Exploring Corporate Community Engagement in Switzerland

Abstract

This research note presents data concerning the community engagement activities of 2,096 Swiss companies as reported by a single company respondent in an online survey. Switzerland affords an interesting opportunity to compare engagement activities in a single country with multiple culture systems across companies varying in size from large to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Study results show that 78% of the surveyed firms pursue some community engagement activities. While engagement is mostly practiced in traditional forms (e.g., donations), more active forms (e.g., supporting employees’ private volunteering) are not uncommon. The main motivating factor is a concern for the communities in which the firms operate. Engagement activities are mostly employed independent of financial considerations and are conducted flexibly to serve personal interests of the firms’ decision makers. Swiss firms’ reported environmental assessment activities show no specific patterning. Perceiving engagement to be on the rise globally and in Switzerland is associated with a greater likelihood to be involved. Accordingly, knowing other engagement pursuing firms increases the individual firm engagement probability. The German speaking part of Switzerland is more active in engagement than the French and Italian speaking parts. Bigger companies pursue engagement activities more intensively and strategically than do SMEs.

Keywords

voluntary corporate community engagement corporate citizenship (CC)corporate social responsibility (CSR)culture systems small and medium enterprises (SMEs)Switzerland

Corporate Community Engagement in Switzerland

Since the 1990s, literature has devoted considerable attention to the metaphorical notion of companies being “good corporate citizens” (Altman & Vidaver-Cohen, 2000; Brown & Dacin, 1997; Marsden, 2000; Windsor, 2001). Matten, Crane, and Chapple (2003) point out that the extant literatures on corporate citizenship (CC) and the related concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fall into two conventional views. One view, narrow in scope, equated CC with strategic philanthropy. Another view, broad in scope, treated CC and CSR as equivalent. Those authors then proposed a third conception of CC as administration of a bundle of individual citizenship rights (social, civil, and political) conventionally provided by governments.

While there is no unanimous definition of CC, it typically encompasses socially responsible activities of firms that are performed voluntarily beyond the requirements of the law (Darigan & Post, 2009). CSR is typically conceptualized more broadly and integrates mandatory aspects, such as implicit or explicit consumer expectations or even legal regulations (Carroll, 1991; Matten et al., 2003).

The survey conducted by the authors of this study used (in German, French, and Italian) a term meaning “voluntary corporate community engagement” (in German: “freiwilliges Engagement von Unternehmen“; in French: “l’engagement bénévole d’entreprises“; in Italian: “volontariato imprenditoriale“). Neither CC nor CSR language was used in the survey instrument. The survey focused on community engagement activities undertaken voluntarily by Swiss companies. The first step was to obtain respondents’ description of those activities. Then the instrument sought to elicit motivations and processes. It is thus difficult to map the survey findings onto the CC, CSR, and strategic philanthropy categories. The activities reported are voluntary and philanthropic.¹

There are complex theoretical disputes on differences between CC and CSR as well as related issues, such as strategic philanthropy or corporate social performance (CSP; Frederick, 1994; Matten et al., 2003; Rowley & Berman, 2000; Wood & Logsdon, 2001). However, the exact nature of corporate community engagement activities is still widely unknown (Chen & Delmas, 2011; Gond & Crane, 2010). Specifically the motivational backgrounds of companies’ voluntary engagement activities remain unclear (Swanson, 1995, 1999). Also the management processes of corporate community engagement have recently found some theoretical attention, specifically with regard to managerial approaches that foster sustainable community involvement (van der Voort, Glac, & Meijs, 2009). Moreover, national variations in engagement practices have been discussed but only sporadically researched (Berthoin, Dierkes, & Hähner, 1997; Berthoin & Sobczak, 2007; Blasco & Zølner, 2010). Lately, engagement variations that are related to company sizes have also been subject to research (Amato & Amato, 2011; Basil, Runte, Basil, & Usher, 2011) in the United States and Canada.

There seems to be variability in companies’ community engagements, specifically with regard to the countries in which firms operate, and the firm sizes. Research efforts have so far concentrated on companies operating in Anglo-Saxon countries, mostly the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Continental European countries have only seldom been in the focus of researchers, which is amazing considering their huge impact on global markets.

Therefore, this study sets out to present a baseline study on the current composition of voluntary corporate community engagement in one European country, namely, Switzerland (see Lorenz, Gentile, & Wehner, 2011). Special attention will be paid to engagement variation by geographical regions and company sizes. Thus this work produces knowledge that may by used by companies themselves (to estimate their engagement compared with other firms), by nonprofit organizations (NPOs), and specialized consulting firms that offer corporate engagement opportunities to firms, and by the society as a whole, which needs to know how its corporate members live up to their civic duties.

Switzerland offers interesting conditions to study corporate community engagement: it is in the heart of continental Europe, has a majority of small and medium sized companies as well as large corporations, and combines two different culture systems that allows for intranational comparisons across these systems.

The remainder of the introductory part of this research note presents the six research questions that this study sets out to answer. They pertain to the actual composition of companies’ voluntary community engagement. Furthermore, intranational (across two different culture systems) and size-wise differences in the engagement are examined. The results of this study therefore provide a description of the current voluntary engagement practice of Swiss companies.

Voluntary Community Engagement by Companies in Switzerland: Research Questions

This study sets out to gain empirical knowledge on the actual community engagement practices in Switzerland. Four research questions target engagement activities (“What is done?”), motivation (“Why is it done?”), and processes (“How is it done?” and “How is it communicated?”). A fifth research question targets engagement variations in relation with geographical disparities (“Where is it done?”); and a sixth research question pertains to different firm sizes (“How big are the engaged firms?”).²

Activities

The main focus in literature on companies’ community engagement so far lies on what is actually done to benefit society (Matten & Crane, 2005). Activities vary internationally (Basil, Runte, Easwaramoorthy, & Barr, 2009; Houghton, Gabel, & Williams, 2009; van de Ven & Graafland, 2006). Thus, measuring national compositions of voluntary community engagement activities has been called for to create a coherent picture of the international engagement activities (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009; Houghton et al., 2009; van der Voort et al., 2009). The present study follows this call in concentrating research on companies’ voluntary community engagement in one single country.

Therefore, this study starts out with the first research question:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): What is the present composition of companies’ voluntary community engagement in Switzerland?

The research question is operationalized by assessing (a) the prevalence of community engagement among Swiss firms, (b) the engagement activities, and (c) the fields in which these activities take place.

Two studies in Germany tackled similar issues: Braun and Kukuk (2007) and Maass and Clemens (2002) gathered data among German firms pertaining to prevalence, nature, and fields of community engagement. Although study procedures and samples differed considerably, the authors strived to establish some degree of comparability by using the same questionnaire items. With regard to activities and fields of engagement items are probed that have also been used in U.S. studies (Rochlin, Witter, Mirvis, Jordan, & Beevas, 2004; for details see method section below).

Motivation

Swanson (1995, 1999) calls for research on the decision-making processes that lead firms to various engagement forms. Specifically, research should concentrate less on external social pressure and more on proactivity on the side of the firms’ decision makers (Swanson, 1999; van der Voort et al., 2009). The corporate behavior under study here is by definition voluntary and initiated proactively.

According to Swanson’s call, RQ 2 is as follows:

Research Question 2 (RQ2): What motivates Swiss companies to engage in voluntary community engagement activities?

RQ 2 was operationalized via two approaches: First, earlier studies (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Maass & Clemens, 2002; Rochlin et al., 2004) were mirrored that explored engagement motivation by prompting a variety of 11 possible reasons. The individual respondents judged whether the reasons applied to their firm.

