Building Employee Relationships Through Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

We explore the role of deeply held beliefs, known as social axioms, in the context of employee–organization relationships. Specifically, we examine how the beliefs identified as social cynicism and reward for application moderate the relationship between employees’ work-related experiences, perceptions of CSR, attitudes, and behavioral intentions toward their firm. Utilizing a sample of 130 retail employees, we find that CSR affects more positively employees low on social cynicism and reduces distrust more so than with cynical employees. Employees exhibiting strong reward for application are less positively affected by CSR, whereas their experiences of other work-related factors are more likely to reduce distrust. Our findings suggest the need for a differentiated view of CSR in the context of employee studies and offer suggestions for future research and management practice.

Keywords

corporate social responsibility social cynicism reward for application beliefs employee studies

Scholars and practitioners agree that a key component of an organization’s competitive advantage and ultimate success relates to its responsibility to employees (Bhattacharya, Sen, & Korschun, 2008). Traditional strategies for demonstrating responsible employee practices and building strong employee relationships include providing attractive wages, good benefits packages, and opportunities for training and promotion within the organization (Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2008; Rynes, Gerhart, & Minette, 2004). In addition, a growing area of interest lies in the potential advantages gained through a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts (Carmeli, Gilat, & Waldman, 2007; Hillenbrand, Money, & Ghobadian, 2013). For example, a study by Kim, Lee, Lee, and Kim (2010) suggests that employees’ participation in CSR activities can have a direct impact on their identification with the firm. Employees’ identification with a firm can then lead to a variety of positive outcomes, including organizational commitment (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994), job satisfaction (Wheeler, Richer, Tokkman, & Sablynski, 2006), and organizational citizenship behaviors (Bergami & Bagozzi, 2000).

Although employees generally react favorably to a firm’s positive initiatives, researchers have also noted inconsistencies in some employees’ responses (e.g., McShane & Cunningham, 2012; Rodrigo & Arenas, 2008). These individual variations leave open a number of important questions. Why do the same inputs (such as a firm’s employee policies and practices or its CSR initiatives) often lead to varied outcomes (including the responses of individual employees)? Which specific employee characteristics contribute to these variations in how employees define, evaluate, and respond to a firm’s initiatives? How can managers address these nuances to nurture their internal stakeholder relationships? Recent theory advanced by Mishina, Block, and Mannor (2012) suggests that perceptions of and responses to a firm’s actions are tempered by socio-cognitive processes, in particular, individuals’ prior beliefs through which new information is then filtered, and the authors call for future inquiry into individual differences within a stakeholder group. Our study addresses this call by delving further into the socio-cognitive literature and suggesting that a likely contributor to the variations among employee stakeholders lies in the moderating impact of their individual-specific beliefs, known as social axioms (SAs).

We contribute to the organizational literature by investigating the underlying theoretical mechanisms that explain and predict employee stakeholders’ diverse responses to the same stimuli. In so doing, we answer calls for more micro-level studies on corporate responsibility in relation to employees (Carmeli et al., 2007), and propose hypotheses to understand the moderating impact of SAs on employee responses to work-related and CSR-related initiatives. From a practical perspective, we also seek to contribute by offering new insights into what has traditionally been viewed as the unforeseeable consequences of a firm’s activities (Money, Hillenbrand, Henseler, & da Camara, 2012). These insights may ultimately lead to improvements in corporate strategic planning and employee management practices.

Theoretical Background

Waddock (2004) defines the broader concept of corporate responsibility as “the degree of (ir)responsibility manifested in a company’s strategies and operating practices as they impact stakeholders and the natural environment day to day” (p. 10). Although this definition invites a wide range of interpretations of company strategies and practices that could affect employee stakeholders, we differentiate between work-related activities, equating to the firm’s day-to-day treatment of employees, and those aimed at achieving broader societal goals, often labeled its CSR efforts. This classification of activities is in line with recent theory advances by Matten and Moon (2008), who offer a distinction between implicit and explicit CSR. Implicit CSR is embedded in the norms, values, and rules of a society and its expectations for corporations as a whole. It is thus often reflected in a company’s workplace environment, including its traditional human resource systems and its performance management practices. As a result, there is considerable overlap between employees’ regular work-related experiences and the notion of implicit CSR. Explicit CSR involves discretionary decisions made by companies that respond to selective societal interests, usually with both social and business gains in mind. These decisions may include initiatives such as corporate donations to charities, community relations, environmental initiatives, employee volunteer programs, or becoming compliant to explicit ethical guidelines and codes of conduct (Ellen, Webb, & Mohr, 2006). Explicit CSR is in line with a long tradition of CSR literature that suggests that firms have a responsibility to society beyond legal obligations and their own economic interest and should be held responsible for those behaviors that affect society as a whole (Carroll, 1979; Wartick & Cochran, 1985; Wood, 1991). We thus build on work by Godfrey and Hatch (2007) and Pirsch, Gupta, and Landreth Grau (2007) to define explicit CSR as actions that appear to further some social good, extend beyond the economic interest of the firm, and are not required by law. We distinguish it from another important aspect of corporate responsibility, that is, the work-related strategies and practices directly linked to employees.

