Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Engagement: Enabling Employees to Employ More of Their Whole Selves at Work

Abstract

Research at the individual level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been growing rapidly. Yet we still lack a more complete understanding of why and how individuals (i.e., employees) are affected by CSR. This study contributes to that gap by exploring the relationship between CSR and employee engagement. Moreover, in order to address the problem of low levels of employee engagement in the workplace, CSR is proposed and tested as a pathway for engaging a significant part of the workforce. Building on engagement theory, a model is tested in which CSR enables employees to bring more of their whole selves to work, which results in employees being more engaged. Data from 15,184 employees in a large professional service firm in the USA was analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that authenticity (i.e., being able to show one’s whole self at work) positively and significantly mediates the relationship between CSR and employee engagement. However, the other mediator tested in this study, perceived organizational support (POS; i.e., direct benefits to the employee), did not significantly mediate the relationship. In addition, results of moderated mediation suggest that when CSR is extra-role (i.e., not embedded in one’s job design such as volunteering), it weakens the relationship between CSR and employee engagement. Moreover, post hoc analyses show that even when POS is controlled for, authenticity has an impact above and beyond POS on employee engagement. These results extend prior CSR literature which has often been top–down and has focused on how employees will be positively affected by what the organization can give them (e.g., POS). Rather, a bottom–up approach might reveal that the more that employees can give of their whole selves, the more engaged they might be at work.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
published: 31 May 2016
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00796
Edited by:
Radha R. Sharma,
Management Development Institute,
India
Reviewed by:
Latha Poonamallee,
Michigan Technological University,
USA
Daniel Korschun,
Drexel University, USA
*Correspondence:
Ante Glavas
ante.glavas@kedgebs.com
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 24 December 2015
Accepted: 11 May 2016
Published: 31 May 2016
Citation:
Glavas A (2016) Corporate Social
Responsibility and Employee
Engagement: Enabling Employees
to Employ More of Their Whole Selves
at Work. Front. Psychol. 7:796.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00796
Corporate Social Responsibility and
Employee Engagement: Enabling
Employees to Employ More of Their
Whole Selves at Work
Ante Glavas*
Department of Strategy, Sustainability, and Entrepreneurship, Kedge Business School, Marseille, France
Research at the individual level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been growing
rapidly. Yet we still lack a more complete understanding of why and how individuals (i.e.,
employees) are affected by CSR. This study contributes to that gap by exploring the
relationship between CSR and employee engagement. Moreover, in order to address
the problem of low levels of employee engagement in the workplace, CSR is proposed
and tested as a pathway for engaging a significant part of the workforce. Building on
engagement theory, a model is tested in which CSR enables employees to bring more
of their whole selves to work, which results in employees being more engaged. Data
from 15,184 employees in a large professional service firm in the USA was analyzed
using structural equation modeling. Results show that authenticity (i.e., being able to
show one’s whole self at work) positively and significantly mediates the relationship
between CSR and employee engagement. However, the other mediator tested in this
study, perceived organizational support (POS; i.e., direct benefits to the employee), did
not significantly mediate the relationship. In addition, results of moderated mediation
suggest that when CSR is extra-role (i.e., not embedded in one’s job design such as
volunteering), it weakens the relationship between CSR and employee engagement.
Moreover, post hoc analyses show that even when POS is controlled for, authenticity
has an impact above and beyond POS on employee engagement. These results extend
prior CSR literature which has often been top–down and has focused on how employees
will be positively affected by what the organization can give them (e.g., POS). Rather, a
bottom–up approach might reveal that the more that employees can give of their whole
selves, the more engaged they might be at work.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility, engagement, organizational psychology, meaningfulness, perceived
organizational support, sustainability
INTRODUCTION
With studies such as that of Gallup (2013) showing that only 13% of employees are engaged
worldwide, engagement is among the lowest it has ever been. On the one hand, employee
engagement is a major concern for organizations—just in the USA alone, it is estimated the USA
economy loses an estimated 450 to 550 billion USD annually due to decreased productivity from
disengaged employees (Gallup, 2013). On the other hand, the lack of employee engagement is also
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Glavas CSR and the Whole Self
a broader societal issue in that employees are spending more and
more time at work, yet if work is not meaningful, it can negatively
affect employee well-being (Hulin, 2014). For example, a study
by Diener and colleagues (Time, 2005) found that work is not
even among the top eight sources of satisfaction in life—a key
dimension of subjective well-being.
