When Does CSR Fail to Incentive Employees’ Affective Organizational Commitment? Exploring the Moderating Effects Based on the C-S-R Concerns Model

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a strategy employed to engage stakeholders. Prior studies explored the different mechanisms by which employees, as one of an organization’s biggest stakeholder groups, positively respond to organizational CSR behavior. However, limited attention has been paid to the conditional boundaries when employees’ positive responses are stronger or weaker, overlooking the possibility that sometimes CSR fails to obtain employees’ support. The study employed the “C-S-R concerns” model to systematically investigate how caring-based (i.e., moral identity), self-based (i.e., corporate ability), and relational-based (i.e., importance of CSR) factors moderate the relationship between perceived CSR (PCSR) and affective organizational commitment (AOC). Using data collected from 326 employees in the Chinese high-tech industry, we found that the positive effects of employees’ PCSR on their AOC becomes negative when employees have higher levels of moral identity, when their organizations are perceived as having greater ability, and when CSR is perceived as more important to the success of their organization. The findings advance our understanding of the inconclusive impacts of CSR on firm performance by providing micro-level evidence from employees. This also provides practical implications for managers about how to select employees, set CSR strategies and cultivate organizational cultures.