CSR and Employee Relationships

Some scholars suggest that CSR can affect employee relationships positively by enhancing organizational trust (Hansen, Dunford, Boss, Boss, & Angermeier, 2011), compliance (Houghton, Gabel, & Williams, 2009), and commitment (Collier & Esteban, 2007). CSR can also serve to ease recruitment of qualified personnel (Greening & Turban, 2000) as well as promote employee innovation and success in the development of new products (Ahmad, O’Regan, & Ghobadian, 2003). Other benefits include a reduction in negative consequences, such as labor disputes (Hopkins, 2005) and feelings of discomfort or role conflict among workers (Sims & Keon, 2000). Moreover, studies indicate that employees prefer to be associated with organizations that stand for honesty, transparency, and accountability (Luce, Barber, & Hillman, 2001).

In developing a conceptual model of how CSR affects employee–organization relationships, we build on the framework developed by Hillenbrand et al. (2013) to explore how employee experiences and perceptions influence their affective attitudes (such as trust and distrust) and behavioral intentions (such as advocacy and intent to remain with the organization).

We also incorporate employees’ day-to-day work-related experiences to understand how they affect the development of trust, distrust, and behavioral intentions alongside the impact of explicit CSR-related experiences and perceptions. We include a measure of work-related experiences to account for the influence of issues related to work design, training, and compensation on the outcome measures in our model, in line with other studies in the management literature (Greenwood, 2007; Pare & Tremblay, 2007; Whitener, 2001).

Although the proposed framework described above offers a way to understand the impact of a firm’s actions on employee attitudes and behaviors toward the organization, employees do not respond to such efforts in a uniform manner. Prior research suggests that employee attitudes and behaviors may be moderated by a variety of individual characteristics, such as corporate identification (Chong, 2009), personality traits (Glomb, Bhave, Miner, & Wall, 2011), and attributions (Nishii, Lepak, & Schneider, 2008). In a Latin American study, Aqueveque and Encina (2010) report that certain employees are more inclined than others to respond favorably to particular aspects of CSR, based on their underlying cultural beliefs or as a result of the attributions they make for the company’s actions. Given the variations observed among employees, it is imperative to deepen the understanding of individual differences in relation to the impact of CSR on employee–firm relationships.

The Moderating Impact of SAs

SAs are part of a wider category of individually held beliefs. Fishbein and Ajzen (2010) define beliefs as a cognitive association between two concepts, whereby the strength of the belief depends on how the association was formed. Building on this premise, Leung et al. (2002) describe SAs as “generalized beliefs about oneself, the social and physical environment, or the spiritual world, [stated] in the form of an assertion about the relationship between two entities or concepts” (p. 289). Grounded in expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964), we acquire these deeply held SA beliefs naturally through a combination of unique life experiences and the socialization process, which, in turn, is influenced by the cultural context to which one is exposed (Bond, Leung, Au, Tong, de Carrasquel, et al., 2004).

SAs are rooted in an individual’s cultural upbringing and may therefore appear to be similar to the concepts of norms or values, which have been widely studied in the context of understanding cultural differences (e.g., Hofstede, 1984; Schwartz, 1992). Scholars in psychology have examined SAs in relation to a range of established psychometric measures, such as Costa and McCrae’s Five-Factor Inventory (Chen, Fok, Bond, & Matsumoto, 2006), Rotter’s Interpersonal Trust Scale and Locus of Control Scale (Singelis, Hubbard, Her, & An, 2003), and Schwartz’s Values Survey (Leung et al., 2007). Although some correlation has been found between SAs and these measures, they remain largely independent concepts with distinct characteristics. Norms tend to be interpreted at the aggregate societal level in terms of the shared expectations of reference groups (Stankov, 2007). Values, by contrast, are generally stated as individual endorsements that reflect what is good or bad, important or unimportant, desirable or undesirable. SAs differ from norms and values in that they represent an assertion about a causal or a correlational relationship between two entities (Bond, Leung, Au, Tong, & Chemonges-Nielson, 2004; Bond, Leung, Au, Tong, de Carrasquel, et al., 2004). For example, a value may be stated as, “It is important to work hard,” whereas an SA would elaborate on this statement by claiming, “Hard work leads to positive outcomes.” The latter statement implies a relationship between hard work and some form of reward, thereby offering a more concrete interpretation of how one object relates to another. Whereas SA research is a relatively recent field of study, there is an emerging consensus among scholars that it plays a critical role in predicting human perception, attitudes, and behavior in a range of social contexts and explains often overlooked individual differences arising from human beliefs (Bond, 2005; Bond, Leung, Au, Tong, & Chemonges-Nielson, 2004; Singelis et al., 2003). As work-related experiences, including those of a CSR nature, form part of one’s social world, it is reasonable to expect that an individual’s SA beliefs may moderate the effects of these experiences.