In parallel, there is a counter-trend emerging in a portion
of the workforce in that employees are increasingly engaged at
work due to corporate social responsibility (CSR). For example,
at Walmart, a company widely criticized for its work conditions,
CSR became the main source of employee engagement (Glavas,
2012). One of the initiatives was a Personal Sustainability Plan in
which each employee crafted a minimum of one major change
they would undertake in order to make their life and work more
sustainable—in the end, over 500,000 employees voluntarily
participated in CSR initiatives, which also resulted in 35,000
new business solutions that benefitted both the planet and the
company (Saatchi and Saatchi S, 2014)1. Therefore, scholars have
recently begun exploring the CSR–engagement relationship, with
studies finding a positive and significant relationship between
CSR and employee engagement (e.g., Glavas and Piderit, 2009;
Caligiuri et al., 2013). Yet, little is known about why, how, and
when employees are engaged by CSR (Glavas, 2016).
Therefore, a theoretical model is tested in this study that is
built on engagement theory, which puts forward that the more
an individual can show of their whole selves at work, the more
they will be engaged (Kahn, 1990;Rich et al., 2010). Two critical
engagement factors are tested in this study, which are perceived
organizational support (POS) and the ability to be oneself (i.e.,
authenticity). Prior literature has often focused on employees
benefitting from CSR due to the support they will receive (i.e.,
POS), because it is proposed that companies higher in CSR will
be fairer companies and thus treat their employees more fairly
(Cropanzano and Rupp, 2008). This study empirically tests the
proposed CSR–POS relationship and goes one step further to
explore whether employee perceptions of CSR enable them to
live out more of their whole selves (i.e., authenticity) at work.
In addition, moderated mediation was explored—specifically,
whether the relationship between authenticity and engagement is
moderated by extra-role involvement in CSR (i.e., volunteering).
Although extra-role involvement in CSR might positively affect
employees, perhaps too much extra-role involvement in CSR is
not a good thing and might be perceived as taking away time from
work. To clarify because volunteering—which is used to measure
extra-role involvement in this study—has many different forms,
for purposes of this study, volunteering is defined as a corporate-
sponsored activity of employee involvement in the community
and these activities can be initiated by either the employer or
employee (Pajo and Lee, 2011).
This study makes the following contributions. It is the
first study, based on my review of the literature, to explore
the underlying mechanisms (i.e., mediators) between CSR and
employee engagement. Second, by unpacking the relationship
between CSR and engagement, both positive and negative effects
1http://cdn.corporate.walmart.com/cd/4e/83b19cf8481392311929c7fbf315/r_1363
.pdf
are uncovered. Results suggest that when CSR is embedded, it will
more positively affect employees. Third, this is also the first study,
to my knowledge, to empirically explore the relationship between
CSR and authenticity, finding that CSR enables employees to
show more of their whole selves at work. Finally, this study
answers the call of Aguinis and Glavas (2012) for more micro-
level research on CSR as well as models that include multiple
mediators.
PRIOR RESEARCH ON CSR AND
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Because the extant CSR literature is broad and diverse, which
can lead to confusion regarding the definition of CSR (Peloza,
2009), I define CSR upfront. Based on the definition of Aguinis
(2011) and adopted by others (e.g., Rupp, 2011;Rupp et al., 2011;
Bauman and Skitka, 2012;El Akremi et al., 2015) CSR is defined
as: “context-specific organizational actions and policies that take
into account stakeholders’ expectations and the triple bottom line
of economic, social, and environmental performance” (Aguinis,
2011, p. 855). CSR is also relevant for a study on engaging the
whole self because it is tied to one’s self-concept—as Korschun
et al. (2014, p. 24) explain, CSR “reflects a core belief rather than
an attitude about a particular social issue.”
Research on CSR and employee engagement is relatively
nascent, but there are a few studies that establish that there is
a positive relationship between CSR and employee engagement.
Glavas and Piderit (2009) found that the effect on employee
engagement resulting from positive employee perceptions of
CSR was strengthened by importance of CSR to the employee.
Caligiuri et al. (2013) also found a positive relationship between
CSR and employee engagement; moreover, the authors found a
three-way interaction of project meaningfulness, social support,
and availability of resources on employee engagement. Glavas
(2012) proposed that a reason for the positive relationship
between CSR and engagement is that employees find greater
meaningfulness and values congruence at work. Specifically, CSR
allows for companies to go beyond formal values statements
which tend to be words on paper to actually living out these
values. This in turn sends signals to employees about the
values of the company, which is in line with research that
has found a positive relationship between CSR and anticipated
values congruence for prospective employees (e.g., Jones et al.,
2014). Moreover, CSR can also be a pathway for finding greater
meaningfulness at work—in a review of the meaningfulness
literature, Rosso et al. (2010) proposed CSR as a pathway through
which employees can find meaning because they feel that they
are contributing to the greater good. Moreover, Grant et al.