Second, theoretical reflections of Windsor (2001, 2006) and Swanson (1995, 1999) suggest companies’ community engagement to be either idealistically or strategically motivated or both. Accordingly, previous empirical studies (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009; Googins et al., 2009; Hahn & Scheermesser, 2006; Maass & Clemens, 2002; van de Ven & Graafland, 2006) have found idealistic values, such as being a good employer and living up to one’s corporate social responsibility, to motivate companies’ community involvement activities as well as strategic considerations of benefits that are gained readily or over the course of time (e.g., expected reputational gains, increased employee morale).

The items used in this study reach from idealistic (e.g., “It is part of the social responsibility we have as a firm.”) to strategic (e.g., “It facilitates regional networking.”) reasons. Therefore, responses could be categorized statistically across the entire sample to test if a factorial structure of motivating aspects exists.

Processes

Two different processes that define a company’s management of voluntary community engagement are taken into account: environmental assessment practices and communication efforts.

Environmental assessment

According to Wood (1991, p. 704), firms need to monitor their dynamic external environment on a constant basis to “[. . .] translate corporate social responsibility into managerial action [. . .].” Especially the assessment of (a) the importance of companies’ voluntary engagement in general, as well as (b) whether other firms pursue it and (c) its impact has been discussed as relevant information (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Maass & Clemens, 2002; Marquis, Glynn, & Davis, 2007; Orlitzky, Schmidt, & Rynes, 2003) and will be termed hereafter “environmental assessment.”

Therefore, RQ 3 is as follows:

Research Question 3 (RQ3): Do Swiss firms monitor voluntary corporate community engagement in their environment?

Environmental assessment was first operationalized by obtaining data on the perceived past and estimated future relevance of companies’ voluntary engagement for business. It has been argued that these estimations determine future engagement efforts: The results of the German study of Maass and Clemens (2002) showed the majority of the firms to expect voluntary engagement to remain an important management issue in the future. Accordingly, more than 90% were determined to continue their activities. Googins et al. (2009) similarly report U.S. firms to stay committed to their voluntary community involvement in times of economic crisis.

Second, companies’ awareness of good examples in the corporate environment was focused. The knowledge of relevant other companies pursuing voluntary engagement activities may influence whether and how an individual firm will become involved; the underlying process has been termed community isomorphism (Marquis et al., 2007).

Third, the evaluation of volume and impact of the community engagement is a strategy of environmental assessment. Although much has been said about the business case of companies’ voluntary community engagement, the big picture as to whether it pays in economic success remains unclear (Orlitzky et al., 2003). Evaluation efforts by individual firms are—despite the demand from scholars (Wood, 1991) to deal with the issue—still largely missing in practice (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Googins et al., 2009; Orlitzky et al., 2003; Rochlin et al., 2004). However, the volume of evaluation activities as part of firms’ environmental assessment is not known for Switzerland and was thus assessed in this study.

Differences in the environmental assessment of companies that are involved in voluntary activities and those companies that are not will be explored in this research note.

Communication

Another process of managing corporate community engagement is its communication to interest groups. Therefore, literature gives attention to how firms spread information about their voluntary activities to their stakeholders (Maignan & Ferrell, 2001; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Sen, Bhattacharya, & Korschun, 2006; Slater & Dixon-Fowler, 2009; Wood, 1991).

The fourth research question is formulated as follows.

Research Question 4 (RQ4): Do companies communicate their voluntary community engagement to key stakeholders?

Employees have been recognized as the key stakeholder group of companies’ voluntary community engagement activities because their identification with the firm is touched and they often provide manpower, time, and knowledge (Berthoin & Sobczak, 2007; Liu, Liston-Heyes, & Ko, 2010). Having the employees informed about the reasons for and processes of the engagement activities has been called crucial for the success of engagement activities (van der Voort et al., 2009): Therefore internal communication of the engagement is of special interest in this study. However, communication with other external stakeholders has also received a lot of attention, especially when positive effects on corporate image are discussed (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Slater & Dixon-Fowler, 2009; Wood, 1991).

Thus internal (e.g., to employees, managers) and external (e.g., to the public, media) communication is distinguished in the operationalization of RQ 4 (cf. Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Googins et al., 2009). Studies have repeatedly found that companies communicate own good deeds only reluctantly, which has been attributed to expected public skepticism and threats to corporate reputation (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Jahdi & Acikdili, 2009; van der Voort et al., 2009).

National and Subnational Variations in Community Engagement Practices

Debate and research suggest that the occurrence of corporate community engagement varies by cultural environments and thus internationally (Basu & Palazzo, 2008; Berthoin & Sobczak, 2007; Habisch, Jonker, Wegner, & Schmidpeter, 2005; Katz, Swanson, & Nelson, 2001; Küskü & Zarkarda-Fraser, 2004; Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005; Maignan & Ferrell, 2000; Matten & Moon, 2008). Besides, companies’ voluntary engagements have been reported to be “[. . .] heterogeneous even within single country contexts” (Blasco & Zølner, 2010, p. 242). One explanation for subnational variation is the existence of different cultural systems within one country (Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005).

There have been demands to assess the various national conditions affecting companies’ community involvement to get a clear picture of the international and subnational variation in engagement practices and to identify the factors producing such variation (Basil et al., 2009; Houghton et al., 2009; van de Ven & Graafland, 2006). The present study follows this call in concentrating on companies’ voluntary community engagement in different culture systems of one single country.

Literature has identified three major culture systems that affect the public’s and companies’ approaches to corporate community engagement: the Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Latin culture systems are especially relevant in Europe (Katz et al., 2001; Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005). The Anglo-Saxon culture system (United Kingdom and United States) is characterized by an explicit (cf. Matten & Moon, 2008) approach to corporate community engagement: the public expects companies that are themselves ready to take social responsibility by undertaking voluntary community engagement activities. The Anglo-Saxon approach correlates with a relatively weakly developed welfare state. The Germanic culture system (German speaking countries and the Netherlands) is characterized by a broad stakeholder concept that incorporates the public, by companies that are involved in their communities, and by a tendency toward more participative structures within companies. The welfare state has a long tradition in Germanic countries. Hence, the Germanic system displays a general affinity to corporate community engagement although it is not as widespread as in the Anglo-Saxon system (Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005). The Latin culture system is present in Southern European countries (e.g., France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal) where social welfare is widely regarded as the business of public authorities and not of companies. The Latin culture system is more dominated by legal and state-run structures than the Germanic culture system and the public are rather suspicious about voluntary corporate community involvement (cf. Berthoin & Sobczak, 2007; Blasco & Zølner, 2010; Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005).

In Switzerland two of these three culture systems are present. In the larger German speaking part (North and East Switzerland), the Germanic system prevails. The Western and Southern parts of Switzerland (speaking French and Italian, respectively) belong to the Latin culture system (cf. Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005). The Anglo-Saxon culture system is not present in Switzerland and will therefore not be further discussed.

This circumstance results in the following.

Research Question 5 (RQ5): Do Swiss companies’ voluntary community engagement practices vary with the prevailing culture system?

Of course, Switzerland is not the only country combining different culture systems. The Germanic and Latin systems occur also in Belgium. Beyond Europe, the Anglo-Saxon and Latin systems coexist in Canada. Switzerland affords a unique opportunity to study two culture systems with regard to the composition of corporate community activities: First, Switzerland does not belong to the Anglo-Saxon system, within which most studies on corporate community involvement have been conducted. Second, Switzerland’s Latin system consists of both French (in the Western part) and Italian (Southern part) culture areas, defined partly by language and business traditions. Thus a subdivision is possible that cannot be addressed in Belgium or Canada. By aggregating (i.e., Latin system) and disaggregating (i.e., French vs. Italian regions) the data, the study can test whether the category Latin culture system is adequate for Switzerland or defined too broadly.

