When Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Meets Organizational Psychology: New Frontiers in Micro-CSR Research, and Fulfilling a Quid Pro Quo through Multilevel Insights

Abstract

Researchers, corporate leaders, and other stakeholders have shown increasing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)—a company’s discretionary actions and policies that appear to advance societal well-being beyond its immediate financial interests and legal requirements. Spanning decades of research activity, the scholarly literature on CSR has been dominated by meso- and macro-level perspectives, such as studies within corporate strategy that examine relationships between firm-level indicators of social/environmental performance and corporate financial performance. In recent years, however, there has been an explosion of micro-oriented CSR research conducted at the individual level of analysis, especially with respect to studies on how and why job seekers and employees perceive and react to CSR practices. This micro-level focus is reflected in 12 articles published as a Research Topic collection in Frontiers in Psychology (Organizational Psychology Specialty Section) titled “CSR and organizational psychology: Quid pro quo.” In the present article, the authors summarize and integrate findings from these Research Topic articles. After describing some of the “new frontiers” these articles explore and create, the authors strive to fulfill a “quid pro quo” with some of the meso- and macro-oriented CSR literatures that paved the way for micro-CSR research. Specifically, the authors draw on insights from the Research Topic articles to inform a multilevel model that offers multiple illustrations of how micro-level processes among individual stakeholders can explain variability in meso (firm)-level relationships between CSR practices and corporate performance. The authors also explore an important implication of these multilevel processes for macro-level societal impact.

The Formation Mechanism of Consumer Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility Authenticity: An Empirical Study of Chinese Consumers

“…Jones et al [1] and McWilliams et al [2] propose CSR as an act that transcends immediate economic interests and responsibilities stipulated by law for companies. CSR can promote the behavior of social public interest.…”

“…In recent years, with the continuous development of the world economy and society, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has attracted greater attention from consumers, researchers and companies [1][2][3][4]. Based on previous definitions of CSR [1,2], we define CSR as the actions that appear to further some social benefits, beyond the immediate economic interests and responsibility stipulated by law for companies. CSR efforts not only respond to social demands for companies to undertake acts in the public interest, but also serve as a way for companies to gain competitive advantages.…”

“…There is much research on CSR [17][18][19]. Most of this research are objective studies at the macro-level and meso-level [1,20,21]. Therefore, this kind of research tends to neglect specific and detailed factors of CSR research [10,22].…”

Corporate Social Responsibility Excites ‘Exponential’ Positive Employee Engagement: The Matthew Effect in CSR and Sustainable Policy

“…Interestingly, there has been an exponential growth of research on this exciting topic. More than half of the articles on CSR have been published in the last decade (Jones et al ., ). Meso‐ and macro‐level studies have dominated the field.…”

The impact of CSR on corporate reputation perceptions of the public—A configurational multi‐time, multi‐source perspective

“…More specifically, in applying the category diagnosticity approach it addresses calls to investigate how and to what extent positive and negative signals affect reputation (Walker, ), with a particular emphasis on their interactive effects (Lin‐Hi & Blumberg, ). This approach also ties in with the notion that processes on the individual or micro‐level may have a crucial impact on the outcomes of CSR at the firm level (Jones, Willness, & Glavas, ).…”