(2008) found that the contribution to the greater good makes an
employee feel good about themselves, thus improving their own
self-concept resulting in greater organizational identification.
Although, there are only a few studies that explore the
relationship between CSR and employee engagement, there are
studies on related constructs that provide further evidence that
there might be a relationship between CSR and engagement. In a
study which built a nomological net of employee engagement, job
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satisfaction and intrinsic motivation were two constructs found
to be distinct but related to engagement. Prior CSR research has
found a positive relationship between CSR and job satisfaction
(e.g., Valentine and Fleischman, 2008;Glavas and Kelley, 2014).
Other studies have found a positive relationship between CSR and
intrinsic motivation (e.g., Grant, 2008).
In summary, the extant CSR research suggests that there is a
relationship between CSR and employee engagement. However,
in my review of the literature, I did not find any studies that
have explored mediators of the relationship between CSR and
employee engagement. In other words, we know that employees
can be more engaged due to CSR, but we do not understand the
underlying mechanisms.
UNDERLYING MECHANISMS THAT
EXPLAIN WHY CSR LEADS TO
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Because the focus of this study is on the underlying mechanisms
of why employees are engaged, the underlying theory guiding
the conceptual framework (see Figure 1) builds on engagement
theory (e.g., Kahn, 1990;May et al., 2004;Rich et al., 2010).
In a review of engagement theory, Saks and Gruman (2014)
outlined the different approaches to engagement of which they
concluded that theory put forward by Kahn (1990) and later
adopted by others (e.g., May et al., 2004;Rich et al., 2010) is
the most comprehensive in terms of explaining the underlying
psychological mechanisms of engagement. In brief, Kahn’s (1990)
approach to engagement is built on theories of the whole self
and is based on three underlying mechanisms that influence
engagement. The first is related to the content of the work
in that employees are more engaged when they are able to
do work that is true to themselves, which is referred to as
authenticity in this study. Kahn (1990) referred to this content
as work that is aligned with what is meaningful to a person.
Rich et al. (2010) had a similar reasoning but focused more
on values congruence finding that employees are more engaged
when they feel that their personal values align with those of
the organization. Second, the conditions of work are a key
factor in that engagement is influenced by psychological safety,
which represents the conditions that enable an employee to
show up whole at work (Kahn, 1990). Rich et al. (2010) put
forward that POS is the key factor that provides psychological
safety. The third is related to traits of the individual which is
psychological availability, which is more closely related to self-
efficacy and whether an employee has the ability to carry out
aspects of their whole selves at work (Rich et al., 2010). Of
these three potential underlying mechanisms, the one not related
to CSR is psychological availability because it is personal and
not influenced by the organization—Rich et al. (2010) measured
psychological availability as one’s core self-evaluation (see Judge
et al., 2003), which is a stable personality trait. On the other hand,
organizations can influence the content (e.g., meaningful work
aligned with one’s values) and conditions of work (e.g., POS). In
the following text, I put forward hypotheses based on how the
content (i.e., authenticity) and conditions (e.g., POS) explain why
and how CSR influences employee engagement.
Perceived Organizational Support
Psychological safety is defined as the ability to show more of one’s
whole self without fear of negative consequences (Kahn, 1990).
FIGURE 1 | Multiple mediator and moderated mediation of the relationship between CSR and engagement. Direct effect of CSR on DVs was also
modeled.
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Rich et al. (2010) put forward that POS is critical for psychological
safety—in other words, the more that an organization supports an
employee, it provides a safe environment in which the employee
can be more engaged. When an employee does not believe that
there is POS, employees tend to guard themselves, withdraw, and
thus disengage (Kahn, 1990;Rich et al., 2010).
Corporate social responsibility could be an antecedent of POS.
