Talking about CSR matters: employees’ perception of and reaction to their company’s CSR communication in four different CSR domains

Abstract

Drawing on signaling and social identity theories, we analyze how liking of the company’s CSR advertisements, message credibility, and cause-company fit influence employees’ evaluation of their organization’s CSR engagement and how this relates to employees’ job satisfaction, organizational pride, and word-of-mouth about CSR. CSR is analyzed in four different domains: customer-oriented, employee-oriented, environment-oriented, and philanthropy-oriented CSR. Results of a study with the employees (n = 432) of a large European energy provider reveal that the cause-company fit of CSR engagement has the highest impact on evaluation of the CSR engagement in all CSR domains. Message credibility is important for the evaluation of CSR in the customer-oriented, environment-oriented, and philanthropy-oriented domains, while, noticeably, ad liking only shows an impact in the employee-oriented domain. CSR evaluation influences job satisfaction, organizational pride, and word-of-mouth in all four CSR domains, with some domain-related differences. Implications for CSR advertising, directions for future research and limitations are discussed.