Do responsible practices enhance employee organizational commitment? A study of brazilian textile companies

This paper assesses the effects of employee perception of corporative social responsibility (CSR) practices on organizational commitment (OC) in textile companies located in the Brazilian state of Ceará – a relevant region for the textile industry in Latin America. The research used a survey to collect data from 539 employees working in three companies, adopting a quantitative approach based on structural equation modeling. The results show that CSR practices geared toward employees, clients, suppliers, and government positively impacted affective/normative commitment, whereas CSR practices geared toward society and the environment impacted commitment negatively. Also, CSR practices focused on employees affected their continuance commitment, while CSR practices focused on other stakeholders did not present the same impact. Finally, the findings show that large textile companies tend to adopt more CSR practices, which significantly influences employee commitment.