As individuals have a diverse range of socio-cultural and life experiences, the depth to which SAs are held varies from one individual to another. As a result, they can be usefully investigated independently of one another as discrete moderator variables, with either high or low belief levels (Leung & Bond, 2009). Thus, each SA may account for differences in the strength of path links between work-related or CSR-related experiences of employees and subsequent outcomes. Despite their potential to be used as a tool for exploring the varied responses of individual employees, SAs have yet to be applied in a CSR–employee response context.

Leung et al.’s (2002) development of the SA construct was intended to offer a cognitive interpretation of how individuals relate to others and to their environment as well as to examine the relevance of beliefs in different social contexts (Leung & Bond, 2004). Incorporating reviews of more than 300 belief scales as well as studies involving multiple cultures and continents, they identified five SA dimensions: social cynicism, fate control, religiosity, reward for application, and social complexity. Although each of these dimensions has the potential to affect a range of human perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in a workplace context, two SA dimensions are of particular relevance in the context of CSR and employee relationships: social cynicism, the belief that institutions and people in positions of power cannot be trusted, and reward for application, the belief that hard work and effort pays off in the long run. We focus on social cynicism and reward for application in this study, as from an organizational management perspective, it is reasonable to assume that employees who do not hold cynical beliefs would be more desirable from a hiring perspective. The same could be said about employees who hold beliefs that hard work will result in positive outcomes. In the following paragraphs, we examine these two SA dimensions in more depth and consider how they may moderate the impact of experiences of explicit CSR and perceptions of CSR alongside other work-related experiences on employee attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Social cynicism

Studies examining the relationship between beliefs, values, and personality characteristics suggest that individuals who report having cynical beliefs are also likely to be distrustful of others (Singelis et al., 2003), meaner and less helpful (Chen, Bond, & Cheung, 2006), and exhibit an external locus of control (Singelis et al., 2003). While the impact of social cynicism among employees in the context of CSR remains unexplored, previous research has examined this belief dimension to better understand employee responses in related workplace contexts. For example, researchers have identified cynicism as a useful predictor of employee commitment (Gelade, Dobson, & Gilbert, 2006; Remo & Kwantes, 2009), of conflict management style preferences (Bond, Leung, Au, Tong, & Chemonges-Nielson, 2004), of organizational change resistance (Qian and Daniels, 2008), and for understanding attitudes related to organizational citizenship behavior (Kwantes & Karam, 2009). Interestingly, Andersson and Bateman (1997) found that while employees who exhibited high levels of cynicism tended to be less inclined to engage in organizational citizenship activities, they were also less inclined to comply with management requests to perform unethical behaviors. Hence, the nature of the relationship between social cynicism and CSR may require further consideration to understand its impact in specific contexts.

Hypothesis 1: Social cynicism moderates the relationship between (a) employee work-related experiences, and their ensuing attitudes (trust and distrust) and behavioral intentions, (b) experiences of explicit CSR of the firm, perceptions of CSR, and their ensuing attitudes (trust and distrust) and behavioral intentions.

Reward for application

Individuals with high belief levels in reward for application maintain that effort and hard work will bring about long-term rewards (Leung et al., 2002). Not surprisingly, such individuals have been found to possess high levels of conscientiousness (Chen, Fok, et al., 2006) and an internal locus of control (Chen, Bond, & Cheung, 2006). Furthermore, Leung et al. (2007) found an inverse relationship between reward for application and hedonistic tendencies, as measured by Schwartz’s (1992) values inventory, suggesting individuals who exhibit strong beliefs in reward for application are also focused on achieving personal success through work rather than on pleasure-seeking activities.

According to Hui and Hui (2009), reward for application relates closely to several prosocial values, including respect and equity. As a result, individuals who demonstrate strong reward for application tendencies also tend to respond more favorably to a firm’s positive work-related and CSR-related initiatives, compared with their low reward for application counterparts. Another related concept found in the management literature is participation effort, defined as the amount of effort or energy invested in a particular behavior (Ellen et al., 2006). Studies suggest that individuals who become directly engaged in a firm’s CSR initiatives are not only more likely to develop positive firm associations, but they also tend to view these prosocial activities as a demonstration of significant effort and initiative on the part of the firm and thereby deem the firm worthy of their trust and commitment (Bhattacharya et al., 2008).