Numerous empirical studies have found a positive and significant
relationship between CSR and POS (Glavas and Kelley, 2014;
Shen and Benson, 2014;Ditlev-Simonsen, 2015). One reason
is that in a broader stakeholder view of CSR, both external
and internal stakeholders are cared for, so CSR will lead to
POS. Shen and Benson (2014) found that companies high in
CSR will also engage in socially responsible human resource
management practices. This is also in line with the view that CSR
is good management (Waddock and Graves, 1997) in that socially
responsible companies are often well-managed companies who
find that it benefits the company to treat all of its stakeholders
well, including employees. Another reason why CSR is positively
related to POS was offered by Cropanzano and Rupp (2008)—
the authors build on theories of third-party justice and social
exchange theory to propose that when employees see that others
are treated fairly, they will also expect to be treated fairly;
therefore, employees have higher perceptions of organizational
support.
Hypothesis 1. Perceived organizational support mediates the
positive relationship between employee perceptions of the
organization’s CSR and employee engagement.
Authenticity
In addition to POS, engagement theory puts forward that
employees are more engaged when they perceive congruence with
an organization’s values and purpose because they feel as if they
are bringing more of their whole selves to work (Kahn, 1990;Rich
et al., 2010). In other words, many aspects of the whole self have
been lived outside of work (e.g., with family, community, spiritual
practices), but the more that work can allow for employees to
show their real self, the more engaged they will be (Kahn, 1990;
Rich et al., 2010). Turner (1976) defines authenticity as being
able to show one’s real self. In other words, authenticity is an
antecedent to engagement.
Corporate social responsibility could be an antecedent of
authenticity. Korschun et al. (2014) found that the positive
effects of CSR are strengthened for employees to whom CSR
is connected to their sense of self. Moreover, an important
factor for authenticity is values congruence (Rich et al., 2010).
Evans et al. (2011) found that employees with other-regarding
values were able to find greater values congruence because CSR
enabled them to live out these other-regarding values at work,
resulting in higher levels of organizational identification and
organizational citizenship behaviors. Jones et al. (2014) found
that prospective employees were more attracted to organizations
higher in CSR because CSR signaled values that were important
to them. Another important factor for authenticity is to be able
to carry out work that is personally meaningful (Kahn, 1990).
Glavas and Kelley (2014) found that because CSR is about serving
a higher purpose, employees will find such work meaningful. This
also furthers the work of Grant et al. (2008) who found that
prosocial identity will mediate the relationship between CSR and
affective organizational commitment. The authors put forward
that for those employees for whom doing good onto others is
important for their self-concept, CSR will be a way through which
employees live out more of their whole selves at work.
Hypothesis 2. Authenticity mediates the positive relationship
between employee perceptions of the organization’s CSR and
employee engagement.
Extra-Role Involvement
In addition to POS and authenticity as potential mediators of the
CSR—employee engagement relationship, extra-role behaviors
such as volunteering could moderate this relationship. For
example, Caligiuri et al. (2013) found that volunteering led to
increased engagement and was strengthened by availability of
resources and project meaningfulness—employees were able to
live out more of their real selves through volunteering projects.
Jones (2010) found that volunteering increased organizational
identification mediated by organizational pride (i.e., seeing how
one’s work benefited the community made an employee feel
proud of their organization); in turn employee organizational
citizenship behaviors were increased. Muthuri et al. (2009)
found that volunteering positively influenced employees due to
improved social capital.
Although these studies suggest that there is a positive impact
of volunteering on employees, what has not been studied as
extensively is if too much extra-role behavior can have a negative
impact. Aguinis and Glavas (2013) proposed that employees
are more positively impacted by involvement in CSR when it
is embedded into one’s job; however, when CSR is peripheral
(i.e., extra-role) it can have a negative impact on employees.
Employees might perceive CSR as being disingenuous. Moreover,
extra-role CSR might put pressure on employees who already
have high job demands. For example, Grant (2012) found that
if there is too much pressure for volunteering that it can have a
negative impact on employees. This is what Pierce and Aguinis
(2013) would describe as too much of a good thing effect.
Hypothesis 3. Extra-role involvement (i.e., volunteering) in CSR
will moderate the positive relationship between authenticity and
employee engagement, such that the relationship will be weakened
by increased extra-role involvement in CSR.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Ethics Statement
The study design and processes used to protect the interests and
rights of the human subjects involved in this study was deemed
as exempt by the Institutional Review Board at The University of
Notre Dame.
Setting and Sample
Participants were 15,184 employees from a large professional
services firm in the USA. Survey responses were collected as
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part of an annual workplace survey. The response rate was
73.3%. Due to legal restrictions by the company, I was not
given access to individual demographic data. However, the
company did disclose the overall demographics of the sample
and 48.6% of participants were female and the mean tenure
was 6.5 years, which was representative of general company
demographics.