Thus the results to the first four research questions will be presented in consideration of the involved culture systems. Most of this study’s sample comes from the German speaking part of Switzerland. The rest of the sample comes from the French and Italian speaking regions of Switzerland.³ These subsamples are roughly proportional of the distribution of population and firms by language region.

Size-Wise Variations in Voluntary Community Engagement Practices

Various authors suggest that voluntary corporate community engagement is more common among bigger companies (e.g., Basil et al., 2011). Also the strategic use that is made of voluntary activities has been said to be greater in bigger companies (Basil et al., 2011; van de Ven & Graafland, 2006). Variations in socially responsible behaviors along with company sizes have been attributed to a greater public visibility of large companies, greater personnel and financial resources at their disposal, larger scales of operations, and more evolved business administration processes (Amato & Amato, 2011; Donaldson, 2001; Graafland, van de Ven, & Stoeffele, 2003; Russo & Perrini, 2010; Slater & Dixon-Fowler, 2009; Udayasankar, 2008).

The study addresses this question as follows.

Research Question 6 (RQ6): Do Swiss companies’ voluntary community engagement practices vary with company sizes?

The main analyses of the present study will therefore each be presented with an additional section concerning differences between SMEs (i.e., 1-250 employees) and bigger companies (251 and more employees; cf. Bundesamt für Statistik [BFS], 2010).

In sum, the objective of this research note is to present data from a large nationwide sample of Swiss enterprises on their voluntary community engagement activities.

Figure 1 displays the research questions as a cuboid structure: the first four RQs describe the engagement pattern across the Swiss sample (“What is done?”; “Why is it done?”; “How is it done?”; “How is it communicated?”) and are thus presented as horizontal layers. Within the sample, RQs 5 and 6 (“Where is it done?”; “How big are the engaged firms?”) subdivide the sample with regard to operational basis and size. Therefore these RQs are presented as vertical columns.

Figure 1.

Research questions as a cuboid structure.

Method

This study was part of a research project involving two Swiss universities located in Zurich and Basel, respectively. The project’s goal was to examine current and future voluntary community engagement activities of Swiss companies. It was funded by the “Commission for Technology and Innovation” (CTI), the Swiss Confederation’s innovation promotion agency. This method section first provides general information on the questionnaire that was distributed in the three language regions. Then the recruiting procedure is explained and important characteristics of the study sample are presented.

Questionnaire

The authors executed a nationwide web-based survey among companies of all industries. Single company respondents reported data on the voluntary community engagement activities of their firms in an online survey. As psychometric scales are missing in the field, researchers usually make use of single item questions tackling the subject of the research question directly. Respondents indicate agreement or disagreement to the prompted item. Wherever possible, items were modeled on the ones used in the few studies that addressed similar issues to achieve comparability of results (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Maass & Clemens, 2002; Rochlin et al., 2004). Items used are presented in the appendix.

The online questionnaire was provided in three language versions. The majority of 87.2% answered the questions in German and constitutes the subsample Germanic culture system. A portion comprising 7.7% of the respondents stemmed from the French, and another 5.1% from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland (constituting the Latin culture system in this study, with a subsample size of 12.8%). Thereby, the sample represents the trilingual Swiss population reasonably well (cf. swissworld.org, 2011).

Recruiting Procedure and Sample

The three biggest employers’ associations in Switzerland supported this study: the “Swiss Employers’ Association,” the Economiesuisse, and the “Swiss Trade and Crafts Association.” Calls for participation were sent to the members of the associations in periodically issued journals and via internal e-mail delivery systems. Each invitation contained the link to the online survey. To gather a comprehensive data basis each call for participation was addressed “to the person responsible for your company’s corporate citizenship activities.” Also, companies that are not actively involved in voluntary community engagements were explicitly asked to participate to reduce self-selection bias as much as possible.

The software used distinguishes mere visits from more thorough approaches to the survey. Eventually, 2,142 completed questionnaires were gathered along with 2,310 questionnaires that were started but left unfinished. To accomplish a sufficiently large sample size, each respondent was free to activate the survey link repeatedly. So participants were free to take a look at the questionnaire and fill it in later or pass it on internally to the adequate respondent. Judging by the sample size and the positions of the respondents (see information below), this measure was successful. Although technically repeated completions per person per firm were possible, the authors judge this duplication improbable, as respondents are unlikely to be motivated to cheat or have the spare time necessary. A control item was installed to filter out uninformed respondents: 46 of 2,142 persons indicated that they did not know whether their company had ever performed voluntary community engagement activities and were excluded from the study. The final ratio of valid completed questionnaires to visits of 47.6% indicates sufficient acceptance of the survey.

Mapping the Swiss economic structure quite well, the sample consisted mainly (89.5%) of SMEs (1 to 250 employees). The respective Swiss population consists of 99.6% SMEs (BFS, 2010). A further 8.5% of participants represent firms employing 251 and more persons. (About 2.0% did not indicate the size of firm; the reader should see the results section for the study’s policy on forced choice and missing items). In a majority of cases (56.4%), respondents were owners of the respective firms. A further 22.1% of respondents were CEOs, 14.1% were employees in leading positions, 4.0% were employees in the human resources department, and 2.0% indicated “other.” With respect to the industry branches represented in this study, the sample roughly maps the Swiss economic structure well. However, companies from the building sector were overrepresented; and underrepresented were the sectors of: commerce, maintenance and repair, consulting, education, health care, public administration, and banking and insurance as well as public and private services (BFS, 2010). Figures 2a and 2b report demographic characteristics of participating respondents and firms.

Figure 2a.

Demographical information on respondents and participating firms: Language regions, culture systems, and valid data sets.

Figure 2b.

Demographic information on respondents and participating firms: Firm sizes, respondent positions, and industry branches.

Results

The results section is organized in three main parts. First, authors present preliminary analyses, which show that data from French and Italian speaking regions are statistically homogeneous and may be combined to form the subsample “Latin culture system.” Second, the results to the research questions RQ 1 to 4 are presented. Results to RQ 5 and 6 (variations by culture system and firm size) are incorporated in the results reports of the first four research questions. Third, a post hoc classification analysis is reported. Roughly 20% of the participating companies explicitly refrain from any voluntary community engagement. The analysis explores which variables predict corporate engagement.

Sample sizes differ minimally from item to item as not all questions were issued to all participants (e.g., only participants who had stated to pursue engagement activities were asked for their motivational orientation) and because participants were—for the sake of higher compliance—not forced to answer each question, thereby resulting in differing missing rates. Error margins were computed for each indicator of each subsample (Basil et al., 2009; see note below Table 1). Percentages flagged boldly represent significant differences (i.e., 95% confidence intervals do not overlap) between the subsamples of different firm sizes, geographic origins, and engaged versus nonengaged companies. Detailed computations may be obtained from the authors.

Table 1.

Results to RQ 1: Composition of Swiss Companies’ Voluntary Community Engagement—Prevalence.

