Corporate Social Responsibility Promotes Organisation Citizenship and Pro-Environmental Behaviours: The Employee’s Perspective

Background: Organisations in the contemporary workplace lack meaningful work and life, resulting in psychological and physical pain for workers. Employees seek organisations that align their daily work activities with society. Partially limited research exists on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and employee work-related attitudes, especially with the mediating mechanism of employee work meaningfulness (EWM) and organisation identification (OID) in developing country contexts such as Pakistan. This study has used Social Learning Theory (SLT) and Social Identification Theory (SIT).

Methods: Data were collected through a sample of 154 employees in two waves from multiple sectors in Karachi, Pakistan, using non-probability, purposive sampling. The PLS-SEM, along with IBM-SPSS, was run for data analysis.

Results: The results demonstrated that Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a significant positive relationship with employee work-related attitudes. CSR affects organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and pro-environmental behaviours (PEB) through the mediation mechanism of employee work meaningfulness (EWM) and organisational identification (OID).

Conclusion: This study contributes to the nascent literature by establishing that EWM and OID mediate the effect of CSR on OCB and PEB. Furthermore, this study utilizes two primary theoretical lenses and provides a novel contribution to the current literature. Finally, this study provides valuable insights to policymakers, businesses, and society.