Employee happiness and corporate social responsibility: the role of organizational culture

Abstract

PurposeThis research explores how does the organizational culture influence internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions and the effect of these actions on the level of happiness of employees.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts an employee perspective since the perception of employees is the unit of analysis. By relying on a sample of 921 workers of firms from different sectors and sizes headquartered in Spain, the empirical analysis is performed using partial least squares.FindingsThe findings evidence that clan and adhocracy cultures highly foster internal CSR practices and that internal CSR activities enhance employees' happiness. The mediating role of internal CSR in the relationship between organizational culture and employee happiness is also found. These results suggest that managers could play a proactive role in fostering internal CSR by designing the organizational culture according to features of clan and adhocracy cultures such as flexibility, innovation, creativity, autonomy, communication, training and support of supervisors.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focuses on a single country, which makes it difficult to generalize the results and guides future research into cross-cultural analysis. Including countries that present differences in their cultural and institutional context would allow to explore the influence of the national context on the business culture, on internal CSR and on employee happiness. This work is also limited in time, as the data used are of a cross-cultural nature.Practical implicationsA greater effort in internal CSR by companies translates into a higher level of happiness for their workers. Specifically, occupational health and safety practices have the greatest influence on employee happiness. Hence, organizations must develop cultures that contribute to promote internal CSR—adhocracy and clan—since this would enhance employees' happiness if the values and beliefs that characterize these cultural configurations are translated into internal CSR practices such as occupational health and safety, work–life balance and equal opportunities.Social implicationsThe improvement of employee happiness creates social value and can be enhanced through an organizational culture that promotes CSR. The research findings might be useful when defining institutional policies to promote job quality, as encouraged by the social policy agenda of the United Nations embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals.Originality/valuePromoting internal CSR through organizational culture will have positive effects for companies internally by enhancing employees' happiness. Therefore, the article contributes to overcome the lack of evidence about the antecedents of internal CSR and its relationship with employees' happiness, an emerging variable in the management literature.

Socially Responsible Human Resource Management: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda

“…Regarding the methodological implications, and according to the reviewed articles in the present paper, it appears that future research would highly benefit from employing ethnographic methods [61], longitudinal studies [59,88,94,98], comparative and crosscultural research [67,80,83,85], experimental research design [57], and data collecting from different sources [84,87], specifically relying more on the employees rather than senior managers' perspectives [47,48]. However, these methodological recommendations mostly come from those quantitative studies that originated from utilitarian philosophies.…”

“…Although all the reviewed papers assert that CSR firm policies impact SRHRM practices, some studies also explored other drivers within firms that might have been influential in this regard. Such factors include firms' strategic policies and priorities [48,60], available financial resources [60], HRM systems design [60], HRM power in the organization [26], ethics-oriented HRM philosophies [65], the multi-nationality of firms [93], as well as organizational structure and culture [80]. The third antecedent category is related to the individual factors, including employees' needs and wants [21,62,77,79], the presence of an ethical leader [60,61,75,89,92,101], the HR professionals' perception of their ethical role [61], and the role of employees' representatives in organizations [56].…”

Proposing Employee Level CSR as an Enabler for Economic Performance: The Role of Work Engagement and Quality of Work-Life

“…The main agenda of employee-level CSR activities is to focus on the wellbeing of the workers through responsible business operations [42]. Through CSR activities, a socially responsible enterprise seeks to develop a partnership with its employees to create better opportunities and convert the workplace into a place where employees happily perform their job [43]. Various research studies have reported on the positive link between CSR and economic performance [44][45][46].…”

A Human Resource Development Strategy for Primary Health Care: an Exploratory Study of Mixed Methods

“…The remaining 13 factors were collectively referred to as 'Internal Organization Development'. It has conclusively been shown that the organization's internal development is critical to the turnover rate, happiness, job satisfaction, and burnout of medical personnel [53][54][55].…”