Linking Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility and Intention to Quit: The Mediating Role of Job Embeddedness

Abstract

Systematic research regarding the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on organizational stakeholder groups, like employees, remains sparse. This article examines employees’ reaction to CSR programmes at the attitudinal level and provides evidence that developing CSR to society and CSR to customer can be effective ways for companies to lower employees’ intention to quit the organization. This quantitative study was conducted with 501 managers in 19 financial service organizations in India and the results indicate that on-the-job embeddedness (on-the-JE) is negatively related to turnover intentions and mediates the relationship between CSR and employees’ intention to quit.

Keywords

Job Embeddedness Corporate Social Responsibility Intention to Quit

Company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities comprise an important way to retain good employees. ‘CSR represents a continual commitment of a business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development whilst improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families, as well as of the local community and society’ (Mijatovic and Stokic, 2010, p. 533). Yet, there are not enough studies that explain the impact of CSR activities on employees’ behaviour (Hansen et al., 2011; Rodrigo and Arenas, 2008). It is important to study the influence of CSR and its perception on employees as employees react to an organization’s role in social responsibilities (Rupp et al., 2006) and base their decisions, opinions and attitudes affecting organization performance (Hansen et al., 2011).

The current article’s objective is to analyze the impact of employees’ perception of CSR to society and CSR’s role to customers on their intentions to quit through the mediation of job embeddedness (JE). The first dimension, that is, CSR’s role to society is defined as ‘corporate behaviours which aim to affect primary nonsocial and secondary nonsocial stakeholders positively and goes beyond its economic interest’ (Turker, 2009a, p. 414). The second dimension, that is, CSR to customers is defined as ‘a significant tool of influencing the feelings, thoughts and consequently buying behaviors of their target customers’ (Turker, 2009b, p. 192). Both the dimensions are processes through which organization expresses and develops its ‘corporate culture’ and social consciousness. CSR to society are secondary social stakeholders which do not involve human relationships and include things such as natural environment and future generations, which have less direct impact but are sometimes extremely influential on the business (Turker, 2009b). CSR to customers, on the other hand, can impose responsibilities on business and their welfare can be directly affected (Turker, 2009a).

We have considered the above key stakeholders for three reasons. First, we propose that CSR to society and CSR to customers are the two groups of stakeholders with whom employees interact directly and get opportunities to prevent harm (e.g., by providing full and accurate information about the product to the customers) or promote gains to other people (e.g., by protecting natural environment). Therefore, the magnitude, frequency and focus of employees’ interactions are stronger with society and customers in comparison to other stakeholders such as suppliers and investors. Second, the data used in this study were collected along with the collection of other variables during a broader study. Hence, to minimize the impact of non-response due to an ‘excess’ of data required to be filled in by the respondents, the impact of other important stakeholders (e.g., suppliers and investors) was not measured.

Although CSR research has made considerable progress, the body of literature is limited to three important aspects. First, the kind of relationship that exists between employee attitudes and CSR is still not fully understood. Few studies suggest that employees’ attitude is influenced by the socially responsible activities undertaken by the organization; for example, Turker (2009b), Brammer et al. (2007) and Peterson (2004) have explained that when organizations are perceived by the employees as a socially responsible member, it enhances their self-concepts by increasing their senses of belongingness towards organization that influences their organizational commitment positively. Bhattacharya et al. (2008) have found that CSR lowers intention to quit, yet other studies suggest that it does not (De Gilder et al., 2005). Such inconsistency in findings creates ground for further investigation.

Second, although a few empirical studies have examined the relationship between perceived CSR and employee attitudes such as organizational commitment (e.g., Brammer et al., 2007; Turker, 2009b), job satisfaction (Valentine and Fleischman, 2008) and intentions to quit (Bhattacharya et al., 2008; De Gilder et al., 2005), the underlying psychological mechanisms were not tested. Except few studies (e.g., Hansen et al., 2011; Jones, 2010; Vlachos et al., 2010) where the mediating mechanism was clarified, the authors (e.g., Hansen et al., 2011; Jones, 2010) have advocated that future research should focus on potential mediators that have not been tested before. The above gaps have put forward the need for identifying potential mediating mechanisms to clarify the relationship between employees’ attitudes and CSR.