What is the present constitution of companies voluntary community engagement in Switzerland?		Firm size		Culture system
	Total	SME: ≤250 employees	Big companies: >250 employees	Germanic system	Latin system
	N = 2096	n = 1,876	n = 179	n = 1,827	n = 269
	(100%)	(89.5%	(8.5%)	(87.2%)	(12.8%)
Engagement rate^a,bHas your company ever pursued voluntary community engagement?	78.3%	77.3%	92.2%	81.3%	58.0%
					French	Italian
					n = 162 (7.7%)	n = 107 (5.1%)
					58.0%	57.9%

Note. Error margins for the 95% probability were computed conservatively for observed frequencies at 50% as: ±2.2 for N = 2,096 (total sample); ±2.5 for n = 1,642 (subsample engaged companies); ±4.7 for n = 454 (subsample nonengaged companies); ±2.3 for n = 1,827 (subsample Germanic culture system companies); ±6.1 for n = 269 (subsample Latin culture system companies); ±2.3 for n = 1,876 (subsample SME); ±7.5 for n = 179 (subsample big companies); ±2.6 for n = 1,486 (subsample engaged Germanic culture system companies); ±8.0 for n = 156 (subsample engaged Latin culture system companies); ±2.6 for n = 1,451 (subsample engaged SME); ±7.8 for n = 165 (subsample engaged big companies). Bold percentages represent significant differences (95% probability). Unless otherwise marked differences refer to the percentages presented within one cell.

Note for all tables. Items taken/adapted from: ^aBraun & Kukuk, 2007. ^bMaass & Clemens, 2002. ^cRochlin, Witter, Mirvis, Jordan, & Beevas, 2004. ^dAuthors’ item.

Preliminary Analyses

Lenssen and Vorobey (2005) propose that the French speaking Western regions and the Italian speaking Southern regions of Switzerland are culturally closer to other Southern European countries than the rest of Switzerland. Hence, French and Italian language regions form the Latin culture system in this study, which is contrasted with the Germanic culture system (German language region). To test the validity of the data aggregation, simple comparisons based on chi-square statistics were run. The results to the subsample tests are included in each of the results tables. In sum, only isolated differences between French and Italian subsamples reach a statistically significant level. (These differences are more engagement activities targeting culture in French subsample; more image- and tradition-related motives in French subsample; more future increase and less stagnation expected in Italian subsample; more known examples in French subsample.) Therefore, aggregating the data from Switzerland’s French and Italian language regions in the Latin culture system is feasible.

Research Questions

Tables 1 to 7 provide all descriptive results for the respective research questions, RQ 1 to RQ 4. Cells contain agreement rates to the respective items.

Research Question 1: What is the present composition of companies’ voluntary community engagement in Switzerland?

Table 2.

Results to RQ 1: Composition of Swiss Companies’ Voluntary Community Engagement—Engagement Form.

				Culture system
					Engaged Latin
		Firm size			n = 156
	Total engaged	Engaged ≤250	Engaged >250	Engaged Germanic	French	Italian
Engagement form (in the last 5 years)^a,b,c	n = 1,642	n = 1,451	n = 165	n = 1,486	n = 94	n = 62
Donations	80.3%	80.6%	83.0%	81.1%	73.1%
Donations					78.7%	64.5%
Beneficiary services	69.7%	70.8%	65.5%	70.6%	61.5%
Beneficiary services					63.8%	58.1%
Corporate gifts	65.2%	64.4%	76.4%	65.6%	61.5%
Corporate gifts					60.6%	62.9%
Assignments for beneficial use (e.g. vehicles)	63.3%	63.7%	66.7%	63.7%	59.0%
Assignments for beneficial use (e.g. vehicles)					61.7%	54.8%
Company leave without deduction from wages	55.2%	52.8%	83.0%	56.8%	39.7%
Company leave without deduction from wages					43.7%	33.9%
Company leave with deduction from wages	24.7%	22.5%	44.2%	26.1%	10.9%
Company leave with deduction from wages					10.6%	11.3%
Provision of training	22.7%	21.4%	37.0%	23.4%	16.0%
Provision of training					11.7%	22.0%
Supporting or maintaining foundations	6.5%	4.2%	27.3%	6.3%	8.3%
					10.6%	4.8%

Table 3.

Results to RQ 1: Composition of Swiss Companies’ Voluntary Community Engagement—Area of Engagement.

				Culture system
					Engaged Latin
		Firm size			n = 156
	Total engaged	Engaged ≤250	Engaged >250	Engaged Germanic	French	Italian
Area ^a,b,c	n = 1,642	n = 1,451	n = 165	n = 1,486	n=94	n=62
Sports	67.9%	68.6%	68.5%	68.6%	60.9%
Sports					67.0%	51.6%
Culture	56.6%	55.8%	70.3%	56.8%	55.1%
Culture					69.1%	33.9%
Education	51.1%	49.5%	70.9%	52.4%	38.5%
Education					42.5%	32.2%
Social welfare	37.3%	35.8%	50.9%	37.1%	39.7%
Social welfare					40.4%	38.7%
Political activities	29.5%	29.5%	32.7%	30.1%	24.4%
Political activities					26.6%	21.0%
Environment protection	26.9%	24.5%	49.7%	27.8%	17.9%
Environment protection					21.3%	12.9%
Rescue	24.4%	24.2%	29.1%	25.1%	17.9%
Rescue					17.0%	19.3%
Children/youth	23.9%	24.3%	21.2%	24.4%	18.6%
Children/youth					20.2%	16.1%
Religion	19.3%	20.3%	12.1%	18.8%	23.7%
Religion					28.7%	16.1%
Health care	17.8%	15.0%	44.2%	18.2%	13.5%
					17.0%	8.1%

Table 4.

Results to RQ 2: What Motivates Swiss Companies to Engage in Voluntary Community Engagement Activities?.

				Culture system
					Engaged Latin
	Total	Firm size			n = 156
	Engaged	Engaged ≤250	Engaged >250	Engaged Germanic	French	Italian
Reasons for engagement efforts ^a,b,c	n =1,642	n = 1,451	n = 165	n = 1,486	n = 94	n = 62
Personal concern of the decision maker	70.1%	71.7%	62.4%	71.9%	52.6%
Personal concern of the decision maker					55.3%	56.4%
Social responsibility	69.6%	68.6%	81.2%	71.1%	54.5%
Social responsibility					68.1%	41.9%
Image	47.9%	46.4%	66.1%	47.8%	48.1%
Image					60.6%	41.9%
Tradition	35.4%	34.9%	43.6%	35.3%	36.5%
Tradition					43.6%	25.8%
Regional networking	29.4%	28.9%	36.4%	31.4%	10.3%
Regional networking					13.8%	11.3%
Employee morale	28.3%	25.6%	53.3%	27.9%	32.1%
Employee morale					39.4%	32.3%
Teamwork abilities	21.6%	20.6%	32.1%	22.8%	9.6%
Teamwork abilities					11.7%	11.3%
External expectancy	20.8%	20.3%	27.9%	20.9%	20.5%
External expectancy					25.5%	16.1%
Promotion of sales	16.6%	17.0%	13.9%	17.0%	12.8%
Promotion of sales					16.0%	12.9%
Recruiting advantages	7.2%	5.6%	21.2%	7.5%	3.8%
Recruiting advantages					3.2%	9.7%
Profit	3.4%	3.4%	3.6%	3.3%	4.5%
					6.4%	3.2%

Table 5.

Results to RQ 2: Factorial Structure of Motivational Orientations

	Component 1	Component 2	Component 3
Reasons for engagement efforts	Regionally concentrated business development	HR management	Concern for community
Item 3: Image	.704
Item 5: Regional networks	.593
Item 8: External expectancy	.558
Item 9: Promotion of sales	.813
Item 11: Profit	.873
Item 6: Employee morale		.872
Item 7: Teamwork		.861
Item 10: Recruitment		.641
Item 1: Social responsibility			.707
Item 2: Personal concern			.664
Item 4: Tradition			.743
Explained variance	33.9%	15.6%	14.1%
Eigenvalues	> 3.5	> 1.5	> 1.5
Agreement rates
Total	17.3%	5.9%	76.8%
Engaged ≤ 250	16.6%	5.6%	77.8%
	∧		∨
Engaged > 250	25.0%	9.4%	65.6%
Engaged Germanic	17.6%	5.9%	76.5%
Engaged Latin	14.3%	6.3%	79.5%
French	15.9%	4.3%	79.7%
Italian	11.6%	9.3%	79.1%

Table 6.