In the organizational management context, Remo and Kwantes (2009) found reward for application to be a positive predictor of organizational commitment among employees, though only in relation to human resource policies designed to facilitate career development. This finding suggests that high reward for application employees focus on and respond more positively to personal career advancement opportunities. In the context of organizational citizenship behaviors, Kwantes, Kuo, and Towson (2008) reported employees with high levels of reward for application who engage in volunteerism are more inclined to perceive their actions as in-role rather than extra-role, perhaps because they view these “extra” activities as contributing to their performance appraisals and therefore are likely to be rewarded in the long run (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). However, in a CSR context, it is not clear whether these same employees, when responding to the activities of the firm rather than to their own actions, are likely to respond as positively to the firm as those who exhibit low reward for application tendencies, as there is no direct personal benefit to them.

Hypothesis 2: Reward for application moderates the relationship between (a) employee work-related experiences, and their ensuing attitudes (trust and distrust) and behavioral intentions, (b) experiences of explicit CSR of the firm, perceptions of CSR, and their ensuing attitudes (trust and distrust) and behavioral intentions.

The proposed model is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model for understanding CSR in the context of employee–organization relationships.

Method

Participants and Procedure

The participating firm is a well-established, Canadian retailer whose history stretches back to the early 20th century. The retailer has 33 locations across the country, and has recently developed an e-commerce site to establish an international presence. The senior management team demonstrates a proactive commitment to CSR through ongoing support for employee volunteer programs, environmental initiatives, and established partnerships with youth agencies and government agencies involved in community-serving projects. The selection of an organization within the retail industry, while not a requirement for the purpose of this research, provides useful insights to a growing sector of the Canadian economy that represents 16% of domestic jobs (Simmons & Kamikihara, 2009) and contributes approximately Can$75 billion to annual gross domestic product (Industry Canada, 2012).

With management’s permission, an email explaining the nature of the project was sent to all 420 employees with a link to an online survey. Employees were informed that the research project was university-sponsored and that the company would receive only summary statistics of aggregated data. A total of 130 employees consented to participate, representing a 31% response rate, comparable with similar studies in management literature (Baruch, 1999). Employee ages ranged from 19 to 67 with a mean of 37 years, and 58% were male. More than 90% of respondents lived and worked in Ontario, which is where the majority (27) of the company’s outlets and its corporate headquarters is located.

Measures

The development of the survey instrument was based on work by Rossiter (2002). We followed suggestions by Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, and Podsakoff (2003) to address issues related to common method bias through the study design, including taking steps to reduce respondent evaluation apprehension, ensuring anonymity of answers, and incorporating reverse scored items in the final instrument. In addition, Harman’s single-factor test revealed distinct factors in the unrotated factor solution. Scales for measurement of constructs were sourced from literature and pre-tested with employees to ensure they effectively represented the context of the participating retailer and its workers. This procedure led to inclusion of six reflective and two formative scales in the final instrument, all of which utilized a 7-point Likert-type scale. A brief description of each scale is provided below. Refer the appendix for the full list of scale items.

Reflective scales

Employee perception of CSR is operationalized based on Fombrun, Gardberg, and Sever’s (2000) widely used three-item measure, which examines the extent to which employees agree or disagree that they perceive the retailer to “support good causes,” “be environmentally responsible,” and “maintain high standards in the way it treats people.”

The independent constructs of trust and distrust are operationalized based on Cho (2006). In the case of trust, the construct includes three items measuring the extent to which employees agree or disagree that the retailer “operates its business in a dependable manner,” “is responsible when dealing with employees,” and “promotes employees’ benefits as well as its own,” Distrust is represented by a four-item measure to identify employees’ feelings of the extent, for example, to which their employer “will take advantage of employees’ vulnerability” and “deals with employees in a deceptive way,”

The construct of behavioral intentions, based on the established scale developed by Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979) as well as more recent adaptations used by MacMillan, Money, Downing, and Hillenbrand (2004) and Whitener (2001), is operationalized as employees’ future commitment (e.g., willingness to maintain the relationship in the long run) and advocacy behaviors (e.g., would recommend the firm as a good employer). While this 13-item construct is comprised of multiple theorized dimensions, prior research suggests considerable overlap exists between them (Hillenbrand et al., 2013).

