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).