Results to RQ 3: Environmental Assessment—Future and Past Relevance of Voluntary Corporate Community Engagement, Known Examples of Engagement Pursuing Firms in Corporate Environment, Evaluation Efforts.

						Culture system
							Engaged Latin
				Firm size			n = 156
	Total	Engaged	Nonengaged	Engaged ≤250	Engaged >250	Engaged Germanic	French	Italian
Environmental assessment	N = 2,096	n = 1,642	n = 454	n = 1,451	n = 165	n = 1486	n = 94	n = 62
Engagement relevance in the next 3 years^b
will increase	19.7%	18.2%	25.1%	17.0%	26.0%	18.6%	14.1%
will increase							6.4%	25.8%
will stagnate	69.5%	74.5%	51.1%	76.1%	70.3%	74.6%	74.4%
will stagnate							80.9%	64.5%
will decrease	4.3%	4.8%	2.2%	5.0%	2.4%	4.6%	7.1%
will decrease							8.5%	4.8%
missing	6.6%	2.5%	21.6%	1.9%	1.2%	2.3%	4.5%
missing							4.3%	4.8%
Engagement relevance in the past 3 years^b
has increased	18.3%	20.7%	9.9%	19.3%	30.9%	20.4%	23.1%
has increased							18.1%	30.6%
has stagnated	68.7%	70.3%	63.0%	72.2%	61.2%	70.8%	65.4%
has stagnated							70.2%	58.1%
has decreased	6.0%	6.6%	3.7%	6.6%	7.3%	6.4%	8.3%
has decreased							8.5%	8.1%
missing	7.0%	2.5%	23.3%	1.9%	0.6%	2.4%	3.2%
missing							3.2%	3.2%
Known examples in the corporate environment^d	60.1%	70.5%	22.2%	70.4%	77.0%	71.3%	62.8%
Known examples in the corporate environment^d							73.4%	46.8%
Assessment of obtained benefits^a		17.1%		17.0%	17.4%	16.8%	19.2%
							18.1%	21.0%%

Table 7.

Results to RQ 4: Stakeholder Communication –External and Internal Communication of Voluntary Community Engagement.

				Culture system
					Engaged Latin
		Firm size			n = 156
	Engaged	Engaged ≤250	Engaged >250	Engaged Germanic	French	Italian
Stakeholder communication	n = 1,642	n = 1,451	n = 165	n = 1486	n = 94	n = 62
External communication^a	24.1%	22.1%	41.2%	24.0%	24.4%
External communication^a	∧				25.5%	22.6%
Internal communication^a	41.8%	39.0%	64.2%	42.3%	36.5%
					36.2%	37.1%

The present composition was operationalized as the prevalence (i.e., engagement rate), the activities (i.e., what is done?) and fields (i.e., who/what benefits) of activities pursued by Swiss companies. Voluntary community engagement is common among Swiss enterprises: 78.3% of the participating firms have pursued such activities. Respondents indicated those forms of engagement they had pursued in the past 5 years. The results show that traditional forms of engagement (e.g., donations, 80.3%, or gifts, 65.2%) are widespread. Also, more than half of the already engaged respondents provide beneficiary services to NPOs (69.7%) and grant their employees leave of absence without payroll deduction (55.2%) so they may do volunteer work. Trainings for beneficiary reasons are less common (22.7%). Concerning the fields of their voluntary engagements, respondents most often focus their contributions on sports (67.9%), culture (56.6%), and education (51.1%).

Companies located in the German-speaking part of Switzerland display significantly higher engagement rates than the ones in the Western and Southern parts (81.3% vs. 58.0%). Regarding the specific activities, Germanic companies more often grant leave of absence (56.8% vs. 39.7% without pay reduction; 26.1% vs. 10.9% with pay reduction). Latin culture-system firms engage less often in the fields of education (52.4% vs. 38.5%) and environmental protection (27.8% vs. 17.9%).

The bigger the company, the more likely it is involved in voluntary community engagements: more than 90% of the companies employing more than 250 persons indicate some engagement (vs. 77.3% in SMEs). Larger companies report more engagement in a variety of forms. They significantly more often donate corporate gifts (76.4% vs. 64.4%), maintain foundations (27.3% vs. 4.2%), grant their employees leave of absence (83.0% vs. 52.8% without pay reduction; 44.2% vs. 22.5% with pay reduction) and provide cost-free trainings than SMEs (37.0% vs. 21.4%). The larger firms are engaged in a wider array of fields: specifically culture (70.3% vs. 55.8%), education (70.9% vs. 49.5%), social welfare (50.9% vs. 35.8%), environmental protection (49.7% vs. 24.5%), and health care (44.2% vs. 15.0%).

Research Question 2: What motivates Swiss companies to engage in voluntary community engagement activities?

Participants indicated agreement and disagreement to a number of reasons for voluntary community engagement. First, the results show that respondents attribute their firms’ voluntary activities mainly (70.1%) to the personal concern of the decision maker. Second, engagement is considered an expression of the companies’ social responsibility (69.6%). The third ranked motive (47.9%) is the cultivation of corporate image. With less than 10% each, recruiting advantages and development of profits seldom serve as incentive for voluntary community engagement activities.

Firms operating in the Germanic system significantly more often agree to the activity being a personal concern of the decision maker (71.9%) and perceive voluntary community involvement to be part of their social responsibility than do firms in the Latin system (52.6%). Additionally, Germanic system firms more often perceive the engagement to be a resource for regional networking (31.4% vs. 10.3%) and team development (22.8% vs. 9.6%).

Bigger firms more frequently than SMEs state that their voluntary engagement is part of their social responsibility (81.2% vs. 68.6%). Notably, they also more often expect strategic benefits in the fields of corporate image (66.1% vs. 46.6%), employee morale (53.3% vs. 25.6%), teamwork (32.1% vs. 20.6%), and recruitment (21.2% vs. 5.6%).

To test the second part of RQ 2 (whether motives may be summarized in a factorial structure), a principal component analysis (PCA) for dichotomous variables was conducted (Kubinger, 2003). Preliminary analyses revealed the data suited for this approach: the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin criterion reached a value of 0.681 thereby exceeding the lowest acceptable threshold of 0.5; Bartlett’s sphericity test proved correlations between singular items to be sufficiently large to justify a principal components analysis, χ²(55) = 1298.185, p < .001. The PCA revealed three components to have eigenvalues above Kaiser’s criterion of 1. Table 5 displays varimax-rotated factor loadings, the portion of explained variance, eigenvalues, and mean agreement rates to each factor across subsamples. The three components explain 63.6% of the variance. On the basis of the convention that loadings above 0.5 are relevant (Backhaus, Erichson, Plinke, & Weiber, 2008), every item can be assigned to exactly one of the principal components. The respective item loadings suggest component 1 to represent motives that are related to the middle to long-term pecuniary growth of business within the region in which the firm operates (hereinafter termed regionally concentrated business development). Items loading on component 2 belong to the realm of human resource management. Component 3 represents motives that are characterized by a concern for the community the firm belongs to. For the last component, it is essential that community concern is not directly associated with pecuniary advantages but rather originates in the self-perception of being a societal actor. The three-factorial structure was backed up by a bootstrapping procedure with 999 drawings, rendering a good stability of the three-factor-solution of 68.9%. Frequency analysis of the three factors reveals concern for the community to be the most dominant motivational aspect of companies’ voluntary community engagement activities (76.8% of the respondents agree to one or more items loading on this factor), followed by regionally concentrated business development (17.3% agreement) and expectancies related to HR management (5.9% agreement). Companies from the different culture systems do not vary in their agreement to the respective factors. Bigger companies significantly more often admit to expecting positive business development and significantly less often express a concern for the community in which they operate.

