Catering to the Needs of an Aging Workforce: The Role of Employee Age in the Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Satisfaction

Journal of Business Ethics, Feb 2018

Contemporary organizations often reciprocate to society for using resources and for affecting stakeholders by engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It has been shown that CSR has a positive impact on employee attitudes. However, not all employees may react equally strongly to CSR practices. Based on socio-emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen in Science 312:1913–1915, 2006), we contend that the effect of CSR on employee satisfaction will be more pronounced for older than for younger employees, because CSR practices address those emotional needs and goals that are prioritized when people’s future time perspective decreases. In one multi-source field study (N = 143) and one experimental study (N = 500), we demonstrate that CSR indeed has a stronger positive effect on employee satisfaction for older relative to younger employees. Accordingly, engaging in CSR can be an attractive tool for organizations that aim to keep their aging workforce satisfied with their job.

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Catering to the Needs of an Aging Workforce: The Role of Employee Age in the Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Satisfaction

Catering to the Needs of an Aging Workforce: The Role of Employee Age in the Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Satisfaction Barbara Wisse 0 Rob van Eijbergen 0 Eric F. Rietzschel 0 Susanne Scheibe 0 Rob van Eijbergen 0 0 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Groningen , Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen , The Netherlands Contemporary organizations often reciprocate to society for using resources and for affecting stakeholders by engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It has been shown that CSR has a positive impact on employee attitudes. However, not all employees may react equally strongly to CSR practices. Based on socio-emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen in Science 312:1913-1915, 2006), we contend that the effect of CSR on employee satisfaction will be more pronounced for older than for younger employees, because CSR practices address those emotional needs and goals that are prioritized when people's future time perspective decreases. In one multi-source field study (N = 143) and one experimental study (N = 500), we demonstrate that CSR indeed has a stronger positive effect on employee satisfaction for older relative to younger employees. Accordingly, engaging in CSR can be an attractive tool for organizations that aim to keep their aging workforce satisfied with their job. Corporate social responsibility; Employee age; Future time perspective; Satisfaction; Work attitudes Introduction The steadily rising age of the working population has a tremendous impact on organizational life (Hedge and Borman 2012) . One consequence is that organizations need to develop and implement age-sensitive organizational policies and practices (Hertel and Zacher 2015; Truxillo et al. 2015) . Specifically, management finds itself challenged with the task to keep older workers satisfied with their work in order to maintain organizational effectiveness. Indeed, research has shown that employee satisfaction is positively related to, for instance, employee motivation, performance, and pro-social work behavior (Ilies et al. 2009; Judge et al. 2001; Ostroff 1992) , indicating that organizations may benefit from high levels of satisfaction of their workers. Therefore, identifying factors that positively affect job satisfaction aging workers might provide important benefits to organizations. We argue that corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices might be such a factor. CSR has been defined as ‘‘context-specific organizational actions and policies that take into account stakeholders’ expectations and the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance’’ (Aguinis 2011, p. 855) . In this definition, stakeholders are those (groups of) individuals who can affect or are affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives or who have a direct or indirect interest in the company (Verdeyen et al. 2004) . By engaging in CSR activities (ranging from donations and protecting consumer rights to developing socially responsible products and services), organizations thus aim to reciprocate to society for using ecological resources and for affecting employees, customers, and the wider social fabric in order to legitimately make a profit. A growing body of evidence indicates that the extent to which an organization exhibits CSR also substantially affects a stakeholder group that arguably is of primary importance to the organization: the employees within the company. Indeed, CSR has been shown to positively affect employee attitudes and work-related behaviors (Aguinis and Glavas 2012; Rupp et al. 2013) . The current study builds on this research and investigates employee age as a potentially crucial moderator in the relationship between CSR and employee satisfaction. Based on socio-emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen 2006) , we contend that the effect of CSR on employee satisfaction will be more pronounced for older employees compared to younger employees, because CSR practices address exactly those needs and goals that are stronger when people’s future time perspective is more limited. This research contributes to our understanding of CSR by identifying age as a factor that may explain why some employees react more strongly to CSR practices than others. Notably, insight into the way age affects the relationship between CSR and employee satisfaction is of particular importance, since the average age of the workforce in many developed countries has been increasing and will further increase over the years to come (Ng and Feldman 2010; Schalk et al. 2010) . The Effects of CSR on Employee Satisfaction Although most studies have taken a macro-perspective on CSR (focusing, for instance, on the effects of CSR at the institutional or organizational level), the number of studies that have taken a micro-level perspective (e.g., focusing on the effect that CSR efforts have on individuals) is (...truncated)


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Barbara Wisse, Rob van Eijbergen, Eric F. Rietzschel. Catering to the Needs of an Aging Workforce: The Role of Employee Age in the Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Satisfaction, Journal of Business Ethics, 2018, pp. 1-14, DOI: 10.1007/s10551-015-2983-8