Like It or Not : When Corporate Social Responsibility Does Not Attract Potential Applicants

DOI zum Zitieren der Version auf EPub Bayreuth: https://doi.org/10.15495/EPub_UBT_00006070
URN to cite this document: urn:nbn:de:bvb:703-epub-6070-1

Title data

Jakob, Eva Alexandra ; Steinmetz, Holger ; Wehner, Marius Claus ; Engelhardt, Christina ; Kabst, Rüdiger:
Like It or Not : When Corporate Social Responsibility Does Not Attract Potential Applicants.
In: Journal of Business Ethics. Vol. 178 (2022) . - pp. 105-127.
ISSN 1573-0697
DOI der Verlagsversion: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04960-8

	Format: PDF Name: Jakob2021_Article_LikeItOrNotWhenCorporateSocial.pdf Version: Published Version Available under License Creative Commons BY 4.0: Attribution
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Abstract

Companies increasingly recognize the importance of communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) including their engagement toward employees, the community, the environment and other stakeholder groups to attract applicants. The positive findings on the effect of CSR on applicants’ reactions are commonly based on the assumption that companies send a clear signal about their commitment to CSR. However, communication is always contextualized and has become more ambiguous through the increased availability of information online. External stakeholders including actual and potential applicants are confronted with inconsistencies between the way companies communicate CSR activities and their overall CSR performance. Drawing on signaling theory, this article raises the question of how the interaction between strong CSR communication and low CSR performance influences organizational attractiveness. We propose that low CSR performance dampens the effect of CSR communication on organizational attractiveness. Hence, the inconsistency between CSR communication and CSR performance decreases organizational attractiveness. To test our hypotheses, we scraped 67,189 posts published on corporate Facebook career pages by 58 Fortune 500 companies from the time they began their respective career page until June 2018. Surprisingly, our results show that a low CSR performance strengthens the effect of CSR communication on organizational attractiveness. Thus, inconsistencies between CSR communication and CSR performance seem to lead to positive evaluations among applicants.

Further data

Item Type:	Article in a journal
Keywords:	Corporate social responsibility; Potential applicants; Organizational attractiveness; Corporate social responsibility performance; Signaling theory; · Inconsistency; Social media
DDC Subjects:	300 Social sciences > 330 Economics 300 Social sciences > 360 Social problems, social services
Institutions of the University:	Faculties > Faculty of Law, Business and Economics > Department of Business Administration Faculties > Faculty of Law, Business and Economics > Department of Business Administration > Junior Professor Social Entrepreneurship Faculties Faculties > Faculty of Law, Business and Economics
Language:	English
Originates at UBT:	Yes
URN:	urn:nbn:de:bvb:703-epub-6070-1
Date Deposited:	25 Mar 2022 06:23
Last Modified:	01 Aug 2022 07:37
URI:	https://epub.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/6070

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