Research Question 3: Do Swiss firms monitor voluntary corporate community engagement in their environment?

Environmental assessment was operationalized by measuring firms’ retrospective and prospective estimates of the relevance of voluntary corporate community engagement in general, their awareness of firms in their environment that pursue such activities, and their evaluation of the voluntary efforts. Differences in the environmental assessment of engaged and nonengaged companies are presented.

About 90% of the respondents expect the relevance of voluntary corporate community engagement to remain at the present level or to increase in the future. A slightly smaller portion of the sample (87.0%) has perceived the same tendency in the past 3 years. However, more than two thirds of the respondents perceive stagnation in the past (68.7%) and expect it for the future (69.5%). The perception that companies’ voluntary community engagements are on the rise is positively related to own activities: engaged companies see a relevance increase significantly more often than nonengaged firms (20.7% vs. 9.9%). In total, the majority of the respondents indicated that they knew relevant other companies who are voluntarily engaged in their communities (60.1%). Much more engaged than nonengaged companies know of other engagement pursuing firms (70.5% vs. 22.2%). Only a 17.1% minority reports to assess benefits that their voluntary community engagement creates for the firm.

Analyzes of the culture system subsamples reveal no differences in the estimated past and future relevance of voluntary corporate community engagement or the respective evaluation practices. Corresponding to the generally higher engagement level in the Germanic culture system, companies here know of more other engaged firms (71.3% vs. 62.8%).

The bigger firms expect an increase in relevance and obviously perceive this to be part of an already ongoing process (past: 30.9% vs. 19.3%, future: 26.0% vs. 17.0%). Despite the notion that bigger companies pursue voluntary engagement with more strategic rigor and professionalized administration processes, evaluation efforts are equally rare among firms of all sizes.

Research Question 4: Do companies communicate their voluntary community engagement to key stakeholders?

Communication of community engagement efforts is rare: only 24.1% of the respondents communicate their efforts externally. Internal communication is significantly more common than external communication (41.8%). However, the majority of firms refrain from communicating their voluntary efforts to internal stakeholders.

According to the presumably wider spread acceptance of companies’ involvement in social matters in the Germanic system, it could be assumed that firms here are less reluctant to communicate their voluntary engagement activities. However, there is no difference in communication habits evident between firms in both culture systems. Bigger firms communicate their voluntary activities to both, internal and external stakeholders, more than SMEs (external: 41.2% vs. 22.1%; internal: 64.2% vs. 39.0%).

Post Hoc Classification Analysis

Whereas the majority of participating companies is engaged in voluntary community activities, 20% refrain from any voluntary engagement. A post hoc classification analysis was conducted to identify characteristics that distinguish the engaged majority from the explicitly nonengaged minority (i.e., the dependent variable is voluntary community engagement). Classification analysis provides the independent variables that are best suited to explain the difference between the subsamples engaged versus nonengaged companies. The variables firm size and culture system were entered in the analysis. Bigger companies are expected to be more visible and to have greater resources at their disposal and should thus be more prone to voluntary community engagement. Similarly, companies in the Germanic culture system are expected to have a higher propensity to voluntary activities than Latin system companies. Finally, the variable known examples in the corporate environment was entered in the classification analysis as the results have so far indicated this knowledge to be closely related to voluntary community engagement activity.

Figure 3 displays the tree diagram obtained from the classification analysis. As the CHAID method was used χ²–statistics and Bonferroni-corrected significance levels are presented. The results read as follows. The variable explaining the difference between engaged and nonengaged firms best is whether they know of other engaged companies in their environment. More respondents in the group of the engaged companies know other engaged firms (92.0%) than not (8.0%). Among the nonengaged companies this difference is smaller (57.3% vs. 42.7%; χ²(1) = 357.910, p < .001). The second most important characteristic of engaged companies—no matter if they know of other engaged firms or not—is their belonging to the Germanic culture system, χ²(1) = 17.233, p < .001 and χ²(1) = 23.847, p < .001, resp. Analyzing the yes-percentages in the classification tree shows that 93.2% of the firms that know of other engaged firms and operate in the Germanic culture-system actively pursue voluntary community engagement activities.

Figure 3.

Classification tree—Characteristic properties of engaged versus nonengaged companies.

Discussion

This research note presents a baseline study on the current composition of voluntary corporate community engagement in Switzerland. It presents descriptive data on the current composition of community engagement activities of 2,096 Swiss companies, their motivational basis, and some processes by which engagements are managed. Additionally engagement variations in relation with geographical disparities and different company sizes are under study.

This section gives answers to the research questions and discusses implications of the results for research and practice. The results of the posthoc classification analysis are discussed. Then cross-country comparisons are briefly drawn. The research note then closes with the discussion of study limitations. Table 8 at the end of this section provides an overview of the research questions, main results, and implications of the findings.

Table 8.

Overview of Research Questions, Main Results, and Implications.

	Research Question	Operationalization	Main result	Note	Implication
Activities	RQ1: What is done?	Prevalence/engagement rate	78.3% of participating companies pursue voluntary community engagement	Bigger companies and companies in the German-speaking part of Switzerland are more frequently involved in community engagement.	SMEs and Latin companies show different attitudes and approaches to voluntary engagements and might respond to consulting that specifically considers their situation (e.g. public skepticism; scarce resources). Research is needed to illuminate differences.
		Activities	Not only traditional forms are most common (donations and gifts) but also beneficiary services and leave of absence.	This study’s research on motivation shows personal concern of decision maker to be crucial for engagement.	The decision maker’s personal concern seems adequately satisfied by giving, more active engagement forms may require more internal communication.
		Fields	Sports, Culture, Education		Why sports? Firms may create unique selling points by benefitting other causes.
Motivation	RQ 2 Why is it done?	Single item description	Personal concern of decision maker Social responsibility of the firm Company image		Should employees volunteer to serve personal interest of decision maker?
		Factorial analysis	3 factors evident: Concern for community Regionally centered business development HR management		Psychometric instruments necessary to back up finding.
		Factorial analysis			“Business case”, especially with regard to personal and organizational development not convincing.
Processes	RQ 3 How is it done?	Past and future estimation of relevance	Relevance is affirmed and positively associated with intention to pursue engagement activities	Nonengaged judge engagement to be relevant too.	Voluntary engagement seems crisis-resistantPossibly higher future engagement rates
	RQ 3 How is it done?	Past and future estimation of relevance		Nonengaged judge engagement to be relevant too.
		Good examples	Knowledge of other engaged firms corresponds with own activity	Post hoc classification: The variable explaining the difference between engaged and nonengaged firms best is knowledge of other engagement pursuing companies. Possible explanations: peer pressure and community isomorphism. Longitudinal study needed to establish causality.	Spread the word—get more corporate social initiatives
		Evaluation efforts	Still rare	Bigger and smaller companies evaluate benefits equally rarely	Most firms don’t measure return on invest of their voluntary engagement efforts. Possibility to learn more about the relationship between companies and society; also possibility to create better evaluation instruments that cover nonfinancial aspects
	RQ 4 How is it communicated?	Internal communicationExternal communication	Rare; little more frequent than external communicationRare	Bigger companies communicate more	Empirical studies on employee and consumer interests needed
	RQ 4 How is it communicated?	Internal communicationExternal communication	Rare; little more frequent than external communicationRare	Bigger companies communicate more	Empirical studies on employee and consumer interests needed
Culture	RQ 5 Where is it done?—Culture systems	Culture-systems subdivision	Companies in the Germanic culture system are more active in engagement, perceive engagement to be part of their social responsibility (more so than in Latin system)	Preliminary analysis shows: no significant differences between Italian and French subsamples, ergo: aggregation to Latin culture system valid.	If voluntary engagement is part of the negotiating process to gain legitimacy (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009)—how do firms in French and Italian speaking regions negotiate?
Sizes	RQ 6 How big?—Company sizes	Size-wise subdivision	Bigger companies display greater engagement rates, connect engagement more closely to strategic wins and communicate it more actively.		Indirect support for slack resources theory (Amato & Amato, 2011)Consulting firms need to take sizes into account—clear cut differences.

