Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Performance - Research Proposal Example

Name Instructor Course Date Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Employee Performance/Engagement Summary of Education In order to achieve and satisfy the needs of citizens, political administrations provide public services. These services demand services that are offered by a government to individuals that live under its control. To provide Efficient and effective public service, essential skills are required. These skills are such as interpersonal skills, teamwork, and communication, which facilitate meeting of civic expectations. From an individual perspective, this paper is of the opinion that organization as well as operation of public services within the local level should be customized such that they meet as well as fulfil the requirements of the beneficiaries. Therefore, in this setting, for one to acquire the essential skills that are required within the public service, its important that they go through a doctoral program. Modern public service necessitates personnel with the capacity to comprehend in profundity the needs as well as skills of the public. Therefore, for the personnel to excel in the management of public service, they should possess proficiency and high level skills in public service. CSR and Employee Engagement According to studies conducted on employee engagement, it has been evidenced that only 13 percent of them are engaged globally. This indicates low levels of employee engagement, which is perceived as a major concern for firms and organizations. For example, in the United States alone, it has been estimated that the country’s economy suffers a loss of about 450 to 550 billion dollars per year due to reduced productivity resulting from the disengagement of employees (Glavas N.p). Moreover, employee disengagement at the workplace is perceived as a broader societal challenge because employees spend plentiful of their time at work. Consequently, if the work is not meaningful, it has the capacity to influence the wellbeing of the employees in a negative manner. Conversely, there has emerged a counter-trend aimed at engaging employees in the workforce as a result of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Glavas N.p). In the recent past, it has been evidenced that CSR has become the backbone of employee engagement where employees are expected to participate in newly drafted initiatives aimed at enhancing their lives as well as making their work more sustainable. As a result, researchers have embarked on exploring the relationship that exists between CSR and employee engagement. However, there is very little that is known concerning reasons why and how employees get engaged by the CSR. CSR and employee engagement will result to efficient and effective public service. Importance of the Study The main reason for this study is that studies on employee engagement and CSR have been moderately nascent although few of the studies have concluded that there exists a positive link between employee engagement and CSR. For example, some studies have established that the impact on employee engagement as a result of positive employee view of CSR is strengthened by its importance to the employee. Particularly, the ability of CSR to allow public service organizations to move past formal value statements that are commonly just written words to actually embodying and living the values. As a result, this embodiment sends positive signals to the organization’s employees concerning values of the organization, which in return influences their engagement. Moreover, according to recent studies, it has been evidenced that CSR enhances the attractiveness of organizations ton potential as well as existing employees. Employees are perceived as an important part of stakeholder group within organizations and hence the firms have a role to exercise their CSR on them. However, despite the continued dissemination regarding CSR’s cross-disciplinary state, organizational behavior, relevance to the management of employees, and human resource management, CSR still remains under investigated (Gond, El-Akremi and Igalens 4). Although various studies have adopted the standpoint of CSR as organizational behavior, these studies mainly concentrate on ways in which CSR influence prospective employees as well as increase organization attractiveness. On the other hand, other empirical studies that focus on investigating the internal influence of CSR on staff only concentrate on particular aspects of organizational commitment. Nonetheless, due to the multidimensional state of CSR, it has the capacity to influence a significant range of corporate behaviors and attitudes beyond the commitment of an organization (Gond, El-Akremi and Igalens 4). Due to the lack of substantial theoretical synthesis and consolidation on the why and how CSR influences employees’ engagement the importance of this study is to support the establishment that CSR has a positive relationship with employee engagement and also establish the reasons why and how that relation occurs. Therefore, this study attempts to examine the underlying mechanisms between CSR and positive employee engagement. Motivating Factors to Conduct the Study The understanding of this analogy as well as personal interest in public service has acted as the catalyzing factor for the desire to expound personal knowledge and skills within the public service using a PHD program. The desire to have a compelling experience in public service is deeply entwined with long-term personal professional goals, which include attaining a considerable rank within the public service management. Additionally, holding an executive master’s degree in business management also acted as a catalyst that triggered the personal decision to enroll for a public service doctoral program. Moreover, the graduate satisfaction, learning resources, generic skills, credibility, performance upshot, as well as competent staff at the University had a significant part in catalyzing the desire to take up a public service doctoral program. To excel in the public service sector, it is paramount that one should be of potent mind, good communicator, decisive, rational, and with both interpersonal and leadership skills. Thus, as a public service engineer in Qatar Civil Aviation, it’s a personal firm belief that taking the PhD program will have a significant influence in both professional and the individual’s life. The intention for enrolling for the public service is to use the PhD degree as a platform for offering support, expertise, and advice to the public. This