Social Responsibility and Engagement Practices: The Role of Organizational Confidence and the Meaning of Work

Abstract

The organizational social responsibility construct (RSO) has acquired political, academic and business relevance in the last decades. Research on this topic, carried out in several disciplinary areas, initially focused on the institutional and organizational levels, analyzing the factors that contribute to the adoption of SR practices and their impact on performance indicators of organizations and external stakeholders of companies.
The analysis of RSO results at the micro level is more recent, but there is empirical evidence that RSO practices are positively related to employee attitudes and behaviors (eg, affective organizational commitment, identification with the organization, organizational citizenship behaviors and organizational trust), however there is a spark of studies that analyze the mediating and moderating variables of this relationship. In this context, we intend to carry out an exploratory study with a diversified sample of workers from service companies operating in Portugal to analyze the influence of organizational trust and the meaning of work on the relationship between RSO practices and worker engagement.
The literature on Marketing and Organizational Behavior reveals that organizational trust is a mediating variable in the relationship between RSO practices and attitudes and behaviors of clients and employees and is considered a determinant of successful interpersonal relationships. Traditionally the meaning of work has been studied within the framework of work design, but few studies have analyzed how social responsibility practices in signaling that the company that care about the "common good" can contribute to the employees assigning meaning and purpose to the work they do.
Like social responsibility, engagement has acquired relevance in academic and business research in the area of human resources management and development due to evidence of its importance to the quality of life and worker’s performance. The literature on engagement predictors has been focused especially on variables of an individual nature (eg, self-efficacy, personality), work characteristics (eg, jobs and working conditions) and social support (eg, leadership), however there are few studies that analyze the relationship that RSO practices through organizational trust and meaning in work are likely to have in the workers' engagement.
This paper intends to contribute to research in the scope of the relationship between RSO practices and workers' welfare indicators, analyzing the global and differential impact of RSO practices on work engagement. Additionally, it contributes to the development of an RSO scale adapted to the Portuguese context.
The results of the study will be presented and the theoretical and practical implications will be discussed as well.