How and when do employees identify with their organization? Perceived CSR, first-party (in)justice, and organizational (mis)trust at workplace
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-08-2017-0237 |
| Pages | 1152-1171 |
| Date | 06 August 2018 |
| Published date | 06 August 2018 |
| Author | Koustab Ghosh |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
How and when do employees
identify with their organization?
Perceived CSR, first-party
(in)justice, and organizational
(mis)trust at workplace
Koustab Ghosh
Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, Rohtak, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to inquire how and when the CSR efforts of an organization can
generate positive organizational outcomes by influencing individual employees at the workplace. Theorizing
perceived first-party justice as psycho-cognitive and affect-based organizational trust as psycho-affective
processes, respectively, in interpreting employees’perception of organizational CSR initiatives provided a
valid rationale behind this research.
Design/methodology/approach –Following a two-phase longitudinal research design, sample was drawn
from six subsidiary organizations of a multinational conglomerate.
Findings –The findings indicated that the perceived internal image of CSR predicts employees’deep
organizational identification through the mediation of affect-based organizational trust, conditional on
perceived first-party justice as a moderator.
Research limitations/implications –This study contributed to extant research by investigating the
hitherto unexplored question of how and when employees’perceived image of CSR delineates to their deep
identification with the organization supported by affect-based organizational trust and self-experienced
first-party justice. The collection of survey responses within six group organizations could limit the
generalization of the findings from this study in other contexts.
Practical implications –This study offers significant implications in terms of the managers’role in
involving employees in the organization’s CSR activities, using CSR as a platform for corporate branding to
internal stakeholders, and attracting talent in knowledge intensive competition.
Originality/value –The studyadvances the emerging micro-level approachof CSR by exploring an employee
centric, personalized view of organizational CSR and estimating its effect at the level of individual employees.
Keywords Quantitative, Corporate social responsibility, Trust, Identity, Organizational justice,
Internal image of CSR, Perceived first-party justice, Employees’organizational identification
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a psychological micro foundation has recently
evoked enthusiasm and a growing body of literature has started providing evidence that
afirm’s own CSR initiatives significantly affect the behavior of employees within the
company. This micro-level approach of CSR has been interpreted as how employees’
perception and response to their firm’s CSR activities can result in positive outcomes at
the workplace (Kim et al., 2010; Morgeson et al., 2013; Vlachos et al., 2014;
Rupp and Mallory, 2015; De Roeck et al., 2016; Shen and Benson, 2016; Gond et al.,
2017; Vlachos et al., 2017).
Perceived internal image of CSR involves employees’perception of CSR activities of their
organization (Dutton et al., 1994; Fuller et al., 2006; Glavas and Godwin, 2013).Organizational
identification has been understood as the feeling of oneness or belongingness of members of
the organization they work for (Mael and Ashforth, 1992).
Scholars in the CSR domain have supported the view that employees’CSR perception
influence their attitude and behavior toward the organization. However, the formation of
Personnel Review
Vol. 47 No. 5, 2018
pp. 1152-1171
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-08-2017-0237
Received 10 August 2017
Revised 20 November 2017
1 January 2018
Accepted 10 February 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
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PR
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employees’positive perception of their organization’s CSR activities is contingent on how
they are treated by their organization (Tyler and Blader, 2003). In particular, I intend to
examine how an employee centric-personalized view of CSR can generate positive
organizational outcomes at the level of individual employees. This supposition enables me
to adopt the view of perceived internal image of CSR in further examining the relationship
chain with affect-based organizational trust (emotion) and employees’organizational
identification moderated through perceived first-party justice (self-experienced).
In explaining the relationship between the perceived internal image of CSR and
employees’identification with their organization, I have taken support from two major
theoretical propositions, namely, the social identity theory and cue consistency theory.
Drawing on the social identity theory, employees’favorable CSR perception develops
strong emotional bonding that in turn leads to a long lasting deep identification with
their organization (Bartel, 2001; Kim et al., 2010; Glavas and Godwin, 2013; Gond et al.,
2017). Accordingly, it is hypothesized that perceived internal image of CSR predicts
employees’organizational identification through the mediation effect of affect-based
organizational trust.
The cue consistency theory helped me to conceptualize employees’holistic judgment of
their organization’s internal fairness measured through their experience as the overall
first-party justice. Also, this theory explains how CSR as the overall third-party justice is
reflected through the perceptions of employees based on how they are treated by their
organization vis-à-vis external stakeholders (Ambrose and Schminke, 2009). Thus,
theorizing perceived first-party justice as psycho-cognitive and affect-based
organizational trust as psycho-affective processes, respectively, in interpreting employees’
perception of organizational CSR initiatives provided a valid rationale behind this research
(Aguinis and Glavas, 2012; Rupp et al., 2013; Farooq et al., 2016).
The basic research objective of this study lies in inquiring how and when the CSR efforts
of an organization can generate positive organizational outcomes by influencing individual
employees at the workplace. The mediation process in the study explained the causality of
association by answering how perceived internal image of CSR influences employees’
organizational identification. Whereas, the moderation processes served the purpose of
developing a boundary condition to the associative relationship among research variables
by providing support to when employees’CSR perception influences strongly their
identification with the organization.
Data were collected from six subsidiary units of a conglomerate business group, where
each of these subsidiary organizations independently decided their CSR budget,
programs, and implementation plans within the broad guiding philosophy of the parent
organization. Notwithstanding having such autonomy, these six group organizations
could reasonably be influenced by the parent organization’svaluesandCSRorientation.
This anticipation poses as a serious limitation to the effort of generalizing the findings
from this study in other contexts. Common method variance bias for self-reported data
was controlled partially by adopting a longitudinal research design and partially by
taking care of the methodology of data analysis.
Theresultsofthisstudyconfirmthatabetter congruence between employees’
perceived first-party justice inside their organization and perceived internal image of
CSR strengthens the employees’identification with their organization via affect-based
organizational trust. The temporal reactive response pattern of individual employee’s
psycho-cognitive and psycho-affective processes to CSR perception and subsequently
organizational identification was resolved by adopting a longitudinal research
design for this study. This study contributed to extant research by investigating the
hitherto unexplored questionofhowandwhenemployees’perceived image of CSR
delineates to their deep identification with the organization supported by affect-based
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Perceived
CSR and
organizational
identification
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