-19 are created by organizations but are implemented by individual employees. The way employees perceive and react to CSR actions are key determinants of CSR’s implementation and success. CSR can be embedded within or peripheral to a firm’s core functioning. While embedded CSR is linked to several positive outcomes if correctly implemented together with employees, peripheral CSR is linked to “the dark side” of CSR and can result in negative employee outcomes.

Practical implications

Using the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors detail types of CSR actions that governments and organizations can implement and their relative effectiveness; why “one size fits all” top-down CSR does not work; how firms can use human resource management practices to re-engage employees through finding meaning in work; and the “dark side” of CSR.

Social implications

Using the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors detail types of CSR actions that governments and organizations can implement and their relative effectiveness; why “one size fits all” top-down CSR does not work; how firms can use human resource management practices to re-engage employees through finding meaning in work; and the “dark side” of CSR.

Originality/value

CSR research has focused mostly on why and when firms choose to engage in CSR. A behavioral perspective on CSR facilitates, through an employee-centric conceptual framework, a deeper understanding of when and why employee reactions lead to positive and unintended negative outcomes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Influence of Business Commitment to Sustainability, Perceived Value Fit, and Gender in Job Seekers’ Pursuit Intentions: A Cross-Country Moderated Mediation Analysis

Recruitment messages can help organizations to attract talent by influencing job seekers perceived fit with the company. As sustainability issues have become more relevant for 21st century citizens, messages communicating companies’ commitment to sustainability can send information that could influence young job seekers perceived fit with their future organizations. This between-subjects study analyses the influence of six messages showing business commitment to sustainability on job seekers pursuit intentions, considering a sample of 265 job applicants from three countries (Spain, Kazakhstan, and Germany). We are particularly interested in studying the role of perceived value fit as a mediating mechanism, as well as the moderating role of gender. Results obtained from a between-subjects factorial design confirm that different actions showing business commitment to sustainability positively affect job seekers’ job pursuit intentions. Our findings also show that the importance of every message is different depending on the studied country. The obtained results confirm that recruitment messages showing business commitment to sustainability influence job seekers’ pursuit intensions by increasing the perceived fit between job seekers’ and business values. Finally, results show the moderating role of prospective employees’ gender in the proposed model.

When Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Meets Organizational Psychology: New Frontiers in Micro-CSR Research, and Fulfilling a Quid Pro Quo through Multilevel Insights

Researchers, corporate leaders, and other stakeholders have shown increasing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)—a company’s discretionary actions and policies that appear to advance societal well-being beyond its immediate financial interests and legal requirements. Spanning decades of research activity, the scholarly literature on CSR has been dominated by meso- and macro-level perspectives, such as studies within corporate strategy that examine relationships between firm-level indicators of social/environmental performance and corporate financial performance. In recent years, however, there has been an explosion of micro-oriented CSR research conducted at the individual level of analysis, especially with respect to studies on how and why job seekers and employees perceive and react to CSR practices. This micro-level focus is reflected in 12 articles published as a Research Topic collection in Frontiers in Psychology (Organizational Psychology Specialty Section) titled “CSR and organizational psychology: Quid pro quo.” In the present article, the authors summarize and integrate findings from these Research Topic articles. After describing some of the “new frontiers” these articles explore and create, the authors strive to fulfill a “quid pro quo” with some of the meso- and macro-oriented CSR literatures that paved the way for micro-CSR research. Specifically, the authors draw on insights from the Research Topic articles to inform a multilevel model that offers multiple illustrations of how micro-level processes among individual stakeholders can explain variability in meso (firm)-level relationships between CSR practices and corporate performance. The authors also explore an important implication of these multilevel processes for macro-level societal impact.