Help yourself before helping others: When corporate social responsibility does not make a company more attractive to job seekers

Abstract

This paper explores the conditions under which job seekers may not respond positively to a potential employer's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We propose that the relationship between an organization's externally-directed CSR activities and job seekers’ perceptions of the organization's attractiveness is moderated by whether the organization is also engaging in internally-directed high-investment human resource systems (HIHRS). Results from a combination of three studies—an archival study of Fortune 500 companies (Study 1), a survey study (Study 2), and an experiment (Study 3)—provide support for our hypotheses. When an organization has lower levels of internally-directed HIHRS, the positive influence of externally-directed CSR on attraction to an organization diminishes (Study 3) or disappears (Studies 1 and 2). Importantly, we identify perceptions of organizational authenticity as one key mechanism driving these effects (Studies 2 and 3).