combined with personal qualities like resilience, humbleness, diligence, honesty, collaboration, attentiveness, and the propensity as well as potential to be in alignment with any taxing education background allows for one to become a competent employee in the public service sector. These traits are important values in an organization and in particular the public service because they will help build a high performance culture. Seeking to Fill the Gap i. Defining CSR and Employee Engagement The first step to filling the gap will be defining CSR and Employee engagement. A substantial number of researchers have hypothesized CSR in fairly broad terms and as a result, CSR definitions mutate in conjunction to policies and actions that are known to comprise this kind of responsibility. In some definitions, CSR tend to focus on aspects such as environmental protection and working conditions while others concentrate on business ethics that could include public involvement and philanthropy. However, the definition used for this study is that CSR is context-specific policies and actions by organizations that take into consideration the expectations of stakeholders as well as the triple bottom line of social, economic, and environmental performance (Aguinis 855). Thus, this definition indicates that organizations operationalize CSR with the aim of ensuring that there is involvement and commitment in improving the well-being of the community. CSR programs come in many forms and involve various extents as well as types of contributions together with degrees of involvement from the employees (Roza 18). Employee engagement on the other hand involves three concepts, which include “employee attraction, retention, and engagement” (Gross and Holland 3). Organizations want employees who are willing to engage their best with the aim of ensuring that the company successfully achieves its set goals. On the other hand, employees crave for jobs that challenge them and give their lives a meaning. Consequently, this relationship between employers and employees where the situation is win-win has been commonly referred to as an engaged workforce. Regarding the definition of employee engagement, there has been on agreed-upon definition of the concept. However, an agreement exists that employee engagement entails more aspects other than performance and motivation. Common themes that are present in employee engagement definitions include belief in and commitment to the organization as well as its values and the employees’ willingness and capacity to contribute open effort to assist in ensuring that the organization succeeds (Gross and Holland 3). Additionally, other definitions also put emphasis on employees’ emotional bond with the organizations they work for, a passion for their work as well as hopeful feelings concerning the future in the firms. Engaged employees are evidenced to get satisfaction from the excelling of firms and organizations they work for (Gross and Holland 3). ii. Literature Review on CSR and Employee Engagement The second step to filling the gap will be reviewing previous studies to help gain grounds on what has been done and what needs implementation. According to Glavas (N.p), studies on CSR as well as employee engagement are fairly nascent although afew of these studies have established that there exists a positive correlation between CSR and the engagement of employees. For example, According to Glavas and Piderit (53), the importance of CSR has the capacity to strengthen the effect of employee engagement as a result of positive views of CSR by the employees. Moreover, there has been evidence that CSR’s contribution to the greater good of the organization and society at large makes employees to feel good about themselves and therefore find meaning in their work (Glavas and Piderit 53). Although only a few studies have been dedicated to explore this relationship, there are researches on paradigms that offer further evidence of the likelihood of a relationship between CSR and employee engagement. Another way through which CSR influences employee engagement is that it plays a crucial role enhancing organizations’ status among the employees. As a result, their motivation is boosted which in return positively influences their engagement. However, this role is highly underrated in public service organizations because the firms are mainly inconsistent in their approach to executing the CSR initiatives. For example, employees in a public service organization that has not established a policy on reprocessing wastes but puts up a yearly litter clean-up can turn cynical concerning the genuineness of the organization’s efforts to render a positive impact in the society. As a result, it is important for CSR to be embedded deeply at the heart of organization’s ethos instead of being viewed as just a simple add-on. In addition, according to Bhattacharya, Sankar, and Korschun (2008, N.p), CSR initiatives are used as a reference for the values of an organization and therefore becomes an integral part of “employee value proposition” where contemporary studies have indicated that managers should focus on talent management. Moreover, CSR also humanizes organizations in such a manner that other aspects of the job are incapable. Thus, it portrays the organization as a contributor to the beneficiaries instead of as an entity that is purely concerned with making profits (Bhattacharya, Sankar and Korschun N.p). Due to the different forms that CSR can take, it often works as a legit source of differentiation for organizations. Internal marketing is considered as the most apt rubric where CSR can be utilized as a tool to acquire as well as retain employees. This argument is based on the idea that just like organizations excel in fulfilling the needs and requirements of their clients, they also have the capacity to manage their employees in an effective manner. The approach can be achieved through perceiving the employees as customers from the inside and thus satisfying their needs by offering a compelling set of choices of “job products” with features such as salary, job responsibilities, and benefit packages (Bhattacharya, Sankar and Korschun N.p). Consequently, despite the different meanings and definitions of employee engagement, the distinct as well as unique construct of the concept consists of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive components, which are linked to employees’ role performance (Saks 602). Therefore, various qualities are evident when employees are highly engaged and these include personal traits such as diligence, humbleness, resilience, honesty, spirited, and