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The literature on corporate social responsibility and corporate philanthropy generally focuses on how employers come to the aid of those outside the organization who have been affected by disasters. Less is known about an organization's corporate philanthropic disaster response (CPDR) directed towards their employees. We argue, based on conservation of resources (Hobfoll, 1989, Am. Psychol., 44, 513) and compassion organizing (Dutton et al., 2006, Admin. Sci. Quart., 51, 59) literatures, that employees perceive employers who provide aid to them following a natural disaster as supportive. This aid from CPDR provides support to employees and helps to restore the loss of valued resources. Accordingly, we predict that satisfaction with CPDR reduces employee psychological and physiological strain via its positive effects on perceived organizational support. We find support for our predictions using a sample of 695 Hurricane Katrina survivors. Finally, we discussed theoretical contributions and implications of this research. Practitioner pointsOrganizations are encouraged to fulfil their social responsibilities. Our research shows that organizations should be socially responsible not only to the general public, but also to their own employees. Responding compassionately by providing aid to an organization's own employees is an important element in carrying out their social responsibilities. In the aftermath of a severe natural disaster, employees may need to rely on their organizations to provide timely assistance. Such assistance could help them mitigate their strain, both psychologically and physiologically, aroused from the disaster they experienced.

Although similarity-attraction notions suggest that similarity--for example, in terms of values, personality, and demography--attracts, the authors found that sometimes demographic similarity attracts and sometimes it repels. Consistent with social dominance theory (J. Sidanius & F. Pratto, 1999), they demonstrated in 3 studies that when prospective employees supported group-based social hierarchies (i.e., were high in social dominance orientation), those in high-status groups were attracted to demographic similarity within an organization, whereas those in low-status groups were repelled by it. An important theoretical implication of the findings is that social dominance theory and traditional similarity-attraction notions together help explain a more complex relationship between demographic similarity and attraction than was previously acknowledged in the organizational literature.