Corporate social responsibility, customer orientation, and the job performance of frontline employees

Laurence J. Pino- 1 - Laurence J. Pino- 1 -
Daniel Korschun, C.B. Bhattacharya & Scott D. Swain
May, 2014
Corporate Social
Responsibility,
Customer Orientation,
and the Job
Performance of
Frontline Employees
Laurence J. Pino

The Authors
Daniel Korschun
Associate Professor of Marketing
Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business
Doctorate, Business-Marketing Strategy
Boston University
C.B. Bhattacharya
Professor of Marketing and Management
University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Business &
College of Business Administration
PhD, Marketing
University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
Scott D. Swain
Associate Professor of Marketing
Clemson University
PhD, Marketing
University of South Carolina

Purpose of the Study
(Dewhurst, Guthridge, and Mohr, 2009; Vogel, 2005). In broad
terms, therefore, this Study is designed to
address the conflict in the literature for the
purpose of determining, among other things,
whether CSR has an effect on frontline job
performance and, if so, under what conditions
and through what pathways.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined as discretionary business
practices and contributions of corporate resources intended to improve
social well being (Kotler and Lee, 2005). There is a conflict in the literature as to
whether CSR actually improves frontline job performance, rather than
simply making frontline employees “feel better” about what they do

The Landscape of the Study
The Study conceptualizes a multifaceted social landscape for frontline
employees which carry, at minimum, two overriding motivational nexuses
which inform frontline employee motivation, behavior and performance:
Organizational Identification and Employee-Customer Identification.
• Organizational Identification “involves depersonalizing the self and
using the organization as a vehicle for self definition” (Hogg and Terry,
2000). Organizational Identification has been shown in the literature to
influence frontline outcomes (Bergami and Bagozzi, 2000; Cole and Bruch, 2006;
Madjar, Greenberg, and Chen, 2011). However, other than conceptually
through this Study, the literature has not extended that relationship to
the impact of CSR on frontline performance outcomes.

• The Study also addresses Employee-Customer Identification, defined as
“the extent to which an employee senses a sameness or oneness with the
organization’s customers. Employees who identify with customers consider
themselves to belong to a common social group with customers” (Authors;
Tajfel and Turner, 1986). For purposes of the Study, the authors are focused on
how employees construe the customers’ support for the organization’s CSR
activities, or, said differently, “perceived customer support for CSR,” in a
manner which might influence their job performance.

Against that landscape within which the authors posit the influence of
Organizational Identification and Employee-Customer Identification, the
authors also sought to understand how CSR might be moderated based upon
the employee’s own internal assessment of the importance of CSR as well as
construing the importance of CSR to the organization and to the customer.
Finally, the authors sought to understand the pathway among CSR, Customer
Orientation and job performance.

Data and Methodology
• The Study consisted of two parts. The first part was a
survey directed to 375 non-commissioned frontline
employees of which 236 completed the survey. The
second part of the Study consisted of supervisor ratings of
job performance for the survey participants which, when
deleting 15 for which no job performance data were
available, netted 221 survey responses matching each of
the participants with each of the supervisor ratings.
• Organizational Identification was measured with a four-
item scale adapted from Smidts, Pruyn, and Van Riel, 2001.
• Customer-Employee Identification was measured by
adapting the Organizational Identification with four similar
Likert items replacing “organization” with “customers.”

• “Perceived Management Support” for CSRs was measured with a three-
item Likert scale adapted from Larson et al, 2008.
• “Perceived Customer Support” for CSRs was adapted from the companies’
CSR measures from Larson et al, 2008.
• With respect to the importance of CSR to the frontline employee, a three-
item Likert scale was created from prior literature (Berger, Cunningham, and
Drumwright, 2007; Reed, 2004; Vogel, 2005).
• Customer orientation was measured with a four-item self-reported Likert
scale adapted from Saxe and Weitz, 1982 and Brown et al, 2002.

• Measures for job performance were taken from global supervisor
ratings consistent with Brown et al 2002 and Zablah et all 2012.
• Control variables. The study controlled for personality, tenure at
company, service experience, and pay satisfaction.

Conceptual Model
The focus of the study – the frontline employee – provided the hub for
evaluating the role of several factors influencing the frontline employee
because of the nature of a frontline employee, who, on the one side, is in
relationship to the organization; and, is on the other side, in relationship to
the customer. When extended to an evaluation of how that dual relationship
plays out in assessing the employee’s construal of the importance of CSR, the
authors conceptualized that behavioral outcomes are moderated by the
employee’s own internal assessment of the importance of CSR, as well as to
the employee’s assessment of the company’s and customer’s support for CSR
and that the employee’s job performance would ultimately be mediated by
the employee’s Customer Orientation.

Conceptual Model
The conceptual model augmented the literature review with focus group
and individual interviews. The authors initially identified a conceptual
model linking job performance to CSR among frontline employees and
ultimately modified that model to provide a best-fit structural model
estimation, both as set out hereafter.

Initial Construct
For Conceptual Model

Hypotheses
1. Perceived management support for CSR is positively related to organizational
identification, and this effect is moderated by CSR importance to the employee. The
relationship between perceived management support for CSR and organizational
identification becomes stronger as CSR importance increases.
2. Organizational identification is positively related to job performance, and this effect is
mediated by customer orientation.

Hypotheses
3. Perceived customer support for CSR is positively related to employee–customer
identification, and this effect is moderated by CSR importance to the employee. The
relationship between perceived customer support for CSR and employee–customer
identification becomes stronger as CSR importance increases.
4. Employee–customer identification is positively related to organizational identification.
5. Employee–customer identification is positively related to job performance, and this
effect is mediated by customer orientation.

Summary of Hypotheses
Findings

Best Fit Structural
Estimation Model

Implications & Conclusions
1. The Study does provide further validation of other research which shows
that the stronger the Organizational Identification, the higher the
supervisor expectation of job performance (Hekman et al, 2009; Drumwright 1996;
Edwards and Cable, 2009).
2. On the other hand, unlike the relationship between Organizational
Identification and job performance, which was not mediated by
Customer Orientation, the relationship between Employee-Customer
Identification and job performance was mediated by Customer
Orientation.

3. Moreover, job performance, even within that context, was mediated, on
the one side, by Organizational Identification, and on the other side, it was
not affected by Customer-Employee Identification, except to the extent
that it was mediated by Customer Orientation.
4. With respect to the primary thrust of the study, i.e. the relationship
between CSR and job performance for frontline employees, the conclusions
are less than overwhelming, with data suggesting that CSR may influence
job performance, but only correlated to the frontline employee’s perceived
support of management for CSR and the perceived customer support for
CSR, further moderated by the employee’s own assessment of the
importance of CSR to the organization.

5. Therefore, while it appears that this is the first Study which documents the
relationship between CSR and job performance among rated frontline
employees by supervisors, it is not totally clear as to whether CSR was
demonstrated to have any particular correlative relationship to job
performance.

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