cooperation as a team. Moreover, the employees are seen to reflect other qualities like splendid communication, collective dexterity, and interpersonal skills that append worth in their work in public service. iii. Challenges of CSR on Employee Engagement The third step will be to understand the challenges of CSR on employee engagement in order to help fill the gap. Thus, despite CSR’s ability to influence employees’ engagement in a positive manner using internal marketing strategy, the approach faces several challenges, which include the lack of awareness as well as involvement in CSR among employees. The proximity of an employee to CSR extends a range, which stems from the complete lack of knowledge regarding the existence of CSR to direct involvement. According to research, it has been evidenced that most employees do not participate in their employers’ efforts to set up CSR initiatives (Bhattacharya, Sankar and Korschun N.p). While a large number of employees have an obscure idea regarding the social responsibility of their employers, they are unaware of the particular activities that the organization engages in and thus lack potential and propensity to tune to any CSR issues. Additionally, some employees could be highly engaged with a given CSR initiative but lack the awareness about other existing public service CSR initiatives by the organization. Organizations fail for tucking away information concerning new CSR initiatives on remote sites of the intranet and as a result, they end up missing prime chances to connect with their employees. The other challenge that faces organizations in using CSR as an internal marketing tool to engage their employees is the limited understanding the needs of employees that are fulfilled by the CSR (Bhattacharya, Sankar and Korschun N.p). It has been evidenced that the excellence of a given job-product results largely from the degree to which it achieves the key needs of employees. Just like the basic aspects of job-product, which include advancement opportunities, pay, job role, and benefits, public service organizations should be able to CSR programs that satisfy at least one higher-order psychosocial needs or more. Arguably, it can be said that the power of CSR as an internal marketing tool lies heavily on its capacity to satisfy and achieve those psychosocial needs meaningfully (Bhattacharya, Sankar and Korschun N.p). Nonetheless, a large number of public service organizations are oblivious to these needs, which complicates issues thus rendering employee engagement impossible. Research Methodology To help with the research, the first approach will be to obtain an ethics statement from the Institutional review Board (IRB) from the university. The statement will be important since it will be used as a design as well as a process aimed at protecting the rights and interests of participants that will be involved in the study. i. Sample and Setting The participants involved for this study will mostly be from public service organizations including Qatar Civil Aviation. The survey responses will be collected as a part of quarterly workplace survey. Both male and female employees will be included in the survey as a representation for the general organization demographics. ii. Data analysis The primary goal of the procedure will be to analyze the data obtained at individual levels. Intra-class correlations will be calculated to help rule out effects of the office level. The highest VIF or variance inflation factor will be recorded and office will be used as a variable. Apart from the correlations between the identified variables, their collinearity will also be analyzed (A. Glavas N.p). Mediation and moderated mediation analyses will be done following the guidelines provided by Hayes (2013). Moreover, bootstrapping using 1000 replications will be applied to help obtain estimates, standard errors, and bias which will be corrected at a 0.95 confidence level (Hayes N.p). The direct influence of CSR on engagement, which is the dependent variable, will be modeled, iii. Gathering Informations Data collection will be done in form of written questionnaires and surveys. The main reason for using these two methods of data collection is due to the efficiency, economical, and timesaving aspect of the approach. Additionally, they allow room for obtaining substantial amounts of data from large population samples. The data collection will be obtained relatively quickly because there will be no need for the researcher to be present when the questionnaires and the surveys are being filled (Mathers, Fox and Hunn 8). General Objective The general objective of this study will be to understand the influence of CSR on employee engagement and the mechanisms through which the effect occurs. Specific objectives 1. To establish why employees are engaged by CSR within the public service organizations. 2. To establish how employees are engaged by CSR within public service organizations. 3. To establish when employees get engaged by CSR within public service organizations. Works Cited Aguinis, H. "Organizational responsibility: doing good and doing well." APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 3 (2011): 855-879. Bhattacharya, Chitra B., Sen Sankar and Daniel Korschun. "Using corporate social responsibility to win the war for talent." 2008 (n.d.). http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/using-corporate-social-responsibility-to-win-the-war-for-talent/. Glavas, A. and S. K. Piderit. "How does doing good matter? Effects of corporate citizenship on employees." J. Corporate Citizensh, 36 (2009): 51-70. Glavas, Ante. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Engagement: Enabling Employees to Employ More of Their Whole Selves at Work." Frontiers in Psychology 7 (2016). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4886691/. Gond, Jean-Pascal, et al. "Corporate Social Responsibility Influence on Employees." ICCSR Research Paper Series, 54 (2010): 4. Gross, Rob and B. Holland. "Corporate social responsibility and employee engagement: Making the connection." White Paper (2011): 2. Hayes, A. F. Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis. New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2013. Mathers, Nigel, Nick Fox and Amanda Hunn. Surveys and questionnaires. e East Midlands / Yorkshire & the Humber : The NIHR RDS , 2009. Roza, Lonneke. "Employee engagement in Corporate Social Responsibility; A collection of essays." 2016. Saks, Alan M. "Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement." Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21.7 (2006): 600-619. Read More