Universalism values and organisational citizenship behaviour referring to employee perception of corporate social responsibility

Abstract Over the past decade, the number of studies investigating corporate social responsibility (CSR), its drivers and benefits has been growing. However, several gaps still remain. Previous research mostly investigated customer perceptions of CSR, leaving the employee perceptions in the sidelines and accordingly neglecting the employee importance. Furthermore, although acknowledging that employee perception of CSR is beneficial for the organisation, most of the previous studies have focused on employee attitudes as a desirable outcome forgetting about the employee behaviour, including organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), which can be a source of competitive advantage. Moreover, although values have been recognised as key determinants of human attitudes and behaviour, it seems that the potential of values, including the universalism values, for driving the employee perception of CSR and OCB has not been revealed. Trying to close the gap, the paper aims at revealing the relationship between the employee perceptions of CSR, employee OCB and universalism values. In doing this, quantitative data were collected (301 responses in total). Consistent with the expectations, the survey indicated that employee perceptions of CSR directed at four main stakeholder groups, namely employees, customers, government, and social and non-social stakeholders had a positive effect on OCB. As it was expected, universalism values drive both the employee perception of CSR and employee OCB. Moreover, the findings support the idea that the employee perception of CSR partly mediates the relationship between the universalism values and OCB. Generally, the obtained results highlight the necessity for organisations to invest not only in CSR, but also in employee perceptions of CSR, as this could drive extra-role employee behaviour, namely OCB.