A body of existing literature delves into how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects employees’ cognition, emotion, and behavior within an organization. These previous studies, however, pay relatively little attention to the influence of CSR on levels of creativity in employees. Considering that creativity is closely related to innovative capability, which is critical for a firm to survive, the relationship between CSR and employees’ creativity and its elaborate underlying processes need further investigation. Based on a group creativity model, we argue that CSR may increase levels of creativity in employees through mediation of enhanced levels of psychological safety in employees. In addition, existing works on CSR have relatively underexplored the contextual role of leadership in translating CSR practices into employees’ attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Using three-wave time-lagged survey data from 311 employees in South Korea, we found that CSR enhances employees’ creativity via mediation of psychological safety. Additionally, ethical leadership positively moderates the relationship between CSR and psychological safety. Our findings suggest that psychological safety in employees functions as an important underlying mechanism to describe the CSR–employee creativity link. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes the importance of the moderating role of ethical leadership in the process of CSR activities.

Although there has been extensive research on the corporate social responsibility (CSR)–performance link, full understanding is still elusive. A possible reason for this is the limited understanding of the underlying processes that affect the relationship. Grounded in institutional theory, which emphasizes the importance of micro-level intermediating processes (e.g., employees’ perceptions and attitudes) to explain a macro-level association (i.e., CSR to organizational performance), we built a moderated mediation model where: (i) organization commitment mediated the influence of CSR on organizational performance, and (ii) an employee’s prosocial motivation moderated the relationship between CSR and organizational commitment. Using three-wave time-lagged survey data obtained from 302 Korean workers, we found that organizational commitment is an important micro-level process in the CSR–performance link, and that the level of an employee’s prosocial motivation can positively moderate that link. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, along with limitations and future research directions.

Considering the importance of safety behavior, the current study investigates the relationship between CSR and safety behavior. To be specific, we delve into the underlying mechanism and its contingent factor of the association. This paper proposes that CSR promotes employee safety behavior through the mediation of psychological safety. In addition, authentic leadership may function as a positive moderator that amplifies the positive effect of CSR on psychological safety. Utilizing 3-wave time-lagged survey data from 213 South Korean workers, the current study empirically tests the hypotheses by establishing a moderated mediation model by utilizing structural equation modeling. The results demonstrate that CSR enhances employees' safety behavior by increasing their psychological safety and that authentic leadership positively moderates the relationship between CSR and psychological safety. This research's findings have meaningful theoretical and practical implications.

As the global economic situation deteriorates due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the business environment is plagued by uncertainty and risk. To address this, many organizations have sought to optimize efficiency, especially by downsizing and restructuring, to reduce costs. This causes anxiety among employees, who worry about whether they will be fired. We hypothesize that such job insecurity increases knowledge-hiding behavior by employees, and we investigate the mechanism underlying such a negative effect. In addition, we attempt to capture the boundary conditions of how to reduce the adverse effects of job insecurity, focusing on the role of coaching leadership. Using three-wave time-lagged cohort-study data from 346 Korean workers, we empirically found that employees who perceive job insecurity are less likely to feel organizational identification, leading to increased knowledge-hiding behavior. This study also demonstrated that coaching leadership operates as a boundary condition which buffers the negative influence of job insecurity on organizational identification. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

BACKGROUND Although many previous studies examined the influence of job insecurity on organizational outcomes, research gaps remain. First, the existing research focused less on the importance of safety behavior. Second, previous studies underexplored the importance of positive psychology-associated mediators and moderators. Third, we need extant studies to investigate leaders’ critical roles in job insecurity. OBJECTIVE To supplement the above research gaps, we aim to explore the mediator and moderator in the relationship between job insecurity and safety behavior from the perspective of positive psychology METHODS With three-wave time-lagged data from 235 South Korean workers, we built a moderated mediation model by using structural equation modeling (SEM). Based on Anderson and Gerbing’s (1998) suggestion, we took a two-step approach that consisted of the (1) measurement and (2) structural model. In the first step, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the validity of the measurement model. In the second step, based on SEM, we performed a moderated mediation model analysis with the maximum likelihood estimator using the AMOS 23 program to test the structural model. RESULTS We empirically demonstrated that the meaningfulness of work mediates the job insecurity–safety behavior link. In addition, ethical leadership plays a positive moderating role which diminishes the negative impact of job insecurity on the meaningfulness of work. CONCLUSIONS This result indicates that the meaningfulness of work (as a mediator) and ethical leadership (as a moderator) are the critical underlying mechanisms and contingent variables in the relationship between job insecurity and safety behavior.