Corporate social responsibility: A psychosocial multidimensional construct

Purpose – Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is conceptualized as the construct describing the relationship between companies and society. Although scholars reached an agreement about the linkages between CSR in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and psychosocial issues – social identity, organizational culture and commitment – it is still a problematic issue how CSR should be defined and how companies could behave as socially responsible. The authors hypothesize that psychosocial processes impact the activation of CSR. Within a psychological perspective, the purpose of this paper is to explore CSR definitions and CSR psychosocial dimensions. Design/methodology/approach – According to an emic perspective oriented at in-depth comprehension of phenomena, the authors adopted the grounded theory methodology to collect, analyze and discuss the data. In total, 14 entrepreneurs and 12 employees of Italian-Apulian SMEs were interviewed on three thematic areas: organizational culture; sense of community; and CSR. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Findings – Results showed that: CSR definitions were continuously mediated by participants’ organizational culture; and perspective taking, care taking and sustainable practices emerged as the salient CSR psychosocial components, correspondent to its cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions. Practical implications – The paper argues that CSR sychosocial components could be the strategic variables to develop and to manage CSR in organizations. Originality/value – CSR is re-conceptualized as a psychosocial multidimensional construct, explaining its dynamic activation in organizations. The authors suggest that the cognitive and affective dimensions are antecedent to the behavioral dimension. Thus, the authors are developing a CSR psychosocial scale to study the linkages among these dimensions and other variables through quantitative analysis method.