Research Questions: Answers and Implications of Findings

RQ 1: The results of this study suggest voluntary corporate community engagement to be quite common in Switzerland. Swiss firms’ voluntary community engagement is pursued in a variety of forms. Passive activities of engagement, such as donating money or in-kind, dominate over more active and time-consuming forms, such as supporting employees’ volunteer work activities or the provision of cost-free trainings to NPOs. The contribution of beneficiary services that are otherwise provided for pay is popular among Swiss enterprises. Most companies contribute their voluntary engagement to sports-related issues, followed by cultural activities and contributions to the educational system.

There are important implications for practice. The results of the subsample analyzes show that SMEs and companies in the French and Italian speaking parts display less engagement. NPOs and consulting firms that approach firms to stimulate more community engagement should specifically consider the situation in which SMEs and Latin culture system companies find themselves (e.g., scarce resources; public skepticism).

Keeping in mind that the most frequently cited reason for firms to become engaged in their communities is a personal concern of the decision maker, passive engagement forms, such as giving, are an adequate way to satisfy this concern because time, manpower, or knowledge of employees is not needed. Activities that rely on the above-mentioned individual resources, such as corporate volunteering, will likely require intensive internal communication processes to legitimize the time-consuming engagement. The current practice of reluctant communication in engagement matters points to possible legitimacy problems within companies. In the field of corporate volunteering, Swiss studies have indeed found that employees and management see themselves underinformed and wishing for more communication of the engagements’ why’s and how’s (Gentile, 2010).

Regarding the engagement fields on which most companies concentrate their efforts (i.e., sports, culture, education), firms may be well advised to target different areas to create unique selling points with their community engagements. The premise is, of course, that the respective firms take a strategic approach to voluntary community engagement.

RQ 2: The motivation for Swiss companies’ community engagement activities is multidimensional. The respondents first give idealistic reasons for their engagement. When the engagement is linked with strategic considerations, study participants tend to expect benefits over the course of time rather than shortly. This motivational pattern is evident on the single item basis as well as when motivation items are categorized into clusters. Three motivational clusters emerged from the data. The concern for the community in which companies operate is mentioned most frequently. However, respondents also expect positive effects on business development and to a lesser extent use voluntary community engagement as HR management tool. This finding is in line with the studies of Hahn and Scheermesser (2006) as well as Brønn and Vidaver-Cohen (2009) who also suggest a three-dimensional motivational structure behind corporate community engagement, incorporating one intrinsic aspect and two extrinsic factors that differ on the time-scale by which they serve the company’s self-interest.

There are important implications for research. Theoretical reasoning and empirical studies (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Googins et al., 2009; van de Ven and Graafland, 2006) suggest idealistic and strategic motivational aspects to lead companies to become voluntarily engaged in their communities. However, the findings of this study suggest that the factor globally termed “strategic” motivation needs differentiation: First, there is the development of the corporate environment. This factor is comprised of items that suggest benefits for the company through a long-term positive development of the business environment (e.g., networking, satisfying stakeholder expectations). Second, respondents seldom indicate to be motivated by personnel development aspects of engagement activities, which probably earlier yield fruit. Expected economic benefits that are often insinuated to stimulate corporate community involvement (e.g., Swanson, 1995; Zappalà, 2004) play an inferior role in this study. Instead Swiss companies’ voluntary engagement practices are employed mostly independently from a measurable short-term return on investment and the business strategy.

To back up this study’s results on the motivational basis of voluntary corporate community engagement, it will be necessary to develop psychometric instruments that afford valid and reliable assessments of firms’ motivations.

A practical implication of the finding that the personal concern of the decision maker in the company decides whether a corporate community engagement is pursued is an ethical question. Is it legitimate for a company to motivate employees to become involved for charitable causes that they themselves have not chosen? How voluntary is the engagement? How are they treated if they refuse to participate?

RQ 3: Environmental assessment of engagement-related issues shows no specific patterning. The relevance judgments of companies’ past and future voluntary engagements are similarly high across all subsamples and specifically across engaged and nonengaged companies. Knowing other engagement pursuing companies in the business neighborhood is positively associated with one’s own engagement. Finally, it is global, rather than specific environmental assessment that firms conduct: four out of five companies refrain from evaluating whether their engagement activities have an impact on business.

The implications are as follows. The data of this study show that firms that judge voluntary community engagement to be increasingly relevant for business are likely to pursue engagement activities themselves. The fact that the nonengaged companies see voluntary community engagement on the rise may point to increasing engagement rates in the future. However, this research was cross-sectional and until longitudinal studies are realized this conclusion must remain tentative.

Data were gathered in the midst of the first wave of the global financial crisis that caused public attention on companies’ wrong- and right doings. Thus, the fact that more than 90% of participating companies expect voluntary corporate community engagement to remain stable suggests it to be somewhat resistant to economic crisis-situations (for a similar notion, cf. Darigan & Post, 2009; Googins et al., 2009).

The positive association between the knowledge of other engagement pursuing companies and an own voluntary community involvement might be interpreted as the result of peer pressure: community engagement may be seen as a subject to competition between firms. An alternative explanation is that the similarities result from isomorphic environmental forces (Marquis et al., 2007). The social dynamics between neighboring firms as well as the way isomorphic forces effect voluntary corporate engagement await future research. From the perspective of NPOs either answer would be good news: Making corporate engagement activities known to public will likely stimulate further initiatives by other firms as well.

That firms do not evaluate the impact of their voluntary engagement activities may be due to the lack of adequate evaluation tools. So far it must remain open why at least some participants have the expectation that community engagement yields strategic benefits for the company but refrain from monitoring those. However, the finding also suggests that firms emancipate themselves from the utility rationale that community engagement needs to serve own interests as well. This interpretation has been suggested by other authors as well (van der Voort et al., 2009).

RQ 4: The self-confidence with which companies waive the assurance of their own benefits created by voluntary community engagement activities is not mirrored in their communication habits: The majority of participating firms refrain from communicating their community engagement to both internal and external stakeholders. Hesitation to inform external parties about one’s voluntary engagement activities may be due to an uncertainty as to how the engagement will be received. Firms may fear public skepticism or the insinuation to misuse their community involvement as image campaign (cf. Palazzo & Richter, 2005; van der Voort et al., 2009). But also internal stakeholders are in less than half of all cases kept informed about voluntary community engagements.

The implications are as follows. Taken together the lack in communication gives further support to the notion that voluntary engagement activities are personal endeavors of the firms’ decision makers and not yet part of the corporate culture. Empirical studies are needed to shed light on the needs and expectations of employees and consumers with regard to corporate communication habits.

RQ 5: Preliminary analyzes reveal that data aggregation of companies from the Italian and French speaking parts to form the Latin culture system is feasible. The analyses of subnational differences in engagement characteristics reveal Germanic firms to be more active in engagement than Latin firms. This result is in line with a more state reliant welfare system in the Latin culture system. Accordingly, companies from the Latin culture system significantly less often judge voluntary community engagement activities to be part of their corporate responsibility and to it being a personal concern of the decision maker. The reluctance to communicate voluntary engagement activities is equally high in both culture systems.

