The Social Impact of Corporate Citizenship Programs on Their Beneficiaries and Society at Large: A Case Study

Abstract

Within their corporate citizenship program (CCP) “Future Matters,” Nationale-Nederlanden (NN) runs several community investment programs. One of these programs is the Social Innovation Relay (SIR). SIR is a partnership with Junior Achievement Europe and exists of a highly developed international network of corporate volunteer employees and students. SIR aims to increase entrepreneurial competences, practical business experiences, and financial resilience of young people by entrepreneurship education. Available research about employee volunteering (EV) mainly focused on indicating and showing its positive effects in CCPs on the employee and the organization. Unfortunately, knowledge about the effect of EV on the target group and society at large is less developed. In this study, we aim to bridge this research gap by assessing the impact of the program on the SIR participants. We found that the beneficiaries of the SIR program indeed show more entrepreneurial intention, behavior, and social awareness. Our findings show that the main results are achieved during the first phase of the program. Because the skills and characteristics of entrepreneurial behavior of the beneficiaries increase during the program, we can argue that it is likely that NN creates social impact for the beneficiaries with their program.