Business & Management Studies

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is important to employees, who are concerned about their employer’s ethical behavior and performance beyond creating shareholder value. Using a constructivist lens, we study how employees in financial services perceive and construct CSR. The study provides two main contributions. First, we demonstrate that, given our study context, employees may conceptualize the targets of CSR primarily as the business’ external stakeholders – mainly communities, customers, and society. Employee discussion of CSR targets did not emphasize employees, the natural environment, or legal compliance. Second, when evaluating CSR, employees rely on considerations of strategic imperatives in tandem with ideas of third-party fairness. In other words, while the business case for CSR is important to employees, it is insufficient to justify CSR.