Procedure
Because the primary goal was to analyze the data at the individual
level, intraclass correlations (ICCs) were calculated in order to
rule out office-level effects. ICC values ranged from 0.007 to
0.032. Despite the low ranges, I still included office as a control
variable.
In addition, due to high correlations between variables,
collinearity statistics were analyzed. The highest variance
inflation factor (VIF) was 3.20, which is well below the
recommended cutoff of 10 (Ryan, 1997).
To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling was
employed with Mplus Version 7 (Muthén and Muthén, 2012).
The approach to mediation and moderated mediation analysis
was done based on guidelines by Hayes (2013) and Stride (2015).
Bootstrapping with 1000 replications was used to obtain standard
errors, estimates, and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals
according to procedures recommended by Preacher and Hayes
(2008). The direct effect of CSR on the dependent variable (i.e.,
engagement) was also modeled.
Measures
The measures were developed as part of the company’s annual
workplace survey and are adapted from the Great Place to Work
Survey which has been used in prior research (see Fulmer et al.,
2003). Each item, except extra-role involvement in CSR, was
measured on a scale of 1 (rarely) to 5 (almost always). Internal
consistency reliabilities (i.e., Cronbach’s alphas) for each scale are
presented in Table 1.
Independent Variable
The independent variable, CSR, was measured with five
items such as “I believe [my company] makes a positive
contribution to the communities in which it operates,” and “[My
company] demonstrates a clear commitment to its environmental
initiatives.”
Dependent Variable
The dependent variable, employee engagement, was measured
with four items. This scale has previously been used and validated
(Block et al., in press) with the scale found to map onto the
emotional dimension of the employee engagement scale of Rich
et al. (2010). Items were such as “Overall, I would say that this is
a great place to work,” and “I rarely think about looking for a new
job with another organization.”
Mediators
Authenticity was measured with four items such as “I can
be myself at work,” and “There is an emphasis on integrity
here.” POS was measured with four items such as “I get fair
consideration for the best engagements or assignments,” and
“If I feel that I am treated unfairly, I am comfortable going to
management to address my concerns.”
Moderator
Extra-role involvement in CSR was measured with the following
item: “Please indicate the approximate number of hours you
spend annually participating in firm-sponsored or personal
community service/philanthropic activities.” To clarify the
terminology that the sample firm uses, firm-sponsored activities
are a few strategic initiatives that are encouraged throughout the
firm. Personal activities are those that are employee initiated but
still conducted officially on behalf of the firm.
Control Variables
I also controlled for other key variables that might influence
employee attitudes such as satisfaction with leadership, pay
satisfaction, and satisfaction with recognition. Satisfaction with
leadership was measured with nine items such as “Management
does an effective job of operating the business.” Pay satisfaction
was measured with three items such as “I am paid fairly for the
work I do.” Satisfaction with recognition was measured with two
items such as “Management recognizes and shows appreciation
for quality work and extra effort.”
RESULTS
Descriptive Statistics
Means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and intercorrelations
among the variables are presented in Table 1.
TABLE 1 | Descriptive statistics, reliability estimates, and study variable intercorrelations.
Variable M SD 1234567
(1) Corporate social responsibility 3.99 0.73 (0.81)
(2) Perceived organizational support 3.84 0.77 0.68∗∗ ∗ (0.79)
(3) Authenticity 3.96 0.77 0.76∗∗ ∗ 0.76∗∗ ∗ (0.81)
(4) Engagement 3.96 0.86 0.68∗∗ ∗ 0.66∗∗ ∗ 0.74∗∗ ∗ (0.90)
(5) Pay satisfaction 3.39 0.92 0.57∗∗ ∗ 0.63∗∗ ∗ 0.60∗∗ ∗ 0.64∗ ∗ ∗ (0.82)
(6) Satisfaction with recognition 3.63 0.96 0.62∗∗ ∗ 0.65∗∗ ∗ 0.69∗∗ ∗ 0.64∗ ∗ ∗ 0.57∗∗ ∗ (0.77)
(7) Satisfaction with leadership 3.93 0.70 0.73∗∗ ∗ 0.70∗∗ ∗ 0.78∗∗ ∗ 0.77∗ ∗ ∗ 0.61∗∗ ∗ 0.67∗∗ ∗ (0.92)
Scales are from 1 to 5. Coefficient (α) reliabilities are shown in the diagonal. ∗p<0.05, ∗∗ p<0.01, ∗ ∗ ∗ p<0.001.