We answer the above call for research by focusing on a potential mediator, that is, JE, because it explains the variance in intent to quit and voluntary turnover more comprehensively than reflected by attitudinal measures such as satisfaction or commitment (Allen, 2006; Holtom and O’Neill, 2004). We propose that JE shall play a key role at the individual level in explaining the relationship between the employee’s perception of CSR practices and intention to quit.

JE explains how its organization and community dimensions embed employees psychologically and socially within the organization motivating them to stay. To our knowledge, none of the previous research has considered JE as a mediator in the relationship between CSR and intentions to quit. This article will examine the direct effect of CSR on intention to quit and the mediating effects of JE in lowering the intention to quit, explaining us how CSR actually influences intentions to quit.

Finally, CSR is predominantly a Western concept typically introduced in India by multinational companies (MNCs) (Mijatovic and Stokic, 2010). Moreover, current research on CSR in India does not study the impact of perceived CSR on employee’s behaviour. Literature also shows that only a few empirical studies have been conducted with business managers (Narwal and Sharma, 2008); this study intends to fill that gap.

Relying on the theoretical frameworks of JE, CSR and intention to quit, we have developed a model of testable hypothesis; Figure 1 represents the model. As this figure indicates, it is predicted that CSR to society and CSR to customers are negatively related to intention to quit, CSR to society and CSR to customers are positively related to JE and that JE mediates the relationship between employees’ perception of CSR to society and CSR to customers and employee intentions to quit.

Figure 1.

Proposed Model Depicting the Relationship between CSR, JE and Employees’ Intention to Quit

Literature Review

CSR and Intention to Quit

Intention to quit is considered as a conscious and deliberate desire to leave the organization within the near future and as the last part of the sequence in the withdrawal cognition process (Guchait and Cho, 2010, p. 1234). CSR activities are likely to lower intention to leave because of two main reasons: (a) organization’s engagement with CSR activities make the employees aware of companies’ ethics and values and the extent to which it can be trusted; it implies that they are compassionate, benevolent and they understand their societal responsibilities, which ensure quality of workplace experiences (Hansen et al., 2011; Vlachos et al., 2010) and (b) CSR activities develop greater pride in organizational membership, thus promoting higher organizational identification (Jones, 2010). This makes employees content with their employment relationships and they are less likely to seek employment relationships elsewhere.

Few research papers have analyzed the impact of perceptive CSR on an employee’s intention to quit. Bhattacharya et al. (2008) found that CSR activities reduce an employee’s intentions to quit. Hansen et al. (2011) and Vlachos et al. (2010) have explained that perceived organizational trust mediates the positive relationship between CSR initiatives and loyalty intentions; De Gilder et al. (2005) did an empirical investigation and provided contradictory results on Dutch ABN-AMRO bank employee’s volunteering for various CSR programmes. The authors did not find any differences in the attitudes such as the importance of their personal career, their organizational commitment, their intention to quit or in the level of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among three different groups (participants in the programme, community volunteers and non-volunteers). Jones (2010) did a study in which he found that CSR activities promote organizational identification which positively affects employees’ intention to stay. Although the support for mediation was found on the self-reported measures of intentions to stay and OCB-loyalty, support was not found on the supervisor-reported behaviours. Given this limited empirical evidence and contradicting results, it shall be useful to provide additional evidence as to whether employees’ perception of CSR influences intention to quit. Specifically, we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1(a). Employees’ perceptions of CSR to society are negatively associated with employees’ intention to quit.

Hypothesis 1(b). Employees’ perceptions CSR to customers are negatively associated with employees’ intention to quit.

CSR and JE

CSR’s role to society may influence JE by providing employees with opportunities to participate or contribute without participation in social activities; this makes people feel good about themselves, because they are getting an opportunity to give back to their communities (Zelsman, 2000). When employees observe that organizations are giving importance to the values and norms they deem important, it creates a very good personal fit between the organization’s values and employee’s personal values, thus embedding them in their jobs.

