Employee corporate social responsibility and well-being: the role of work, family and culture spillover
| Date | 12 January 2024 |
| Pages | 287-308 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-02-2023-0097 |
| Published date | 12 January 2024 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Ester Ellen Trees Bolt,Stephen T. Homer |
Employee corporate social
responsibility and well-being:
the role of work, family and
culture spillover
Ester Ellen Trees Bolt
Work and Employment Relations Division, University of Leeds Business School,
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, and
Stephen T. Homer
Department of Management, Sunway University, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose –Considering the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this research investigates the mediating
roles of work, family and culture on the relationship between employee corporate social responsibility (CSR)
and employee well-being.
Design/methodology/approach –Self-administered questionnaire data from 403 employees working
across multiple organisations in the United Kingdom were analysed using path analysis with SmartPLS.
Findings –Organisationscanonly maximallybenefit from theirCSR investmentwhen specific HR strategiesare
in place,as no direct relationshipbetween CSR and well-beingoutcomes was observed.Family-to-workspillover
and work–familyculture were significantmediators in the relationship between employee CSR and well-being.
Research limitations/implications –CSR strategies targeted at improving employee well-being do not
necessarily do so in a direct approach. They, therefore, may not serve the desired performance outcomes of
organisations. Boundary conditions of applying the crossover model of COR theory were observed.
Originality/value –This research contributes to the limited knowledge of the effectiveness of employee-
related CSR strategies on HRM and well-being outcomes from an employees’perspective. Employee-related
CSR strategies are unlikely to improve employee well-being if the inter-individual level of analysis, i.e.
interchange between work, family and culture, is not considered.
Keywords Employee CSR, Employee well-being, Work–family spillover, Work-family culture, HRM, COR
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Businesses are transitioning through substantial turbulence, among these labour shortages
and strikes, pandemics, and political tensions. Derived through these challenges,
organisations face the intricate task of harmonising the interests of various stakeholders.
One stakeholder group particularly affected by the challenges are employees–the focus of
this study. Employee contributions to organisations exhibit a dual nature, they not only
contribute to organisational performance but also incentivise organisations to engage in
socially responsible behaviour for the greater societal benefit by virtue of their bargaining
power (Donaghey et al., 2022). The challenges businesses are facing require more than
government intervention alone; the active involvement of businesses and their employees in
formulating and executing strategies to address these issues is imperative, underscoring the
essential importance of employee well-being (Guest, 2017).
Research argues that the benefits of CSR to employees have severely been understudied
(Hsieh et al., 2022;Homer and Gill, 2022), arguably due to a focus in research on the impact of
traditional CSR–organisations satisfying financial stakeholders. Such research typically
Employee CSR
and well-being
287
Funding: This study was funded by Sunway University, Kickstarter Grant Scheme (Grant number:
GRTIN-KSGS-DMNGT[S]-01-2022).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 20 February 2023
Revised 17 October 2023
18 December 2023
Accepted 19 December 2023
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 46 No. 2, 2024
pp. 287-308
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-02-2023-0097
emphasises corporate financial growth as an outcome of CSR (Wang et al., 2016). While
macro-level perspectives are valuable, it is employees who experience and deliver CSR
strategies. Therefore, an organisation is more likely to experience desired workplace
outcomes of CSR strategies, such as positive employee attitudes and behaviours at work,
when such strategies align with employee life values and priorities (Singhapakdi et al., 2015).
Therefore, more recent CSR literature highlights the importance of designing CSR strategies
specific to employees (Haski-Leventhal, 2022) and includes employees in the core meaning of
CSR, defining CSR as a “connection between the firm’s socially responsible identity and
behaviour and employees’identity and behaviour (Haski-Leventhal et al., 2017, p. 184).
The few studies on the impact of CSR on well-beinghint at a favourable impact. Kim et al.
(2018) found evidence of an indirect positiveinfluence of philanthropic and economic CSR to
employee quality of life through quality of work life. Ahmed et al. (2020) found a significant
direct effect between CSR and employee well-being and a significant mediating effect of
employee well-beingbetween CSR and employee green behaviour.Elorza et al. (2022) analysed
the effect of employee-perceived high-involvement work practices (HIWP) to employee well-
being, proxied as job satisfaction and positiveand negative affect, in the SME context. They
found a significant positive effect of HIWP to job satisfaction and positive affect, and a
significant negative effect on negative affect.While these results are promising, the findings
either representnon-Western perspectives or apply to specificbusiness contexts (SMEs). Also,
the CSR dimensions investigated in these studies were not specifically tailored as employee-
CSR strategies and well-being was measured as proxies using job satisfaction and affect
(Elorza et al.,2022) and overall quality in life (Kim et al., 2018) instead of employee well-being
related to overallhealth. Taken together, these aspects representseveral gaps, also previously
mentioned in the review of Frynas andYamahaki (2016), which this research aims to address.
This research examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR),
humanresource management(HRM) and employeewell-being (Voegtlinand Greenwood, 2013).
HRM involves managing employees within extensive networks influenced by public and
private actorsand stakeholders at the microand macro levels (Voegtlinand Greenwood, 2013).
This studyassesses the micro-levelimpact by examiningthe influenceof CSR on an employees’
family domainand vice versa, as well asthe presence of a work–familyculture (WFC), and the
subsequent influence on employee well-being. Following the well-being classifications of Van
De Voorde et al. (2012), thisstudy considers health well-being –the psychological and mental
well-beingof an employee –included in this research as general mentalwell-being (Heun et al.,
1999) and lifestyle andhabits (Dinzeo et al., 2014). Lifestyle and habitsas a parallel outcome to
employeewell-being isconsidered as lifestyleand habits arenot necessarily directprecedents of
employee well-being due to their complex causation, potential mediating roles, measurement
challenges, andvarying relevance across individuals.
Taking the theoretical position of the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll,
1989) and specifically considering resource gain and loss, this research considers several
HRM practices as mediating variables between ECSR and employee well-being. The first
aspects considered in this research are work–family spillover (WFS) and family–work
spillover (FWS), and the second aspect is the presence of a WFC. WFS is the degree to which
experiences from work are transferred into and affect the quality of the family domain (Kim,
2017), while FWS is the influence family has on the work domain (Carlson et al., 2019). WFC
comprises “mutual assumptions, beliefs, and values on whether an organisation supports and
values the interchange of employees’work and family”(Thompson et al., 1999, p. 394). While
there is ongoing debate as to what practices form part of HRM due to a “plurality of
understandings”(Voegtlin and Greenwood, 2013, p. 182), we believe these aspects are part of
HRM. First, these practices are concerned with employees, i.e. the “independent agents”(p. 6)
in the organisation and acknowledge that these independent agents have responsibilities and
interests to the organisation and “out-of-work activities”(p. 7), such as family responsibilities
ER
46,2
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