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Hypothesis Testing
The overall model showed acceptable fit. The root-mean-square
error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.072 with 90% confidence
intervals of 0.071 and 0.073. The standardized root mean square
residual (SRMR) for the model was 0.041. The comparative fit
index (CFI) for the model was 0.89 and the Tucker and Lewis
Index (TLI) was 0.88.
Table 2 reports indirect effects with unstandardized
estimates, corresponding standard errors, and corresponding
bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals. Hypothesis 1 was not
supported. In other words, POS did not significantly mediate
the relationship between CSR and employee engagement.
Hypothesis 2 was supported. Authenticity positively and
significantly mediated the relationship between CSR and
employee engagement.
Hypothesis 3 was supported. Extra-role involvement in CSR
weakened the relationship between authenticity and employee
engagement. To test Hypothesis 3, I used the procedure for
moderated mediation proposed by Hayes (2013) and Stride
(2015) for Mplus. The interaction term (extra-role involvement
in CSR) was significant (β= −0.042, p<0.01) and predictors
explained 67.5% of the variance of employee engagement. I
operationalized high and low scores as 1 SD above and below the
mean score. The estimates, standard errors, and 95% confidence
intervals for the conditional indirect effects are presented in
Table 3.
Post hoc Analyses
Common Method Bias
To control for common method bias, I first conducted a
Harman’s single-factor test (Podsakoff et al., 2003) with the one
factor accounting for less than 50% of the variance. Because
of the critique of the Harman’s test, I further conducted a
post hoc analysis using the marker variable technique (Lindell
and Whitney, 2001;Podsakoff et al., 2003), in which I
partialed out the effect of a theoretically unrelated marker
variable (market development). As expected, the fit was a bit
worse, but still acceptable, compared to the baseline model
(RMSEA =0.084, 90% confidence intervals of 0.084 and 0.085;
SRMR =0.133; CFI =0.85; TLI =0.83), and all the path
estimates from the previous model that were significant (i.e.,
Hypotheses 2 and 3), remained significant and in the same
direction.
Controlling for POS
Because Glavas and Kelley (2014) found that CSR affects work
meaningfulness above and beyond POS, I also tested whether
there is an indirect effect of CSR on engagement through
authenticity that goes above and beyond the influence of
POS. I tested the baseline model but instead of POS being a
mediator, I controlled for POS. Authenticity still mediated the
relationship between CSR and employee engagement (β=1.443,
p<0.001).
TABLE 2 | Results of mediation tests predicting employee engagement: indirect effects of CSR through two mediators (perceived organizational support
and authenticity).
BC 95% CI
Indirect and direct effects Estimate SE Lower Upper
Indirect effects
CSR →Perceived Organizational Support →Engagement (H1) −0.642 0.108 −0.882 −0.465
CSR →Authenticity →Engagement (H2) 1.719 0.439 1.090 2.792
Direct effects
CSR →Engagement −0.341 0.388 −1.355 0.162
CSR →Perceived Organizational Support 1.144 0.045 1.058 1.233
CSR →Authenticity 1.612 0.059 1.499 1.727
Perceived Organizational Support →Engagement −0.561 0.086 −0.745 −0.410
Authenticity →Engagement 1.066 0.289 0.657 1.764
BC 95% CI refers to the bias-corrected 95% confidence interval; Estimate refers to the effect estimate using 1,000 bootstrap samples; estimates with CIs that do not
include zero are statistically significant and bolded; CSR, corporate social responsibility.
TABLE 3 | Results for test of conditional indirect effects of CSR-engagement through a mediator (authenticity) at specific values of the moderator
(extra-role involvement in CSR): mean ±1 standard deviation.
95% CI
Value of extra-role involvement in CSR Conditional indirect effect SE Lower Upper
−1SD (1.53) 0.082 0.005 0.073 0.093
M(2.69) 0.080 0.006 0.068 0.092
+1SD (3.85) 0.077 0.008 0.063 0.092
95% CI refers to the 95% confidence interval; estimate refers to the effect estimate using 1,000 bootstrap samples; estimates with CIs that do not include zero are
statistically significant and bolded; CI refers to the bias-corrected 95% confidence interval.
