The Effect of the Internal Side of Social Responsibility on Firm Competitive Success in the Business Services Industry

Internal Corporate Social Responsibility for Sustainability

The recent attention paid to internal corporate social responsibility (ICSR) observed in the academic literature has been paralleled by an increased focus thereof in management, to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A bibliometric examination of the literature on ICSR and a complementary content analysis with ATLAS.ti revealed that the topic was largely neglected until 2014 but has now reached a consolidation stage. The main contribution of this paper was to conceptualize ICSR within the current theoretical paradigm of sustainability. The obtained results demonstrate that sustainable management requires attention to internal practices such as employee well-being and engagement. We anticipate that very soon, organizations will be directly involved in the SDG agenda through ICSR.

Impact of Board Gender Diversity on Corporate Social Responsibility and Irresponsibility: Empirical Evidence from France

While prior studies have investigated the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitment, researchers have scantly studied the potentially important relationship between board gender diversity and corporate social responsibility and irresponsibilityseparately. Drawing on the social role theory and feminist ethics, we hypothesizethat board gender diversity is positively associated with CSR and negatively associated with corporate social irresponsibility (CSI).Here, we relied on a sample of French non-financial companies listed on the SBF 120 index between 2011 and 2016. Our results provide evidence on the positive impact of board gender diversity on CSR and the negative one on CSI. We show that women have a stronger impact on reducing CSI than on enhancing CSR. Our findings were robust to the different estimation methods.

Responsible Job Design Based on the Internal Social Responsibility of Local Governments

Sustainability needs the socially responsible orientation of public institutions, but not only externally. How civil servants and municipal employees consider what local governments do in relation to their internal social responsibility is the main question of this study. Through structural equation modelling and a sample of 294 employees in local governments in a Spanish region (Extremadura), it is demonstrated that responsible job position design, as well as good communication and team building, both have positive and significant effects on the personal identification of employees with the city council. That has been interpreted as the essence of internal social responsibility and the first step for building external social responsibility at the municipal level. Practical implications and future directions are discussed.

Responsible Decision making for Sustainable Motivation

This article examines motivation and the quality of decision making’s effect on motivation as important preconditions for organizational sustainability. The article is focused on an examination of the content and intensity of perceived motivation, and the forms of decisions that were made while motivating people. Motivation (from a theoretical and empirical point of view) is related to crucial processes of human potential development and motivation. The analysis, synthesis and generalization of knowledge related to sustainability, motivation and decision making in human potential motivation are presented in the theoretical part of the article. The empirical part presents the results of sociological questionnaire, focusing on the area of decision making in motivation that was carried out on sample of respondents in the Slovak Republic (n = 500), Poland (n = 390) and Lithuania (n = 226). The results confirm a strong correlation between the level of the motivation and the quality of key processes of development of human potential (leadership, appraisal, communication, and the creation of an atmosphere of trust). In all examined countries and processes, the calculated values of the chi-square test were significantly higher than the table value (level of significance = 0.05). The section describing the results contains a proposed content-componential model of decision making in affecting and building sustainable motivation.

Empirical Study towards Corporate Social Responsibility Practices and Company Financial Performance. Evidence for Companies Listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange

The present paper empirically examines the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and company financial performance (CFP) for firms listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Likewise, the paper analyzes the CSR policies adopted by the companies as CSR practices towards six types of stakeholders that influence the CFP. Using principal component analysis, we developed a CSR index and several specific indices for CSR practices. By estimating cross-sectional regression models, our study provides support for a positive link between CSR and CFP, when companies implement CSR policies regarding employees, environmental protection, and ethics as social practices. Further, empirical findings show that companies responsive to the CSR concept and those considering international standards and regulations for quality products and services in their business strategy enhance CFP.