On Corporate Social Responsibility, Sensemaking, and the Search for Meaningfulness Through Work

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) focuses on many types of stakeholders and outcomes, including stakeholders outside of the organization and outcomes that go beyond financial results. Thus, CSR expands the notion of work to go beyond a task, job, intraindividual, intraorganizational, and profit perspective and provides an ideal conduit for individuals to seek and find meaningfulness through work. We adopt a person-centric conceptualization of CSR by focusing on sensemaking as an underlying and unifying mechanism through which individuals are proactive and intentional agents who search for and find meaningfulness through work. Our conceptualization allows us to understand variability in CSR effects due to variability in employee sensemaking and the meaningfulness employees experience from CSR; highlight synergies across disconnected theories and streams of research originating in different disciplines and at the intraindividual, intraorganizational, and extraorganizational levels of analysis; and propose new research directions for the future in the form of propositions and research questions. By using sensemaking as a unifying underlying process, the proposed conceptualization explains how individuals find meaningfulness through work and, consequently, when and why employees experience CSR in a particular manner—resulting in more or less positive outcomes for themselves, their organizations, and external stakeholders. Our proposed model could also be used in other individual-level research domains that would benefit from (a) placing people and their search for meaningfulness center stage and (b) focusing on the role that same-level and cross-level interactions among intraindividual, intraorganizational, and extraorganizational sensemaking factors play in the process.

Corporate social responsibility and employee engagement: The moderating role of CSR‐specific relative autonomy and individualism

“…When employees derive meaning from their work, they are healthier, happier, and more productive (Kinjerski & Skrypnek, ). Whereas much of the work engagement research focuses squarely on the meaningful characteristics of employees' day‐to‐day job tasks, research has more recently argued for CSR as a unique source of meaningfulness for employees (Aguinis & Glavas, in press; Rupp, ); and empirical support has been offered evidencing a connection between CSR perceptions and work engagement (Caligiuri et al, ). In the current paper, we acknowledge the effect of CSR perceptions on work engagement, but at the same time question its universality.…”

“…In other words, employees who view CSR as yet another task that they have to do to avoid guilt, shame, and retribution, are unlikely to be those employees for whom CSR is a source of absorption and dedication at work (Bakker, Hakanen, Demerouti, & Xanthopoulou, ; Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, ). This is consistent with arguments made by Aguinis and Glavas (in press), who propose that when employees get involved in their organizations' CSR activities due to organizational or external pressures (i.e., top‐down CSR management), employees are less likely to derive meaning (and subsequently feel engaged at work) from perceived and/or experienced CSR activities.…”

“…Defined as a “positive, fulfilling, work‐related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli, Salanova, González‐Romá, & Bakker, , p. 74), work engagement has been shown to be enhanced when job characteristics that are challenging and meaningful are provided to individuals with qualities known to thrive in such environments (e.g., those high in conscientiousness and positive affect; Christian et al, ; Demerouti, ). Whereas work engagement research has traditionally focused on the work that occurs within employees' direct job environments, recent advances within the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature have uncovered sources of meaningfulness for employees that extend beyond their daily, required job tasks (Aguinis & Glavas, in press). That is, employees' perceptions of their employers' CSR relate positively with their work engagement (e.g., Caligiuri, Mencin, & Jiang, ; Glavas & Piderit, ; Milliken & See, ; for a review, see Gond, El Akremi, Swaen, & Babu, ).…”

“…CSR initiatives are argued to be important to employees because they address employees' deontic (moral) concerns for others (Folger, , ) and, as a result, can contribute to fulfilling their needs for meaningful existence (Rupp, Skarlicki, & Shao, ; Rupp, Williams, & Aguilera, ). Similarly, Aguinis and Glavas (in press) have argued that CSR initiatives are important for individuals both within and outside of organizations, and CSR's benefit to society in general can contribute to employees' experienced meaningfulness at work. This suggests that employees' perceptions of their employer's CSR can provide an additional source of engagement beyond traditional job characteristics.…”

Serving Time: Volunteer Work, Liminality and the Uses of Meaningfulness at Music Festivals

“…That said, a very real sense of camaraderie and personal closeness was palpable in the field, and bonds were created that seemed difficult to cynically dismiss as ideological mystification. Research dating back to Roy’s () ‘Banana Time’ documents the importance of informal interaction in the labour process, and how monotony and alienation are avoided through common activities and rituals (e.g., Thompson, ). Nevertheless, the co‐occurrence of cynical and authentic community dynamics complicates such literature by suggesting that instrumental and selfless micro‐moments interpenetrate during work in diverse and often contradictory ways.…”