The two SA dimensions are measured following suggestions offered by Leung et al. (2002). The extent to which individuals believe or disbelieve in social cynicism is measured using items such as “Powerful people tend to exploit others” and “Kind-hearted people are easily bullied.” Items measuring reward for application include “People will succeed if they really try” and “Good deeds will be rewarded, and bad deeds will be punished.”

Formative scales

Employee experiences of explicit CSR relate to the ways in which an organization treats its various stakeholders. Seven items adapted from Hillenbrand et al. (2013) were used to measure employees’ experiences of explicit CSR of the firm, including the extent to which employees agreed or disagreed that the firm “cares about its customers” and “puts something back into local communities.”

Measures to represent employee work-related experiences, such as work design, benefits, and training, are based on measures in other employee studies (Hillenbrand et al., 2013; Whitener, 2001), including employee experiences that the firm “rewards them fairly for their work,” and “provides opportunities for self-development.”

Analysis

A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach using SmartPLS (Ringle, Wende, & Will, 2005) was adopted to examine the relationships among the study constructs, mainly due to the existence of both reflective and formative indicators (Chin, 1998). Following the procedure outlined by Hair, Ringle, and Sarstedt (2011), a two-stage assessment of the proposed model was undertaken before testing for moderating impacts of social cynicism and reward for application.

Stage 1 assessed validity and reliability of the measurement model. For reflective indicators, this assessment refers to evaluation of composite reliabilities against the expected score of .7 (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). It also refers to evaluation of convergent validity through average variance extracted (AVE), expected to be at least 0.5, and evaluation of discriminant validity through indicator cross-loadings and the Fornell–Larcker criterion, which suggests a latent construct should share a greater level of variance with its associated indicators than with any other latent variable present in the model (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). For formative indicators, assessment of the measurement model included testing for significance of the indicators’ weight coefficients, accomplished through bootstrapping, as well as testing for significance of the indicators’ loadings. Together, these tests provided a measure of each indicator’s relative usefulness in explaining the latent construct (Cenfetelli & Bassellier, 2009).

Stage 2 assessed the structural model. We examined the following four areas: (a) R² values for each latent variable in the model (Chin, 1998); (b) sign, magnitude, and significance of path coefficients (Henseler, Ringle, & Sinkovics, 2009); (c) effect size (f²) of predictor variables (Cohen, 1988); and (d) predictive relevance of the model (Q²), using blindfolding (a sample reuse estimation technique that excludes every dth data point to predict the excluded portions of the data) to obtain cross-validated redundancy measures described by Stone (1974) and Geisser (1974).

To test for moderating effects of the social cynicism and reward for application dimensions, we began by dividing the summated scale for each dimension at its mean value to create a high and low group, respectively. We then followed suggestions offered by Henseler et al. (2009) to conduct group comparisons with the dichotomized moderators. The path coefficients for high and low subsamples were compared using bootstrap analysis and significant differences identified by pairwise t tests were interpreted as moderating effects. While the division of the sample may be a drawback of this method (Eberl, 2010), the approach is nevertheless well-suited for our study, as it allows for testing of overall model effects, rather than only isolated effects of specific paths. The illustrated approach is also deemed appropriate, as the alternative approach of creating interaction terms can be problematic when investigating the impact of multiple exogenous and endogenous variables within a model (Baron & Kenny, 1986).

Results

Results of the measurement model analysis revealed significant (p < .01) loadings for all reflective indicators. However, three items fell below the threshold of .7 and were removed from subsequent analysis. All remaining items showed satisfactory loadings ranging from .733 to .921, and composite reliability scores from .868 to .975 (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). The AVE values of reflective scales ranged between 0.686 and 0.749, thereby exceeding minimum requirements of 0.5 (Hair et al., 2011). Discriminant validity was deemed satisfactory, as each latent construct’s AVE emerged greater than its highest squared correlation with any other latent construct in the model, as shown in Table 1. Also, the analysis of cross-loadings revealed higher loadings for a given indicator on its associated latent construct than for any other constructs in the model. All but 1 of the 16 formative indicators were retained in the model as the assessment of weights and loadings confirmed all were significant on at least one if not both criteria. The one item removed had a variance inflation factor (VIF) value outside of the acceptable range of 5 or less (Hair et al., 2011).

Table 1.

Descriptive Information and Latent Variable Correlation Matrix.

Latent variables	M ^a	SD	Composite reliability	Experiences of explicit CSR	Work-related experiences	Perceptions of CSR	Trust	Distrust	Behavioral intentions
Experiences of explicit CSR	5.84	0.88	(formative)	(formative)
Work-related experiences	5.36	1.11	(formative)	.705	(formative)
Perceptions of CSR	5.81	0.90	.868	.756	.478	.828^b
Trust	5.99	0.70	.872	.620	.532	.635	.835^b
Distrust	1.80	0.94	.909	−.576	−.473	−.495	−.640	.845^b
Behavioral intentions	6.13	0.98	.975	.761	.657	.620	.692	−.673	.866^b

Note. CSR = corporate social responsibility; AVE = average variance extracted.

