Methodology

The current article focuses on executing the CSR activities and how it affect the mentality and behaviour patterns of employees about the CSR initiatives of companies. This article shows the mindset of employees towards the CSR activities of their company. Generally, company use CSR activities as a tool to enhance their HR strategy, but the company ignores the importance of employees who react positively and negatively both towards the CSR initiatives. This article is based on an experiment, conducted on employees of an Italian firm Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk), where more than 3000 workers participated in this study of CSR. Employees were divided into four groups with different incentive types for creating slogans for the products that firm can use on their websites. After research, it has been found that both monetary and charitable incentives worked differently on the performance of employees. When the company provide monetary incentives, it increased the performance of employees and they add three more slogans and while company tied their extra work with charity donation, it backfired and only 49% of workers provide additional slogans. It was comparatively low in compare to 54% of workers who provided extra work when the donation was made independent of their effort. This research clearly shows that employees were less motivated when the company donated money for the charity that is gained by the company from employees. It was also found in the research that more than 60% of workers created three slogans, who were directly asked to create slogans, compare to 52% of people who offered charitable incentives (Meier & Cassar, 2018).

This article is a clear reflection of what workers think and how they adversely react when they know that company usage the CSR initiatives as a tool to increase their own profits. Workers care about the actual motive behind the CSR activities of the firm. When a firm offers pro-social incentives to increase the firm’s profit, it can adversely affect the company and can backfire as well. Thus, it is important to practice genuine CSR practices that are conducted for social welfare rather than earning profits.  

The current article suggests that the profit motive of the organisation through CSR activities can destroy the very benefits it hopes to achieve from CSR activities. Although, there are three limitations of this experiment conducted on the Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk). The experiment was conducted on the workers who were working M-Turk, and they were hired by the company itself. Selection of workers was based on the random basis. Thus, it is difficult to investigate the actual effect of intentions of workers on a firm’s actual employees. It also not applied to every firm. The second limitation is that it is based on only charitable incentives, that are only one form of CSR activities, and making it as the performance-based is a type of CSR tools. The third limitation of this experiment is the random selection of workers for different groups that means workers were not allowed to sort on the basis of their choice of incentive schemes. This sorting mitigates the negative effect of pro-social incentives of such companies. The article based on the assumptions that workers have no idea about the CSR initiatives of the company and the motive behind it. In the research, only one form of CSR that is the charitable incentive is considered on behalf of other CSR tools that may also influence the result if we consider other forms of CSR tool as well.  

Results and Findings

The conclusion of this article reflects that the firm’s pro-social CSR activities do not help them to achieve the desired result from their CSR activities. The article also explains that firms should not use the CSR activities as a profit maximization tool or tool that benefit their HR strategy. Workers are fully aware of the intentions behind the CSR activities of their company. Thus, if company usage their CSR activities to increase their own profits or enhance their productivity, workers care about the genuine causes and reacts negatively about the company. The company should initiate genuine CSR practices instead of pro-social incentives whose main goal is to enhance the profit of the organisation (Gupta, 2017). CSR initiatives should be executed in such a way that helps the community and for social welfare, which operates rather than their profit maximization motives (Chandwick, 2016). If employees think that their company used CSR initiatives as an instrument to increase profit, they will put less effort into their performance and react negatively towards the organisation. In simple words, if CSR activities will be beneficial for the society and employees of the organisation then only it will be effective otherwise, it affects the image of the company.  

In this article, it is clearly stated by the author that CSR is crucial for any organisation for its reputation and image building but only if it is practised in right way and for the welfare of society. The motive of earning profit through CSR activities is not proves that it is helpful for the organisation. The main objective behind CSR activities of any company is to the welfare of society and gives something to that community and environment in which it operates its business (Wang, Tong, Takeuchi, & George, 2016). However, nowadays companies practices CSR initiatives as a tool to enhance their sales, profits, and productivity. They do CSR initiatives because people will attract towards the company and about its product that is not beneficial for the society and for the employees as well (Bhattacharya, Korschun, Sen, & Routledge, 2017). Because employees of the company understand the intentions very well behind the CSR practices, if company is not practising true and genuine CSR activities for the society and for its environment, then people lost their trust in the company (Cha, Yi, & Bagozzi, 2016). Employees are the vital capital of any organisation and if they lost their faith in the company and think that company is doing fraud in the CSR activities and the main motive behind the CSR activities is to maximise their profits, then they negatively affected their performance and productivity (Korschun, Bhattacharya, & Swain, 2014). Although a large number of companies initiates CSR activities and spend huge amounts from their profits, they will not get the expected results rather than they suffered from loss because they are not doing the CSR practices in a right way with true intentions. Thus, a real and ethical intention is necessary behind any CSR activities and it is crucial for any company.  

