Relationship is a positive correlation between an

relationship is a positive correlation between an employees’ commitment to an organization and
their perception of that organizations CSR (Mensah, 2017).
2.4 OC and Employee Perception of Their Organization’s CSR
The underlying idea of this relationship is that employees will be more committed to their
organization because “[they are] proud to identify with work organizations that have favorable
reputations ” (Peterson, 2004, p. 299). One reason that employees may take more pride in their
citizenship with a socially responsible organization is that because of the organization's CSR
initiatives, they feel that their role within the organization also has a positive impact on people,
society, and the environment. Similarly, this may be due to the fact that because socially
responsible organizations are often seen as more fair, honest, and accountable, workers feel that
by working with these types of organizations others will also associate them with these same

CSR AND OC: DOES A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP EXIST 4
characteristics (Vitaliano, 2009).
Using data from the Center for World Leadership’s Employee Commitment Survey
Project, Stawiski et al. (2010) are able to support the finding above of a positive correlation
between an employees’ commitment to an organization and their perception of that organizations
CSR. Figure 1 shows that the more an employee “agrees” that their company acts as a good
corporate citizen the higher those same individuals score on OC.
In addition, a case study from 2002 conducted by Brammer et al. (2002) of 4712 randomly
sampled employees at a UK bank also shows this relationship between employees’ perception of
their organizations CSR and OC to be true. In Table 1 (which displays the results of the survey),
we see that both employees’ views of “External CSR” and sense of “Organizational Commitment”
rate highly, which supports the existence of a positive correlation between the two. Interestingly,
while both “External CSR” and “Organizational Commitment” rate highly we see that nearly 70%
of this bank’s employees have worked there five or more years. That is, employees rate the bank’s
CSR highly and also say that they are committed, and because such a large share of employees
have been there for five or more years, the evidence shows that they actually are committed. This
further proves the argument that employees’ perception of CSR has a positive effect on OC.
2.5 Factors Affecting Employee Perception of an Organization’s CSR
That said however, most studies allude to the fact that the strength of this relationship is
affected by certain individual characteristics like age, gender, work experience, time employed by
and position in the organization (Mensah, 2017). In fact, Stawiski et al. (2010) find the correlation
between these factors and OC to be factual. For instance: as workers get older they value job
satisfaction over anything else (including CSR); even though women and men rate their
organization’s CSR the same “the relationship between CSR and commitment is stronger for