Mean scores for each summated scale are based on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 to 7.

Values represent square-root of AVE.

Results of the structural model revealed moderate (0.32) to substantial (0.47-0.57) effect sizes for endogenous latent variables (Chin, 1998). According to Henseler et al. (2009), moderate R² values are acceptable when the inner path’s endogenous latent variables are explained by only a small number (e.g., one or two) of exogenous latent variables, as was the case in this study. Analysis of path coefficients revealed that all seven relationships were supported at p < .01, as shown in Figure 2. Assessment of the model’s explanatory power utilizing f² tests suggested moderate to large effect sizes of predictor variables (Chin, 1998). Application of the sample reuse measure Q² confirmed predictive relevance of all exogenous constructs on their related endogenous constructs.

Figure 2.

R² values and path coefficients for the overall model.

Having established reliability, validity, and predictive relevance of the overall model, we proceeded with an examination of the moderating impacts of social cynicism and reward for application. Results of an initial exploratory factor analysis confirmed two dimensions analogous to the conceptual development of the original theoretical dimensions found within the SA construct (Leung et al., 2002). Subsequent reliability tests led to the exclusion of one item, resulting in a four-item scale of social cynicism and a five-item scale of reward for application (see the appendix for measures). Finally, group comparison analysis revealed significant group differences for both dimensions. Table 2 provides a summary of the results.

Table 2.

Group Differences in Path Coefficients.

	Social cynicism			Reward for application
Model paths	b low	b high	p	b low	b high	p
Experiences of explicit CSR → Perceptions of CSR	0.871	0.681	***	0.772	0.804
Work-related experiences → Trust	0.461	0.283		0.446	0.226	*
Work-related experiences → Distrust	−0.374	−0.489		−0.277	−0.539	*
Perceptions of CSR → Trust	0.358	0.452		0.480	0.459
Perceptions of CSR → Distrust	−0.431	−0.061	**	−0.415	−0.179	*
Trust → Behavioral intentions	0.410	0.464		0.453	0.381
Distrust → Behavioral intentions	−0.519	−0.310		−0.386	−0.379

Note. CSR = corporate social responsibility.

p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

Significant differences exist in two path linkages between employees identified as either high or low in social cynicism: from experiences of explicit CSR of the firm to perceptions of CSR (β_low = .87, β_high = .68, p < .01) and from perceptions of CSR to distrust (β_low = −.43, β_high = −.06, p < .05). These findings provide partial support for Hypothesis 1b, but not for Hypothesis 1a.

The results further revealed significant differences in path linkages between employees identified as high and low in beliefs about reward for application from work-related experiences to trust (β_low = .45, β_high = .23, p < .1), and from work-related experiences to distrust (β_low = −.28, β_high = −.54, p < .1), thereby partially supporting Hypothesis 2a. Finally, significant differences in high versus low reward for application employees existed in the path from perceptions of CSR to distrust (β_low = −.42, β_high = −.18, p < .1). Hence, Hypothesis 2b is partially supported.

Discussion

The empirical data support the validity and predictive relevance of the core research model used to explore how work-related experiences, experiences of explicit CSR of the firm, and perceptions of CSR affect employee trust, distrust, and behavioral intentions toward an organization. This model is used as the foundation for exploring the role of SAs as moderators of the links within the model. Our overall findings suggest that employee beliefs in relation to social cynicism and reward for application have a moderating impact within the model, though not on all identified paths as originally hypothesized. The moderating effects of each axiom operate in different ways and on different links, the nature of which are now examined.

Social Cynicism

The results support our first hypothesis that social cynicism moderates some of the relationships in the research model. Specifically, the findings suggest that perceptions of CSR play a greater role in reducing distrust among employees who exhibit low levels of social cynicism. These employees seem to respond more positively overall to a firm’s socially responsible activities, not only giving the firm credit for its efforts but also perhaps being less suspicious of its motivations (Godfrey, 2005). The impact of social cynicism as a moderator is particularly striking when considering that the link between perceptions of CSR and reduced employee distrust is only significant for the low, and not the high, social cynicism group. Despite the participating firm having a history of engagement in CSR, high social cynicism employees remain indifferent in terms of mitigating distrust.

It is also interesting to contrast the findings related to employee trust and distrust. For high and low cynics alike, positive work-related experiences are found to increase employee trust and reduce distrust, suggesting that employees tend to respond in a consistent and similar manner when it comes to experiences directly related to their personal work environment.

