EMPLOYEE’S PERCEPTION OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Abstract

Employee’s perception of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) is crucial to the understanding
of attitudes and behaviours that form the core of the
employer-employee relationship. However, prior
research on CSR has mainly focused on prospect
employees or on non-employee stakeholders (e.g.,
customers). As a result, little is known about the
specifics of incumbent employee’s perception of
CSR. A few studies have developed psychometric
scales, but these works remain limited in their reach
and scope. The purpose of this paper is to address
this gap through a qualitative exploratory study of
differences perceptions of CSR by employees and
manager across a variety of contexts. We conducted
nine focus groups within four corporations, two
formerly state-owned and two that have always been
privately managed. Our findings highlight
important differences in the perceptions of CSR by
employees and managers as the former group
focuses on the social dimension of CSR, whereas
the latter group generally exhibits a better
knowledge of corporate values, principles and
commitments. In most cases, employees insisted on
the need to link socially responsible behaviours
inside and outside the workplace. In addition, our
analysis reveals that in the context of formerly stateowned corporations, CSR can act as a substitute for
the notion of public service.