Companies are using community involvement projects for team building. Working on a common cause brings together people with the common interest; in this article, it is defined as CSR provides a platform for interaction and social learning, forming closely-knit communities. The relationships thus develop due to the above kind of interactions that may lead to friendship ties and other links outside the organization (Bhattacharya et al., 2008). Quitting from such an organization will increase the perceived personal loss of separating from colleagues and relationship with important others.

The ‘outside world’ experiences of the participants will help employees acquire competencies such as communication, client-centredness, leadership and co-operation, which will inculcate the necessary knowledge, skill and abilities among the employees for greater job effectiveness (e.g., Bhattacharya et al., 2008; De Gilder et al., 2005). An employee would not like to incur potential sacrifices by leaving an organization that includes opportunities for advancement.

Hypothesis 2 (a): Employee perceptions of CSR to society are positively related to organization JE and community JE.

Engaging in CSR to customers indicate to employees that their organization is market-oriented, because customers may consider CSR to customers as an important purchasing criterion. They may even be ready to make specific efforts—for example, paying a higher price or shopping at a less convenient location. Such proactive behaviours from responsible organizations (Maignan, 2001) make employees view CSR to be market-oriented. Thus, they will remain loyal to the organization.

From a customer perspective, employees are employer’s agents; hence, when organizations implement CSR to customers, they are providing high quality products as well as providing accurate and full information about the activities to the customers (Turker, 2009b). These activities satisfy the needs of the customers that are central in employees’ understanding of societal responsibilities. These processes also communicate to the employees that their organization is concerned about the effect of its activities on customers and has established mechanisms to address these issues, which will help them foretell an organization’s actions more accurately. Such processes satisfy employees’ need for control, as a result of which the employees might be more hesitant to sacrifice his or her relationship with the existing organization.

When organizations promote CSR to customers, it helps employees demonstrate actions that adhere to the normative rules of social conduct; as a result, they are likely to be viewed more positively by the family members and community members, which may help them increase the number of social relationships within the community. As a result, employees may be less willing to sacrifice the respect that they get from their community.

Hypothesis 2 (b): Employee perceptions of CSR to customer are positively related to organization JE and community JE.

The Mediating Role of JE

We propose that JE may be a useful mediating construct which can explain how CSR activities influence employees’ intention to quit. JE is a construct which consists of six dimensions. It is associated with an individual’s links, fit and sacrifice in the organization as well as in the community. Links are strands of formal or informal relationships between a person and the organization where the employee works. It includes other individuals such as work and non-work friends, groups and the community in which the employee lives. Such relationships embed an employee in a social, psychological and financial web. Fit is defined as an employee’s perceived parity in term of values, career goals, etc., between the employee and the organization as well as fit with the environment such as the weather, amenities, political and religious climates and the arts. Sacrifice is defined as an employee’s perceived cost of material or psychological benefits that may be forfeited by leaving a job. The more an employee sacrifices while leaving, the more difficult it will be for him or her to discontinue the relationship with the organization (Mitchell et al., 2001).

It would be inappropriate to consider the two dimensions of JE separately, because as mentioned by Allen (2006), the construct measured as an aggregated construct across the six dimensions incorporates elements of on and off organizational and job affect, investments and sacrifices, non-affective links and ties and fit perceptions in a single coherent framework. However, Lee et al. (2004) disaggregated JE into on- and off-the-JE and found that both the dimensions predicted different outputs.

Managers perceive CSR to customers as a process which facilitates the organization in developing and marketing high-quality products. The managers also believe that by following the above practice it creates value for the firm, the community and the wider society, thereby helping employees become good corporate citizens. The responsibilities for the products/services satisfy customer needs and make society better off. Thus, employees are glued to organizations and strongly linked with society. Rodrigo and Arenas (2008) found that employees have a keen sense of social justice and CSR activities developed broader social attitudes as it sensitizes employees towards social justice and attached a sense of social importance to their work. They want the benefits of social justice, which they can contribute through CSR activities. Thus, they are interested in a positive perception of the social role of the organization that can build JE. CSR to society and customers structures opportunities for employees to have perceived impact and to make a lasting difference in people’s lives and prevent harm or promote gains (Grant, 2007). Therefore, we hypothesize that part of the mechanism by which CSR to society and customers lowers employee’s intention to quit is through embedding employees more extensively into the organization.

