An empirical analysis of job seekers' perception of corporate social performance as a measure of organisational attractiveness

Abstract

Corporate Social Performance is both a prominent notion that the business world views as strategic and a well-known concept in academia that has been assessed in relation to different constructs. Several scholars have suggested the relationship between corporate social performance and its capability to attract numerous superior job applicants at the organisational level, yet, there is no corresponding evidence at the individual level of analysis. Thus, based on suggestions from the social identity theory and the signaling theory, this study hypothesized that job seekers’ perception of Carroll’s (1979) four dimensions of corporate social performance of an organisation are positively related to the organisation’s attractiveness as an employer and aimed to assess these relationships. Carroll’s (1979) four dimensions of corporate social performance consist of an organisation’s economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. This study was quantitative in nature; therefore, the data for this study was collected through the use of previously developed questionnaires that had obtained high Cronbach’s alpha values thus confirming their reliability. Survey results were collected from a sample of 216 final year undergraduate and honours students who were selected via probability sampling technique. These results indicated that job seekers are more likely to pursue jobs from socially responsible organisations; with economic responsibility having the greatest impact on organisational attractiveness. Two Statistical packages, namely, the statistical package of the social sciences and Amos were used to test the conceptual model and to arrive at these findings. The implications of the empirical findings for researchers and South African organisations as well as the study’s contributions to practice and theory are discussed. Just like most studies, this study had several limitations such as the size of the sample and time, just to mention a few, which led to recommendations that future research could take into consideration.