Limitations

People in the Australia are frequently visited in Starbucks and this case is also applied on me where I visit regularly with my friends and family members for coffee. Starbucks is known for their global responsibility and CSR activities. Starbuck is committed towards the society and to the people in which it operates its business (Zhou, Luo, & Tang, 2018). Starbucks is known for their quality coffee services which are ethically traded and responsibly grown in the coffee farming house. They are also committed to our environment and focuses on inspiring others towards nature. Starbucks also considers various measures for efficient use of electricity and by using quality energy-efficient equipment (Kang, & Namkung, 2017). In the above-given article, it is clearly mentioned that a good CSR practice that helps the society, in return get helps the company in employee retention and lowering the wages demand of employees. The same trick is also adopted by Starbucks in Australia, where employee satisfaction and retention in Starbucks is high. Customers are also attracted towards the Starbucks café because of the good CSR practices of the company. However, Starbucks uses a costly measure to reduce the impact of its operation on the environment but for the longest time of period, it will be beneficial for the company as well. They not only supporting the quality coffee for their customers, in addition to this they also provide jobs for those farmers who work in the coffee farming for Starbucks. The major focus of the company is to follow the social and corporate ethics while operating their business.

Starbucks cover the various activities towards the environmental care and protections such as energy conservations, water conservations and recycling, creating green buildings for their Café stores, focuses on the use of energy efficient resources, and fulfil their responsibility for farmers. However, they also focus on fair pricing for their coffee products, precisions, and responsible buying of raw materials such as coffee leaf and other products. They also involve the third party to consider the interests of the farmers and work with the government as well that their farmers are not suffering from deprived of utility (Glavas, 2016). Apart from this, they are mostly focusing on building a strong relationship with their customers, employees, people, investors, shareholders, suppliers, and farmers through effective CSR activities. The satisfaction of employees helps the company to positive word of mouth advertisement by their own employees who take the responsibility of creating feelings of satisfaction in the mind of the customers and suppliers that leads to their unbreakable loyalty and trust in Starbucks.  

Kang, S. K., & Alcantara, L. L. (2011). The impact of corporate social responsibility activities on organisational attractiveness across different cultures. International Employment Relations Review, 17(2), 37.

This article best explain the impact of CSR activities on the organisational performance and its culture. The objective of this article is to show the various gaps between the practice of CSR activities and its impact on organisational attractiveness in different cultures. This article best explain the importance of CSR activities in the context of organisational culture and its attractiveness for people.

Maon, F., Lindgreen, A., & Swaen, V. (2010). Organizational stages and cultural phases: A critical review and a consolidative model of corporate social responsibility development. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12(1), 20-38.

This article also focuses on the vital role of CSR activities in different organisational stages and cultural phases. This article covers the multi-dimensional dynamic perspective that integrates the different organisational factors such as moral, ethical, social, and cultural aspects in the CSR development process.

1. The Relationship between organisational culture and CSR activities has received significant attention in the last few years but still there are two gaps remains in the literature i.e. first gap includes the ignorance of three types of CSR activities: philanthropy, business practice related CSR, and product-related CSR and the second gap is ignorance of organisational culture on the perceived value of CSR (Kang & Alcantara, 2011).

1. Organisational culture sets the tuning of the relationship among employees and altering its interactions and collaborations with other people and with the environment as well and it provides a more inclusive viewpoint on the CSR development (Maon, Lindgreen, & Swaen, 2010).

References

Bhattacharya, C. B., Korschun, D., Sen, S., & Routledge, H. (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility. Journal of International Law, 26(2).

Cha, M. K., Yi, Y., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2016). Effects of customer participation in corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs on the CSR-brand fit and brand loyalty. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 57(3), 235-249.

Chandwick, D. (2016) Three ways CSR can Increase Bottom Line [online]. Retrieve from: https://www.iedp.com/articles/3-ways-csr-can-increase-bottom-line/

Glavas, A. (2016). Corporate social responsibility and employee engagement: Enabling employees to employ more of their whole selves at work. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 796.

Gupta, M. (2017). Corporate social responsibility, employee–company identification, and organizational commitment: Mediation by employee engagement. Current Psychology, 36(1), 101-109.

Kang, J. W., & Namkung, Y. (2017). The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on Brand Equity and the Moderating Role of Ethical Consumerism: The Case of Starbucks. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 15(8), 26-30.

Kang, S. K., & Alcantara, L. L. (2011). The impact of corporate social responsibility activities on organisational attractiveness across different cultures. International Employment Relations Review, 17(2), 37.

Korschun, D., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Swain, S. D. (2014). Corporate social responsibility, customer orientation, and the job performance of frontline employees. Journal of Marketing, 78(3), 20-37.

Maon, F., Lindgreen, A., & Swaen, V. (2010). Organizational stages and cultural phases: A critical review and a consolidative model of corporate social responsibility development. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12(1), 20-38.

Meier, S., & Cassar, L. (2018). Stop Talking About How CSR Helps Your Bottom Line. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2-5. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2018/01/stop-talking-about-how-csr-helps-your-bottom-line

Wang, H., Tong, L., Takeuchi, R., & George, G. (2016). Corporate social responsibility: An overview and new research directions: Thematic issue on corporate social responsibility.

Zhou, Z., Luo, B. N., & Tang, T. L. P. (2018). Corporate social responsibility excites ‘exponential’ positive employee engagement: The Matthew effect in CSR and sustainable policy. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 25(4), 339-354.