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Reverse Causality
Because it is possible that engaged employees might have more
positive perceptions of the organization (e.g., CSR, authenticity,
POS), reverse causality was analyzed. The same baseline model
shown in Figure 1 was tested in reverse with the exception
of moderated mediation. None of the indirect paths were
significant. The overall model showed similar fit to the baseline
model in this study. The RMSEA was 0.073 with 90% confidence
intervals of 0.072 and 0.074. The standardized root mean square
residual (SRMR) for the model was 0.042. The CFI for the
model was 0.89 and the TLI was 0.88. The indirect path from
employee engagement to perceived CSR, mediated by POS was
insignificant and negative (b= −0.012, p=0.104). The indirect
path from employee engagement to perceived CSR, mediated by
authenticity was also insignificant (b=0.026, p=0.183).
Main Effect of CSR and Engagement with No
Mediators
Because many studies between CSR and employee outcomes
have not included mediators, I tested the relationship using the
baseline model (i.e., same controls and analysis) but without
mediators. The relationship between CSR and engagement was
found to be positive and significant (β=0.837, p<0.001). This
is counter to the findings from the baseline model in this study
(i.e., full model with mediators) in which the direct effect between
CSR and engagement is not significant.
DISCUSSION
In this study, I found a positive and significant relationship
between employee perceptions of CSR and employee
engagement, which was mediated by authenticity. The other
mediator, POS, did not significantly mediate the CSR—
engagement relationship and the relationship was actually
negative. Moreover, when POS was controlled for in the post
hoc analyses, authenticity had an effect above and beyond that
of POS on employee engagement. These findings suggest that
perceived CSR has the strongest impact on employees when
it allows for them to show their whole selves at work (i.e.,
authenticity). Moreover, when employees perceive that POS is
related to CSR, it might have a negative impact. In addition,
extra-role involvement in CSR was found to weaken the effect of
authenticity on employee engagement. These results suggest that
even if employees are positively affected by CSR, they prefer that
CSR does not entail work above and beyond their own job.
Theoretical Implications
Based on my review of the literature, this is the first study to
explore underlying mechanisms between employee perceptions
of CSR and engagement. Moreover, this is the first study to
my knowledge that directly tested the relationship between CSR
and authenticity—defined as the ability to bring one’s whole self
to work. As predicted by prior engagement theory (e.g., Kahn,
1990;Rich et al., 2010), authenticity did mediate the relationship
between CSR and engagement. But contrary to engagement
theory (e.g., Kahn, 1990;Rich et al., 2010) and prior CSR research
on POS (e.g., Shen and Benson, 2014;Ditlev-Simonsen, 2015),
POS was not found to be significantly related to engagement.
This has important implications for CSR and organizational
psychology because it goes beyond a top–down model in which
the direct benefits of CSR to the employee (e.g., POS) predict
how the employee will be affected. Instead, a bottom–up model in
which employees can give more of their whole selves might have
a stronger effect on employees. These findings also highlight the
importance of going beyond studying the influence of external
factors (e.g., POS) to studying how intra-individual factors (e.g.,
authenticity) influence how employees are affected by CSR.
Moreover, a bottom–up approach to CSR is one in which CSR
is embedded in one’s job. As the results of this study suggest,
when CSR is extra-role it can have negative effects on employees.
These findings have implications for CSR theory which has
primarily built models based on the strategy and policies of an
organization without taking into consideration if and how CSR is
embedded into the jobs of employees (Aguinis and Glavas, 2013).
By exploring the degree of CSR embeddedness, both positive and
negative effects of CSR on employees can be uncovered.
Finally, this study contributes to gaps identified in a review of
the CSR literature by Aguinis and Glavas (2012) who proposed
that a more complete picture of CSR should be built in which
the individual level of analysis is included. Prior CSR research
has mostly been at the macro and institutional levels (Lee,
2008;Wood, 2010). In addition, this study includes multiple
mediators, which are rarely studied in CSR at the individual
level, but important to explore in order to understand how
different mechanisms influence employees (Jones et al., 2014).
Third, moderators are analyzed through moderated mediation,
which addresses the need for exploring moderators of the CSR–
employee outcomes relationship (Rupp et al., 2013). This has
important theoretical implications because when effects of CSR
on employees are aggregated to the macro level (i.e., without
including mediators and moderators at the individual level of
analysis), both positive and negative effects on employees are
confounded. Perhaps this is why the macro CSR literature has
led to inconclusive findings on whether CSR has a positive
relationship with organization outcomes (Wood, 2010;Aguinis
and Glavas, 2012). By understanding why, how, and when
employees are positively and negatively affected by CSR, more
complete models of CSR can be built in which the positive effects
of CSR can be disentangled.