When it comes to examining how experiences of explicit CSR of the firm affect employee perceptions of CSR, our findings suggest that experiences of explicit CSR of the firm are significantly stronger drivers for low cynics. In other words, employees with low levels of social cynicism seem to rely more on explicit CSR of firms than their high social cynicism counterparts in deriving their perceptions of CSR.

These findings provide managers with important evidence that the firm’s socially responsible activities that reach out to customers and communities will positively affect less cynical employees, without having a negative impact on more cynical employees. So, although high and low cynics alike respond favorably to a broad range of positive experiences (i.e., both work-related and explicit CSR), it seems high cynics are somewhat less strongly influenced by explicit CSR experiences that bear little relevance to their immediate work environment.

Reward for Application

Our results also confirm the second hypothesis that reward for application moderates some of the relationships in the research model. As described earlier, individuals who exhibit high levels of reward for application believe hard work and effort will be rewarded in the long term (Leung & Bond, 2004). Our findings sit well with this description in that reward for application moderates both links in the model that are concerned with traditional work-related experiences of employees, rather than the link for experiences of explicit CSR of the firm. This lends additional credence to the notion that CSR experiences are indeed a distinct category of experiences for employees, and that reward for application is focused largely on the self or one’s personal efforts in relation to desired outcomes.

Our findings indicate that work-related experiences play a larger role in reducing distrust among high reward for application employees compared with their low reward for application counterparts. This suggests employees who believe that they will be rewarded for their efforts are less likely to distrust the organization when they are working in a positive environment. However, when exposed to negative work-related experiences, these same employees would also likely take greater exception and become even more distrustful of their employer than would low reward for application employees.

Consequently, with regard to reducing distrust, defined as the active expectation that the employee will be harmed by the firm, high reward for application employees are more likely to be affected by positive work-related experiences because they have stronger expectations of not being harmed in the future. Those employees who possess lower reward for application beliefs are less likely to reduce their expectations of future harm as a consequence of positive self-related experiences.

Our final findings related to the moderating effects of reward for application appear to be somewhat counter-intuitive at first glance. They suggest that employee perceptions of CSR have a significantly larger impact on reducing distrust among low reward for application individuals compared with high reward for application employees. One explanation for this finding is that the low reward for application group do not believe they will be rewarded fairly for their efforts. With such a starting position, rewards could be seen to flow by chance or circumstance. However, it also seems reasonable that certain individuals or firms are consistently more likely to either provide rewards or to harm others, whether deservedly. If an organization engages in socially responsible activities, it may be viewed as an entity that is well-intentioned, philanthropic, and giving toward its stakeholders. As such it is likely to be seen as acting in less harmful ways toward employees—a conclusion that is borne out by the fact that CSR reduces distrust for both high and low reward for application groups. CSR could have a more substantive impact on distrust in the low reward for application group because, believing that they will not always get what they deserve, they are less likely to be harmed by a firm that engages in social responsibility because this firm is generally less likely to harm anyone.

In this case, by engaging in CSR, the firm has demonstrated that it can act caringly for community stakeholders, regardless of whether their efforts are rewarded in a business or financial sense. High reward for application individuals are perhaps less affected by this form of CSR, because they may be more likely to believe that the firm should focus on how its efforts will result in measurable outcomes, as this is how success is defined in a business context.

Practical Implications for Personnel Management

Our study offers several useful implications for practice. First, it provides much-needed evidence that individual differences exist in how employees respond to the CSR activities of firms, and establishes social cynicism and reward for application as useful ways to understand the nuances in these responses. Thus, perhaps the most useful contribution of our study for the day-to-day management of employees is the application of SAs as a tool for managers to anticipate the range of ways in which employees could respond to a particular experience. For example, if a manager understands that cynical employees are affected more by benefits that relate to them directly than they are by CSR initiatives that relate more to other stakeholders, they can adopt a more transactional approach with these employees. At the same time, they may opt for a more transformational approach with less cynical employees by embracing a wider set of social issues.

In practical terms, firms can utilize the SA instrument to identify departments, divisions, or regions that vary according to social cynicism and reward for application. This information could be applied to develop differentiated relationship-building strategies that are guided to increase factors such as employee engagement. Data-driven insights of this nature can allow managers to use resources more effectively and make strategic choices in terms of the impact that actions are likely to have on employee responses.

