Employee Volunteering and Social Capital: Contributions to Corporate Social Responsibility
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00551.x |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Author | Judy N. Muthuri,Jeremy Moon,Dirk Matten |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
Employee Volunteering and Social Capital:
Contributions to Corporate Social
Responsibility
Judy N. Muthuri, Dirk Mattenwand Jeremy Moon
International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee
Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK, and wSchulich School of Business, York University,
Toronto, Canada
Corresponding author email: lixjnm@nottingham.ac.uk
As employee volunteering (EV) is increasingly regarded as a means of improving
companies’ community and employee relations, we investigate the contribution of EV to
corporate social responsibility, specifically whether and how it contributes to social
capital. We investigate the dynamics of EV in three UK companies. We explore the
social relations and resources which underpin social capital creation; the roles of
opportunity, motivation and ability in bringing the actors together and enhancing their
capacity for cooperation; and the ways in which alternative EV modes inform the
different dimensions of social capital – networks, trust and norms of cooperation. Our
paper contributes to our understanding of EV and the factors that enable it to create
social capital. Finally we assess the contribution of EV to the overall corporate social
responsibility agenda of companies.
Introduction
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has be-
come an integral, albeit controversial, part of
business practice over the last decade (Econo-
mist, 2005). Although CSR practices are rela-
tively long-standing in the USA, the UK can be
regarded as indicative of a more active model of
policymaking for CSR (Moon, 2004; Vogel,
2005). A crucial and long-standing element in
CSR is community involvement whereby cor-
porations act as ‘citizens’ to give back to their
communities and live up to being responsible
members of their (mostly local) communities
(Logsdon and Wood, 2002). Employee volunteer-
ing (EV) is an increasingly salient feature of
companies’ community involvement programmes.
This paper investigates the contribution of EV to
CSR, specifically through its role in building
social capital.
EV
1
is a fast growing tool for community
involvement in the UK (Peterson, 2004; Tuffrey,
2003). Networks like the Employees in the
Community Network (EitCN) and the Business
in the Community (BITC) Care Programme have
been formed to promote business–community
partnerships and to share best practices in EV.
EV consists of ongoing and coordinated business
support for staff involvement in the local com-
munity. EV programmes are either employer-
initiated or employee-led (Lukka, 2000).
The bulk of EV research so far has been
practitioner-oriented and linked to human re-
source development strategy (Logan, 2002;
We thank all those we interviewed for this research and
are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their
comments on earlier versions of this paper.
1
Alternative names: corporate volunteerism, employee
community involvement.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 20, 75–89 (2009)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00551.x
r2007 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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