Managerial Implications
Mirroring theoretical implications, CSR should be embedded
in practice as much as possible. Too often, CSR programs are
put together by a department on the periphery of the company
that emphasizes extra-role CSR behavior such as volunteering,
recycling, and similar initiatives. Rather CSR could be part of
one’s job through two possible ways. CSR could be embedded
throughout the organization (Aguinis and Glavas, 2013) such that
it is part of an organization’s strategy, products, and services.
This is rare and at best, often organizations are somewhere on
the path toward embedding CSR, but it is a journey that many
organizations do embark on (Aguinis and Glavas, 2013). The
other path, which can also be in parallel, is bottom up. Employees
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Glavas CSR and the Whole Self
can embed CSR in their own jobs through models of job crafting
(for job crafting and CSR, see Sonenshein et al., 2014).
Second, the findings suggest that CSR should be more
individualized and personal. Often companies have a unified
strategy for implementing CSR organization-wide. However, if
we take the findings of this study, then CSR is something that
can really move people at a deep level. CSR can connect to what
is most meaningful for a person and to their core values. Because
each individual is different, CSR should be individualized. As a
result, the firm also benefits as a part of the workforce can be
re-energized. If even 13% of the workforce can be re-engaged,
that is also a huge economic benefit to organizations. As the
Gallup (2013) report found, which was conducted on 230,000
employees in 142 countries, only 13% of the current workforce
is engaged. Engaging an additional 13% will double the amount
of engaged employees. Moreover, Gallup (2013) calculated that
due to population growth and GDP increase, there will be $140
trillion in new customers. Moreover, the authors proposed that
those companies that are able to engage their employees more
will have a competitive advantage in this new marketplace.
Finally, all this goes without saying that perhaps the
stakeholder that “wins” the most is the employee. If CSR is about
improving the well-being of others, then enabling employees to
find well-being through work, the activity that takes the most
time out of many people’s lives, is a CSR achievement in and of
itself.
Future Research and Limitations
The measure of extra-role involvement in CSR conflated both
involvement in firm-initiated strategic corporate volunteering
initiatives as well as employee-initiated corporate volunteering
initiatives. Future research could disentangle these two in order to
explore if initiatives proposed by employees might have positive
effects due to its discretionary nature. For example, employees
might be able to design initiatives that are more aligned to their
whole self (e.g., values, perceptions of meaningful work).
In addition, the relationship between CSR and authenticity
could be explored in much more depth. Because authenticity is
intra-individual by its very nature, intra-individual factors could
be explored. For example, it might be interesting to study whether
CSR leads to authenticity because it influences values alignment,
meaningfulness at work, and/or aligns with an employee’s identity
(e.g., prosocial identity)—and for whom. The latter could be
studied by exploring the role of individual differences such as
other orientation and conscientiousness.
Future research could also explore how the social exchange
relationship between employees and the organization changes
when authenticity is introduced into the model. Although,
this study did not explore social exchange theory, conceptual
frameworks that include POS often build on those of social
exchange theory (Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005). However,
the starting point is often the organization and what it does to
the employee, thus leading to a reciprocal exchange. It might
be interesting to explore if this relationship changes when the
starting point is the employee and they are enabled to show more
of their whole selves at work.
Finally, there are limitations that apply to this study that can be
overcome with future research. For example, the cross-sectional
design of this study could be addressed with studies such as those
that include other ratings, are experimental, and/or longitudinal.
Moreover, because this study was on a single firm in the U.S.,
other studies could be conducted in multiple firms (of varying
size), industries, and countries. For example, the findings in this
study might differ in more blue collar employee populations.
In addition, it would be interesting to compare the findings to
data from firms in which CSR is highly embedded. Also, the
measures used in this study were ones that were used as part
of the organization’s annual survey. Other established measures
for the variables in the model could be tested as well, including
collecting demographic variables, which were not disclosed due
to legal privacy regulations.
CONCLUSION
Engagement theory has primarily focused on the relationship
between the individual and the organization. CSR theory has
primarily focused on the relationship between the organization
and society. By combining both, more complete multilevel
models of not only CSR, but management in general can be built
that are holistic in nature. As a result the individual benefits, the
organization benefits, and society benefits.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
approved it for publication.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I thank the editor and reviewers as well as Emily Block, Omer
Farooq, Michael Mannor, and Marc Ohana for their invaluable
help and collaboration.
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The author declares that the research was
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
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Copyright © 2016 Glavas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms
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