The consequences of employees’ perceived corporate social responsibility: A meta‐analysis

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Yanling Wang,Yanxia Wang,Shan Xu
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12273

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:471–496. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  471© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), defined as “context-specific organ-

isational actions and policies that take into account stakeholders’ expec-

tations and the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental

performance” (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012, p. 933), has become an operative

tool for enterprises to pursue competitive advantage and commercial

success (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2015). The past few decades have

witnessed a significant increase in research on CSR at the organisa-

tional level (Lee, 2008), mainly focusing on CSR’s effect on enterprises’

financial outcomes (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012). However, there are some

research gaps in the micro-level research of CSR (Glavas, 2016)––in par-

ticular, limited research attention has been paid to the stakeholder group

of employees, who are important resources contributing to corporate

performance and ultimately determining the long-term survival of the

enterprise (De Roeck, Marique, Stinglhamber, & Swaen, 2014).

Furthermore, although many enterprises claim to practise CSR for

its own sake, there have been continuous efforts by researchers to

discover any possible benefits to enterprises arising from their CSR

activities. Previous scholars have pointed out the instrumental ben-

efits of CSR (Rupp & Mallory, 2015), such as increasing performance,

and encouraging consumption (see Becker-Olsen, Cudmore, & Hill,

2006; Waddock & Graves, 1997). However, the possible psycholog-

ical effects of CSR on stakeholders within an enterprise are still un-

der-investigated (Lin, 2010). In particular, employees, as one of the

most important stakeholder groups in an enterprise, and who have

tacit knowledge of the organisation, tend to be more aware of the

motives behind CSR than other stakeholders (Fryzel & Seppala, 2016).

Therefore, the way in which employees are psychologically affected by

CSR activities is deserving of researchers’ and managers’ keen atten-

tion, since these psychological effects, such as organisational commit-

ment, have the potential to decrease staff turnover and have positive

effects on productivity (Rodrigo, Aqueveque, & Duran, 2019).

To investigate how employe es are psycholog ically affe cted by

CSR, we focus on employees’ perceived CSR (hereafter “perceived

CSR”) at the in dividual level , which is consiste nt with what Glavas

(2016) has suggested. P erceived CSR in dicates employe es’ under-

standing of th e enterprises’ social re sponsibility pra ctices (Lee, Park,

Received: 14 Decem ber 2018 

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  Revised: 27 August 2 019 

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  Accepted: 4 Febru ary 2020

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12273

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The consequences of employees’ perceived corporate social

responsibility: A meta-analysis

Yanling Wang1 | Shan Xu2 | Yanxia Wang3

1Business Sch ool, Yunnan Universi ty of

Finance and Economics, Kunming, China

2School of Business Administration,

Southweste rn University of Fi nance and

Economics, Chengdu, China

3School of Mana gement, Lanzho u

University, Lanzhou, China

Correspondence

Shan Xu, Schoo l of Business Adminis tration,

Southweste rn University of Fi nance and

Economics, Chengdu, China.

Email: sunshinexushan@163.com

Funding information

Western Proje ct Fund from the Minis try of

Education of Hu manities and Soci al Sciences

Project in Ch ina, Grant/Award Numb er:

18XJC630 006; Humaniti es and Social

Sciences Fund of M inistry of Educa tion in

China, Gran t/Award Number: 18YJA630131;

2019 Science Resea rch Fund of Yunnan

Universit y of Finance and Econom ics, Grant/

Award Number: 2019B03

Abstract

This paper reviews th e relationship bet ween employees’ percei ved CSR and its di-

mensions and work outcom es, and explores t he moderating ef fects of the s amples’

demographic char acteristics (i.e., gender, age), and nation al culture, based on a meta-

analysis of 65 studies fro m 67 samples. Results s how that perceived CS R and its

dimensions are positively related to employees’ positive attitudes and behaviours,

and negatively relate d to their negative att itudes and behavio urs. The result s also

partially supp ort the moderating effe cts of the samples’ demogr aphic characteristics

in terms of age and gender, and nationa l culture. This stud y supplements ex isting

theoretical rev iew articles, an d further conf irms the psychologic al effect s of per-

ceived CSR. In ad dition, the result s further conf irm the rationali ty of CSR prac tices

and provide sugges tions for enterprise s to better use CSR s trategies to motivate

their employees.

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& Lee, 2013; Montgome ry & Stone, 2009) and evalua tion of the en-

terprises’ soc ial performance (P anagopoulos, Rap p, & Vlachos, 2016;

Wagner, Lutz, & Weitz, 20 09). It captures employees’ k nowledge of

enterprises’ responsibilities towards employees, consumers, gov-

ernment, the p ublic, and th e environment, a ccording to the sc ales

offered by Turker (200 9b). Perceived CSR has been fo und to have an

important i mpact on employees’ att itudes and behaviours (B rown &

Dacin, 1997; Rupp, Ganapath i, Aguilera, & William s, 2006).