Hypothesis 3(a): Organization and community JE mediate the relationship between perceived corporate social relationship with respect to society and intention to quit.

Hypothesis 3(b): Organization and community JE mediate the relationship between perceived corporate social relationship with respect to customer and intention to quit.

Methods

Sample Selection and Data Collection

The data for this research were collected from 19 leading Indian banks (regional head offices only) in India. From the 1,056 survey invitations circulated among employees, 501 usable questionnaires were returned. Respondents represented a range of departments such as sales, operations, collections, information technology and marketing. Additionally, based on information provided by the human resource (HR) departments, demographic characteristics of the non-respondents were obtained, which were similar in organizational tenure, gender, age, education, types of jobs and other characteristics to the sample respondents.

Participants

The respondents had an average age of 38 years (s.d. = 10.75). They had worked for the organization for an average of 12.06 years (s.d. = 11.16). The sample had 81.8 per cent males and 18.2 per cent females. The average city tenure was 7.49 years.

Control Variables

The study controlled for city tenure, organizational tenure, age in years, gender (1 = male and 0 = female), education and ownership (1 = public, 0 = not public). The above demographic variables were controlled in the study to control for alternative explanations, as they have been shown to be related to variables of interest in the study (e.g., Holtom et al., 2006b; Tanova and Holtom, 2008).

Measures

A panel of two HR experts administered the questionnaire and following their advice, we reworded some of the items to make the constructs more representatives of the intended constructs, thus enhancing its content validity.

Discriminant validity of the constructs was assessed by using chi-square difference tests. The test was done by calculating the χ² difference of the chi-square values between the unconstrained (all constructs were allowed to co-vary freely) and constrained (the covariance between each pair of constructs was fixed at one). For details see Table 1.

Job Embeddedness

Organization JE was measured using nine items developed and validated by Holtom et al. (2006). The respondents indicated on a 5-point Likert-type scales (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree). A sample item for organization JE is, ‘If I stay with my organization, I will be able to achieve most of my goals.’ Similar to Lee et al. (2004), we averaged items for on-the-JE over their three sub-dimensions JE. The three organization-focused composites were aggregated to form organization JE construct (α’s = 0.83).

Table 1.

Chi-square Difference Test for Examining Discriminant Validity

Construct Pair (Unconstrained) χ² = 2,095 (d.f. = 550)	Constrained χ² (d.f. = 551)	χ² Difference
Community JE–organization JE	2,196	100**
CSR to society–CSR to customer	2,329	234**
Community JE–CSR to society	2,368	273**
Community JE–CSR to customer	2,269	174**
Community JE–ITQ	2,415	320**
Organization JE–CSR to society	2,302	207**
Organization JE–CSR to customer	2,218	123**
Organization JE–ITQ	2,478	383**
CSR to society–ITQ	2,491	396**
CSR to customer–ITQ	2,503	408**

Notes: CSR = corporate social responsibility; ITQ = intention to quit; JE = job embeddedness. **Significant at the 0.01 overall significance level by using the Bonferroni method.

Community JE was measured using 12 items. The respondents indicated on a 5-point Likert-type scales (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree) with 9 of the 12 items. The other three items measuring link community had yes or no answers. Following Mitchell et al. (2001), we created Z-scores for three items. A sample item for community JE is, ‘I really love the place where I live.’ Similar to Lee et al. (2004), the three community-focused composites were aggregated to form community JE construct (α’s = 0.74). To quote Felps et al. (2009, p. 550), ‘Because individual job embeddedness is a formative (or indicator) construct, high internal consistency and unidimensionality are not the standards by which construct validity should be judged.’ However, for descriptive purposes, we note that coefficient alpha was high.

