Contemporary organizations often reciprocate to society for using resources and for affecting stakeholders by engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It has been shown that CSR has a positive impact on employee attitudes. However, not all employees may react equally strongly to CSR practices. Based on socio-emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen in Science 312:1913-1915, 2006, we contend that the effect of CSR on employee satisfaction will be more pronounced for older than for younger employees, because CSR practices address those emotional needs and goals that are prioritized when people's future time perspective decreases. In one multi-source field study (N = 143) and one experimental study (N = 500), we demonstrate that CSR indeed has a stronger positive effect on employee satisfaction for older relative to younger employees. Accordingly, engaging in CSR can be an attractive tool for organizations that aim to keep their aging workforce satisfied with their job.

This study focused on the effect of relative competence and confidence in one's own task solution on the use of hard and soft influence tactics. For this purpose a 2 (relative competence: high/low) × 2 (influence tactic: hard/soft) between-subjects design, with the level of confidence generated by task characteristics as within-subjects factor, was employed. Results revealed that high competence individuals were less susceptible to the strength of the available influence tactic than low competence individuals: whereas high competence group members used hard tactics about as often as soft tactics, low competence group members used hard tactics less often than soft ones. However, this effect only showed when the task gave rise to high confidence in one's own task solution. When low competence group members had relatively low confidence, the frequency by which they used soft tactics declined substantially. All in all, the results suggest that people who aim for a positive group outcome employ influence tactics cautiously.