How Do Employees Perceive Corporate Responsibility? Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility Scale

• Published in: Journal of management Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 619 - 657
• Main Authors: El Akremi, Assâad, Gond, Jean-Pascal, Swaen, Valérie, De Roeck, Kenneth, Igalens, Jacques
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-02-2018; Sage Publications Ltd; Southern Management Association
• Subjects: Business administration; Confirmatory factor analysis; Corporate responsibility; Employees; Environmental performance; Exploratory factor analysis; Human resources; Humanities and Social Sciences; Job satisfaction; Organizational ethics; Organizational justice; Organizational support; Social responsibility; Stakeholders; Validity; Welfare; employees’ perceptions; corporate social responsibility; stakeholders; scale development and validation; multidimensional construct; perceptions scale development and validation; stakeholders employees
• ISSN: 0149-2063; 1557-1211
• DOI: 10.1177/0149206315569311

Recent research on the microfoundations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has highlighted the need for improved measures to evaluate how stakeholders perceive and subsequently react to CSR initiatives. Drawing on stakeholder theory and data from five samples of employees (N = 3,772), the authors develop and validate a new measure of corporate stakeholder responsibility (CStR), which refers to an organization’s context-specific actions and policies designed to enhance the welfare of various stakeholder groups by accounting for the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance; it is conceptualized as a superordinate, multidimensional construct. Results from exploratory factor analyses, first- and second-order confirmatory factor analyses, and structural equation modeling provide strong evidence of the convergent, discriminant, incremental, and criterion-related validities of the proposed CStR scale. Two-wave longitudinal studies further extend prior theory by demonstrating that the higher-order CStR construct relates positively and directly to organizational pride and perceived organizational support, as well as positively and indirectly to organizational identification, job satisfaction, and affective commitment, beyond the contribution of overall organizational justice, ethical climate, and prior measures of perceived CSR.