Corporate Social Responsibility

CSR to Society is measured with seven items via Turker (2009a). A sample item for CSR to society is, ‘My company participates in activities which aim to protect and improve the quality of the natural environment’ (α = 0.89).

CSR to Customers is measured with four items via Turker (2009a). A sample item for CSR to customers is ‘Our Company provides full and accurate information about its products to its customers’ (α = 0.85); the two-factor model fits significantly as depicted in the CFA results (see Appendix).

Intention to Quit was assessed via Michaels and Spector’s (1982) 4-item scale (α = 0.85). A sample item is, ‘At this time in my career would I want to quit this job if it were possible.’

Results

Table 2 presents the means, descriptive statistics and correlations coefficient of dependent, independent and mediating variables. When the control variables were regressed on intention to quit, we found multicollinearity between organizational tenure and age. We excluded age and included organizational tenure in the regression equations, because we expect employees having longer organizational tenure to be embedded in the organization, thereby affecting the embeddedness more strongly than age.

Table 2.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Inter-correlations for Study Variables

Variables	Means	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Age	37.99	10.87
Gender	0.82	0.39	0.32**
Organizational tenure	12.04	11.17	0.94**	0.25**
City tenure	7.49	9.58	−0.03	−0.02	−0.03
Education	3.70	0.5	−0.12**	−0.1*	−0.14**	−0.05
Ownership	0.50	0.50	0.67**	0.06	0.69**	−0.12**	−0.09
CSR to society			−0.06	0.3	−0.05	−0.01	0.04	0.02
Community JE			0.35**	0.03	0.32**	0.15**	0.01	0.28**	0.11*	0.17**	0.13**	0.31**
Organization JE	3.47	0.91	−0.07	0.02	−0.06	−0.00	0.03	0.00	0.43**	0.43**	0.21**	0.29**
CSR to customer	4.19	0.85	0.11*	0.09*	0.13**	0.06	−0.06	0.14**	0.46**	0.42**	0.30**	0.28**
Intention to quit	2.37	1.10	−0.31**	−0.14**	−0.34**	−0.00	0.08	−0.21**	−0.33**	−0.35**	−0.18**	−0.21**

Notes: n = 501. *p < 0.05 (two-tailed); **p < 0.01(two-tailed).

The hypothesized relationships expressed in the model were tested with a three-stage hierarchical regression analysis. For Hypotheses 1(a) and 1(b) see Table 3; the control variables entered into the prediction model, in the first step, explained a 12 per cent variance in intentions to quit. Organizational tenure with the highest β (β = −0.35, p < 0.001) emerged as the most significant factor in the predicting of intentions to quit. In the second step and the third step, both CSR to society (β = −0.25, p < 0.001) and CSR to customers (β = −0.30, p < 0.001) were found to be significantly and negatively related to intention to quit. The step done above for testing mediation corresponds to the first step in testing mediation following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) framework. Thus, Hypotheses 1(a) and 1(b) were supported.

Table 3.

Results of Mediated Regression Analysis Predicting Intention to Quit

Predictors	Intention to quit
Gender^a	−0.05	−0.04	−0.03	−0.01	−0.02	−0.04	−0.03
Organizational experience^b	−0.35***	−0.39***	−0.35***	−0.33***	−0.35***	−0.38***	−0.34***
City tenure^c	−0.01	−0.01	0.02	0.02	0.01	0.00	0.02
Education	0.03	0.04	0.02	−0.01	−0.01	0.04	0.02
Ownership^d	0.04	0.06	0.07	0.05	0.04	0.07	0.08
CSR to society		−0.25***			−0.12**	−0.24***
CSR to customer			−0.30***	−0.18***			−0.29***
Organization JE				−0.25***	−0.28***
Community JE						−0.04	−0.05
R ²	0.12	0.18	0.21	0.26	0.24	0.19	0.21
Adjusted R²	0.11	0.17	0.20	0.25	0.23	0.18	0.20
F	13.76***	18.57***	21.98***	24.12***	22.49***	16.04***	19.09***

Notes: Standardized regression coefficients are provided; CSR = corporate social responsibility; JE = job embeddedness; n = 501; ^a1 = male, 0 = female; ^b,cin years; ^d0 = private, 1 = public. *p <0.05, **p < 0.01 and ***p < 0.001.