The implications are as follows. Voluntary community engagement seems to be part of Germanic companies’ self-concept, whereas Latin firms do not pursue engagements as a matter of course. If community engagement is seen as a way of companies to gain societal legitimacy (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009; Marsden, 2000) the question arises how Latin firms proceed and which alternative behaviors they have in their struggle for legitimacy.

Interestingly, communication practices do not differ significantly between culture systems. This finding is interesting as according to the culture systems approach the public in the Latin culture system is supposed to scrutinize corporate engagement more skeptically and disaffirm of it more often than the Germanic public does (Lenssen & Vorobey, 2005). Thus companies in the Latin system could be expected to communicate their voluntary engagement even more reluctantly than firms in the Germanic part of Switzerland (van der Voort et al., 2009). Further research efforts are awaited to illuminate this finding.

RQ 6: Bigger firms show more engagement activities than SMEs. Moreover, they significantly more often agree to resource intensive engagement forms as for example corporate gifts, or maintaining foundations. Big firms associate their voluntary engagement activities more strongly with company benefits and more weakly with a concern for their communities. Big firms more often report that for their businesses voluntary community engagement has gained and will continue to gain in importance. They equally often refrain from evaluating engagement-related benefits for their firm. Less than half of the questioned big companies communicate their voluntary community engagement to external stakeholders.

The implications are as follows. In sum, there are clear differences between SMEs and bigger companies, the latter being more visible to the public, disposing of more resources, and displaying more professionalized administrative processes (Donaldson, 2001; Graafland et al., 2003; Russo & Perrini, 2010; Slater & Dixon-Fowler, 2009; Udayasankar, 2008). Consequently, they display greater engagement rates, connect it more closely to strategic wins and communicate it more aggressively to stakeholders. Consultants and NPOs that offer community engagement opportunities to companies may adapt their offers to the needs and possibilities of big firms and SMEs. For example, resource intensive projects that may be strategically used for image cultivation suit bigger firms better than SMEs.

Post Hoc Classification Analysis

The primary interest of this study was what most companies in Switzerland share in terms of their voluntary community engagements. However, the near conformance in engagement rates and processes yields a special interest in what characterizes firms that behave differently. Therefore, a classification analysis was run to explore what predicts best whether or not companies are voluntarily engaged in their communities. Results show that the knowledge of other companies pursuing engagement activities forecasts a firm’s engagement best. Only then operating in the Germanic culture system serves as predictor of voluntary community engagement. This finding suggests external forces influencing companies’ community involvements (cf. Marquis et al., 2007): cultural and environmental specifics contribute to diversity in engagement activities more than company sizes. Furthermore, the clear-cut geographic disparities support the validity of Lenssen and Vorobey’s (2005) culture systems conceptualization. Future research should address the culturally determined variation in engagement practices within a single country, especially when different culture systems are evident (e.g., Canada, Belgium) and in countries when different culture systems are difficult to discern (e.g., Russia, China).

Cross-Country Comparisons

As mentioned above, this study’s survey instrument made use of questions that were used in studies in Germany and the United States on corporate citizenship to allow for international juxtapositions of results. Comparisons must remain tentative as studies were not designed to replicate and the employed methodologies and samples differed; and not all questions could be parallelized. Engagement rates in Switzerland are likely lower than in Germany (96%, Braun & Kukuk, 2007; 82.4%, Maass & Clemens, 2002). Equivalent data from the United States are not reported. The engagement characteristics of German and U.S. firms reportedly resemble each other (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Googins et al., 2009; Rochlin et al., 2004), with passive forms of engagement (e.g., donations) dominating over more time-consuming activities. Supporting employees in their volunteering activities is, however, more widespread in the United States (Googins et al., 2009; MacPhail & Bowles, 2009). German companies more often target the political field, U.S. firms more often focus on the health system. It will be interesting to observe whether U.S. companies concentrate on other fields now that the U.S. health system is going to be reformed and public need of compensatory actions will probably decrease. Across studies strategic considerations are inferior to rather idealistic reasons in motivating corporate community engagement. However, the U.S. studies (Googins et al., 2009; Rochlin et al., 2004) report higher agreement rates to the expected improvement of regional networks, recruitment, and increased profits. Maass and Clemens (2002) report German companies to be equally determined to continue their voluntary community engagements as the current respondents. Googins et al. (2009) also show that U.S. firms stay committed to their efforts—even during the financial crisis. Finally, detailed evaluation efforts are equally sparse in Germany (12.3%; Braun and Kukuk, 2007). Googins et al. (2009) report 30% to 35% of companies to evaluate the business impact of their engagement activities. Googins et al. (2009) report 39% of the companies communicating voluntary community engagement externally and 54% internally.

In sum, the principles and processes of corporate engagement seem to be similar in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States, supporting the validity of the data presented here. Detailed comparative analyses are awaited to gain insights into, for example, differing stakeholder expectations and varying acceptance rates of diverse voluntary corporate community engagement activities.

Study Limitations and Strengths

One weakness of this study is certainly that in the absence of generally binding definitions in the field the authors’ concept of voluntary community engagement is idiosyncratic and may not be easily compared with other studies. However, authors tried to solve this problem by borrowing from other authors from the CSR and CC field (Braun & Kukuk, 2007; Darigan & Post, 2009; Maass & Clemens, 2002). Therefore, a certain degree of comparability between studies is given. Another limitation pertains to the study’s sample. The recruiting procedure fosters a self-selection bias, possibly resulting in an overrepresentation of participants who have a special interest in the topic. This procedure was consciously chosen because it has the benefit of addressing a larger number of potential participants and it was this study’s declared goal to obtain a comprehensive data set from a large sample in Switzerland. The problem was tackled by explicitly addressing firms who do and who do not engage in voluntary community engagement practices. Despite the effort to overcome this limitation, authors recognize it as being a threat to the results’ external validity. Already, the results can only be generalized to a limited extent, as Switzerland with its two culture systems constitutes a unique study environment.

These weaknesses are outweighed by the strengths of the study. Data were obtained from a sufficiently large sample of companies of all sizes, branches, and across all regions of Switzerland. Thus, for the first time, a thorough insight in the Swiss voluntary corporate community engagement practice was gained. Beyond a description of the actual composition of corporate community involvement the study provides insights into motivational aspects of engagement activities. The identification of motivational categories is crucial to develop psychometric scales assessing motivational states.

Footnotes

Appendix

The article was accepted during the editorship of Duane Windsor.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research was funded by the commission for Technology and Innovation, Switzerland (CTI).

Notes

Author Biographies

Christian Lorenz (Dr. Sc. ETH; Dipl.-Psych.) completed his dissertation at the Center for Organizational and Occupational Sciences at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests focus on corporate social responsibility, corporate volunteering, and work stress. He has published in such journals as the International Journal of Business Environment, the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, and Wirtschaftspsychologie.

Gian-Claudio Gentile (Dr. Sc. ETH) is lecturer and project leader at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland. His research interests focus on corporate social responsibility, corporate volunteering, organizational behavior, and qualitative methods. He has published in such journals as Historical Social Research, International Journal of Business Environment, and Wirtschaftspsychologie. Recently he and Theo Wehner published a book Corporate Volunteering—Unternehmen im Spannungsfeld von Effizienz und Ethik [Corporate Volunteering—Business between Efficiency and Ethics] (Wehner & Gentile, 2012, Springer Gabler Verlag).

Theo Wehner heads the Center for Organizational and Occupational Sciences at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and holds the chair in work and organizational psychology. His research interests center on volunteer work, the psychology of basic incomes, and errors at work.

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