Though existing studies have made efforts to investigate how

perceived CSR influences employees’ attitudes and behaviours, a me-

ta-analysis of the psychological effects of perceived CSR on employees’

outcomes is needed for two reasons. First, although previous empir-

ical studies (Brown & Dacin, 1997; Rupp et al., 2006) have yielded

insights into the change in employees’ attitudes and behaviours when

they perceive CSR, the findings remain inconsistent and inconclusive.

For example, some scholars (Du et al., 2015; Suh, 2016; Yilmaz, Ali,

& Flouris, 2015) argue that perceived CSR has a positive effect on

employees’ job satisfaction, while others such as Wisse, van Eijbergen,

Rietzschel, and Scheibe (2018) have found that perceived CSR is neg-

atively correlated with job satisfaction (r = −.01).

Second, the majority of research summarising the relationships be-

tween perceived CSR and its consequences are qualitative review arti-

cles (see Aguinis & Glavas, 2012; Glavas, 2016; Gond, El Akremi, Swaen,

& Babu, 2017; Rupp & Mallory, 2015). These works are important to

quickly map out research in this field but are incapable of obtaining a

firm conclusion through integrating the existing works. Therefore, a

quantitative review article, namely a meta-analysis, is necessary to help

us better understand the relationship between perceived CSR and its

consequences from the employees’ perspective (Rupp & Mallory, 2015).

This paper contr ibutes theor etically by fur ther confir ming the

psychologic al effect s of perceived CSR a t the individua l level. It

integrates the f ragmented resu lts of extan t empirical st udies and

supplement s existing qualitat ive review articles by ob taining reliable

correlation coe fficients between pe rceived CSR and its psychol ogi-

cal consequen ces using a meta-analysis. It a lso points out the possi-

ble differen ces in employees of diffe rent genders, ages, an d cultures

when predict ing employees’ re actions to C SR practice s. The paper

also makes a prac tical contributio n by verifying the ratio nality of en-

terprises’ CSR activities and giving confidence to stakeholders that

CSR activities will bring consequent benefits.

Following Gond et al.’s (2017) model, which divided the con-

sequences of perceived CSR into four categories, namely, positive

attitudes, positive behaviours, negative attitudes and negative be-

haviours, this paper categorises these consequences into the same

four types when conducting the meta-analysis. Furthermore, this

paper investigates the moderating effects of the samples’ demo-

graphic characteristics (gender and age), and national culture on

the relationship between perceived CSR and its consequences, as a

possible explanation for the intragroup variances of different indi-

vidual clusters. The proposed model in the meta-analysis is shown

in Figure 1.

2 | LITERATURE RE VIEW

Extant st udies have investi gated employees’ p erceived CSR a nd

its conseque nces, and obta ined two main fi ndings. Firs t, perceived

CSR promotes employees’ positive attitudes and behaviours, such

as organisatio nal commitment ( Erdogan, Baue r, & Taylor, 2015),

organisatio nal identity (D e Roeck, El Akre mi, & Swaen, 2016), or-

ganisational trust (Farooq, Payaud, Merunka, & Valette-Florence,

2014), job satisfact ion (Glavas & Kelley, 2014), employee s’ creativ-

ity (Spanjol, Tam, & Tam, 2015), or ganisational c itizenship behav-

iour (Farooq, Rupp, & Far ooq, 2017), and so on . Second, perce ived

CSR reduces employees’ negative attitudes and behaviours, such as

organisatio nal cynicism (Sh eel & Vohra, 2016), turnover i ntention

(Carnahan, Kryscynski, & Olson, 2015), and organisational deviation

(Evans, Goodman , & Davis, 2010). Although mo st of the research has

reached an agreement about perceived CSR and employees’ atti-

tudes and behaviours, some inconsistent findings remain (see Wisse

et al., 2018) due to some in terfering f actors, such a s measurement

and sampling er rors and some possible m oderators such as the sa m-

ples’ demographic characteristics.

Beyond this empir ical resear ch, many other res earchers have

attempted to conduct review ar ticles to better integrate cur rent

research concl usions. For example, A guinis and Glavas (2012) con-

ducted a review of 58 8 journal ar ticles, and 102 boo ks and book

chapters, and d rew conclusions re garding the out comes of CSR

at the individual level, including the reactions of employees when

perceiving C SR. Rupp and Mallory (2 015) also conducted a review

FIGURE 1 Proposed model in t he

meta-analysis

Positive consequences

Attitudes

Perceived external prestige

Perceived organisational support

Organisational identification

Organisational trust

Organisational justice

Organisational commitment

Work engagement

Job satisfaction

Negative consequences

Attitudes

Turnover intention

Organisational cynicism

Behaviours

Job performance

OCB

Creativity

Behaviours

Organisational Deviance

Employees’ perceivedCSR

CSR dimension

Samples’ demographic characteristics

Gender

Age

National culture