The results depicted in Table 4 explain the results of hierarchical regression analysis for CSR to society and CSR to customers predicting embeddedness, which is also the next step in the process of testing mediation following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) framework. For organization JE, the control variables in step 1 are R² = 0.04. In the first step, the coefficient for gender and education was significant such that males reported greater organization embeddedness and highly qualified employees reported less organization embeddedness. CSR to society and CSR to customers were positively related to organization embeddedness and the models explained a variance of 26 per cent and 28 per cent of the organization embeddedness. The coefficient for CSR to society is β = 0.47, P < 0.001 and for CSR to customers is β = 0.49, P < 0.001.

For community JE, the control variables’ step was R² = 0.10. In the first step, the coefficient for city tenure and ownership was significant such that longer city tenured employees were strongly embedded than less tenured employees and employees with public sector undertaking are embedded in the community more than private sector employees. CSR to society and CSR to customers were positively related to community embeddedness and explained a variance of 19 per cent and 15 per cent of the community embeddedness. The coefficient for CSR to society is β = 0.31, P < 0.001 and for CSR to customers is β = 0.22, P < 0.01. Thus, Hypotheses 2(a) and 2(b) were fully supported.

Table 4.

Results of Mediation Predicting Intention to Quit

Bootstrapping	Direct Effect	Indirect Effect	Boot SE	95% Confidence Interval
Bootstrapping	Direct Effect	Indirect Effect	Boot SE	LLCI	ULCI
CSR customer → organization JE → intention to quit	–.20***	–.09***	.023	–.183	–.068
CSR to society → organization JE → intention to quit	–.01(ns)	–.08***	.021	–.152	–.054
CSR to customer → community JE → intention to quit	–.29***	–.01(ns)	.006	–.034	.002
CSR to society → community JE → intention to quit	–.07(ns)	–.02(ns)	.014	–.068	.002

Notes: CSR = corporate social responsibility, JE = job embeddedness, ns = not significant.

***p <.001.

We used the bootstrap method (Preacher & Hayes, 2008) to test the mediation role of organization JE and community JE. As Preacher and Hayes, 2008 (2001) noted, ‘Bootstrapping is a nonparametric resampling procedure, advocated for testing mediation. It is a computationally intensive method that involves repeated sampling from the data set and estimating the indirect effect in each resampled data set. By repeating this process thousands of times, an empirical approximation of the sampling distribution of ab is built and used to construct confidence intervals for the indirect effect’ (p. 880). We generated 5,000 bootstraps based on the 501 observations with a 95 per cent biascorrected (BC) confidence interval and bootstrapped percentile for indirect effects. We requested bootstrap estimates of indirect, direct and total effects. As shown in Table 4, the bootstrapping results showed that the path coefficient of CSR to society → organization JE → intention to quit and CSR to customer → organization JE → intention to quit is statistically significant. The interval between lower level CI and upper level CI does not include zero, hence we can conclude that CSR to society is completely mediated (as only indirect effect is significant) and CSR to customer is partially mediated (as both direct and indirect effect is significant) by organization JE. The path coefficient of CSR to society → community JE → intention to quit and CSR to customer → community JE → intention to quit is not significant (for details see Table 4). Community embeddedness did not mediate the effects of CSR to society and CSR to customers as hypotheses in the model. Taken together, these results provide partial support for hypothesis 3(a) and 3(b).

Discussion

This study contributes by extending two bodies of literature. First, this study provides an empirical evidence of how organizations can develop employee JE through socially responsible strategies, thereby establishing the relationship that CSR practices enhance JE. Second, this study extends employee turnover and the CSR literature by including two crucial CSR dimensions that influence employee turnover intentions. When an employee perceives to be a part of an organization which likes to give back to the large society, it signals that organizations have values and norms which satisfy individuals’ needs for a meaningful existence. Thus, CSR perceptions enmesh employees with the company and employees work more productively (here, lower intentions to quit) on its behalf.