Multinational organizations, or organizations wishing to expand internationally, may also benefit from previous research suggesting that both social cynicism and reward for application vary across national cultures. For example, in the Canadian context in which this study was conducted, social cynicism tends to be relatively low within the general population and reward for application in the moderate to high range when compared with other nations such as Germany, which exhibits moderate to high levels of social cynicism, or Britain, whose population tends to have moderate to low levels of reward for application (Leung & Bond, 2004). If multinational firms were to incorporate measures of social cynicism and reward for application in their employee surveys, these measures would provide a further tool to explore the heterogeneity of employees in conjunction with additional demographic variables. As a result, an opportunity exists to develop more effective regional strategies to maximize employee support for the firm.

Our findings also add to the growing body of evidence that suggests both work-related and CSR-related experiences are important in developing positive employee–organization relationships (Hillenbrand et al., 2013). In the employee context, it is interesting to reflect on the fundamental importance of work-related experiences for all employees, with explicit CSR-related experiences becoming more critical for less cynical employees and employees less driven by reward for application. The results provide organizations with valuable evidence to justify social responsibility programs and the impact that outreach programs ultimately have on employee engagement independently of the impact of their wider work-related experiences.

Limitations and Areas for Future Research

Our study has limitations that should be considered when developing future research. It has been conducted from the perspective of employees of a single retailer in a Canadian context, with two out of several possible SAs. When testing the impact of SAs on organization–employee relationships in future, it may be useful to consider other dimensions such as types of employees, stakeholders, firms, industries, and cultural contexts. As a first step, the study could be replicated using employees of other firms in a retail context to explore whether the results are consistent within this industry and stakeholder group. Thereafter, other opportunities may be considered to adapt and apply this area of research in other industries and/or with other stakeholder groups (e.g., customers, community partners, or members of the media). As well, there may be certain contexts whereby other SA dimensions, such as social complexity, fate control, and religiosity would be meaningfully considered. For example, in the case of social complexity, where individuals vary in their belief that several solutions can exist for a given problem, it could be useful to explore whether different approaches to CSR are met with varying levels of acceptance in relation to a belief in social complexity.

Furthermore, our study focuses on a long-established retailer with a positive reputation for CSR. It would be useful to test the model across a range of firms based on their relative ages and with varying levels of CSR engagement. This approach would provide a more representative range of responses with respect to employee experiences and outcomes. The inclusion of negative corporate examples would provide additional insights into the impact of how explicit CSR-related experiences may adversely affect employee responses. Such results may also have useful insights for employee–customer interaction in a service setting.

Finally, although the moderating effects of reward for application reveal several noteworthy differences in employee outcomes within the model, some caution should be exercised when interpreting these results, as they do not meet traditional levels of statistical significance. Nevertheless, they provide evidence of the potential merit of SAs as a useful approach to differentiate employee responses to a company’s actions. In addition, it would be useful in future studies to test the moderators simultaneously, an option that our current method did not allow. Repetition of this study utilizing a larger sample size may provide more information regarding reliable interpretation of the results.

Conclusion

In this study, we respond to calls for a deeper understanding of how the CSR activities of firms affect employees. More specifically, we distinguish between the roles of work-related and explicit CSR-related experiences in driving employee relationships, as well as through critical exploration of how employee responses are moderated by beliefs of social cynicism and reward for application. We build on an established conceptual model of CSR to explore the impact of two SA dimensions on employee–organization relationships and find significant differences between individuals with low and high belief levels of social cynicism and reward for application. Importantly, for managers and organizations, we provide insights into the underlying reasons why employees may respond differently to the same CSR-related experiences. The study provides relevant new insights into the impact of CSR on employee relationships with the firm as well as the moderating role of individual beliefs in this context, especially at a time when employees increasingly express a desire to be treated as unique individuals, and while firms struggle to understand the diverse range of expectations placed on them (Preuss, Haunschild, & Matten, 2009). Given the significant role that SAs play in influencing decision making and behavior, we provide fertile ground for future management research and practice.

Footnotes

Appendix

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) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Bettina West is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, where she teaches courses in marketing and research methods. Her research interests include topics related to corporate reputation, relationship management, social responsibility, and online communication.

Carola Hillenbrand is Professor of Organisational Psychology at Henley Business School and Academic Director at the John Madejski Centre for Reputation (JMCR). Carola’s research aligns the subjects of responsibility, relationships and resilience with human decision-making, behaviours and emotions. She collaborates with faculty in psychology, governance and leadership to develop multidisciplinary, cross-university and international programmes related to long-term behavioural change.

Kevin Money is the Director of The John Madejski Centre for Reputation. He teaches on the MBA programme and Henley’s flagship Advanced Management Programme in areas of Reputation, Responsibility, Teams and Leadership. Kevin is a Chartered Psychologist, a member of International Association of Business and Society and Academic Board Member of The European Association of Business in Society. He is also a former editor of the Journal of General Management and Manager Update and has acted as a consultant to major companies and voluntary organisations in the UK, USA and South Africa.

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