Commitment to sustainable development: Exploring the factors affecting employee attitudes towards corporate social responsibility‐oriented management

Abstract

Employee contributions are indispensable to the success of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices; however, surprisingly little research has focused on how positive attitudes toward CSR‐oriented management can be facilitated among employees. Applying a relational demography approach and related theories, this study examines employees' emotional identification and behavioral engagement with CSR‐oriented mission activities. Data from a Fortune Global 500 company in Japan show the direct effect of position and the asymmetric effects of position dissimilarity. Lower‐positioned employees tend to report enhanced positive attitudes toward CSR‐oriented mission activities when working with a greater number of higher‐positioned colleagues. Furthermore, perceived mission‐based support mediates the effect of the interaction between position dissimilarity and position on employees' attitudes toward CSR‐oriented activities. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that companies should recognize the importance of managerial members as role models and provide employees with sufficient support to facilitate positive attitudes toward CSR practices.

A systematic literature review on employee relations with CSR: State of art and future research agenda

“…A shared approach towards CSR also moderates the effect that personal environmental values have on environmental behavior (Chou, 2014). for employee CSR behavior (Gao & He, 2017), and leader responsible behavior seems to lead to increasing responsible behavior among employees Wang, 2018).…”

“…Furthermore, the studies show how organization‐wide acceptance of CSR policies depends on leader support. Supervisors providing examples through responsible leadership is an important mediator for employee CSR behavior (Gao & He, 2017), and leader responsible behavior seems to lead to increasing responsible behavior among employees (Kim, Kim, et al, 2017; Wang, 2018).…”

Corporate social responsibility embeddedness through a social network analysis: The case of an Italian multiutility company

“…Previous research has mainly focused on the role of employees' involvement and commitment (Hur, Moon, & Lee, 2018;Wang, 2018) or on the adoption of voluntary behavior (Lülfs & Hahn, 2014;Testa, Iraldo, & Daddi, 2018). Although these topics are relevant in terms of explaining the CSR commitment of a company, they only analyze the employee-employee or organization-employee relation from a static perspective.…”

Green Innovation Behavior Toward Sustainable Tourism Development: A Dual Mediation Model

“…Employees' positive attitudes stimulate their ecological responsibility. Given the explanation, the study shows that the employees' dominant CSR perspective makes them develop a positive attitude toward firms' sustainability practices (Wang, 2018). Moreover, the research reveals that firms' positive attitude forms a critical antecedent in influencing firms' sustainability practices toward achieving environmental protection (Cosma et al, 2021).…”