The study revealed that perceived JE organization mediated the relationship between CSR to society and CSR to customers and intentions to quit, but did not find support for the mediating role of community embeddedness. Future research should focus on community embeddedness, as the study did not find any significant findings related to it.

Control variables such as city tenure were positively related to community embeddedness; this is because when a person resides in the same city for a long time, he/she develops a network on non-work web that includes friends and informal groups (Mitchell et al., 2001). The results show that higher levels of education decrease organization embeddedness. This may be because higher education helps the employee to take the risk of changing a job for potential improvements in his/her career (Tanova and Holtom, 2008). Perhaps, surprising is that the type of organization ownership predicting community embeddedness. A possible explanation might be that employees in Indian private sector banks perceive their work climate to be more authoritarian and tightly controlled (Budhwar and Boyne, 2004) which makes them adhere to the transfer orders. The public sector unit (PSU) employees, on the other hand, can delay accepting the transfer order, and in many cases avoid transfers providing them with an opportunity to reside in a particular community for a longer period. However, to develop a thorough understanding of the above relationship, it is necessary to conduct future empirical research. Finally, the study found organizational tenure to build organizational JE having highest level of β coefficient in predicting intentions to quit.

Managerial Implications

A primary implication of the study is that, at the individual level, JE is influenced by organizations’ commitment towards the CSR activities, which helps in retaining employees. There has to be a commitment from the managers to implement CSR programmes which will minimize the negative impact on the natural environment. They can support the movement of improving the quality of the natural environment either by involving the employees into their company-specific programmes or through involvement of the employees in local charitable causes through donations, hosting or sponsoring events at their facilities or by offering financial donation to a specific cause chosen by the employees. Organizations should emphasize on communicating CSR policies and in particular, external CSR policies such as corporate community policies to employees. Managers can also include employees in designing, selecting and managing the CSR activities of the organization in a way that best suits their needs (Holtom et al., 2006a). Companies can encourage CSR to customers by recognizing those employees who are implementing and promoting CSR to customers by rewarding them as best employees of the organization or by including their contributions in job performance evaluations. Organizations can also promote CSR to customers by advertising about it to its customers, which will make their products more marketable, thereby making employees securely tied to the organization.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

Although the results of this study are promising, some caveats are in order. Common method bias may lead to inflated estimates as data were collected from single informants. We followed Podsakoff and Organ (1986) and adopted scale reordering for minimizing this bias; the survey instrument used in this was structured such that JE and CSR items preceded the intention to quit items and Harman’s one-factor test that showed that nine principal components were extracted, that accounted for 67.77 per cent of the total variance. Further, we analyzed the impact of different forms of CSR on intention to quit, rather than the aggregated CSR, and the different forms related differently to organization and community embeddedness, suggesting that common methods bias in our results is not that severe. Finally, CSR was measured based on employees’ perception, creating a possibility that there can be a difference between the actual involvement level and the perceptions of respondents. Future research should include those employees who are actually involved in CSR activities.

Future research could continue this line of research on organization and community embeddedness and employee retention by examining the effect that JE has on other stakeholders of the organization such as CSR to government, CSR to investors and CSR to employees or other employee-related measures such as productivity. In this study, community JE has failed to influence retention in comparison to organization embeddedness. Future research should focus on developing community embeddedness, as this will help the organizations in garnering the desired results.

Footnotes

Appendix

Factor Structure of Corporate Social Responsibility

Items	Rotated Factor Loadings
	I	II
	Loadings	Loadings
1	0.96	0.24
2	0.80	0.17
3	0.84	0.11
4	0.71	0.26
5	0.73	6.279E−02
6	0.74	0.28
7	0.32	0.64
8	0.15	0.90
9	0.17	0.90
10	0.12	0.82
Eigen values	5.06	1.89
Explained variance	50.62	18.92
Cumulative variance	50.62	69.53

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