Morality matters: social psychological perspectives on how and why CSR activities and communications affect stakeholders’ support ‑ experimental design evidence for the mediating role of perceived organizational morality comparing WEIRD (UK) and non‑WEIRD (Russia) country

Tatiana Chopova, Naomi Ellemers, Elena Sinelnikova

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Companies’ communications about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have become increasingly prevalent yet psychological
reasons for why those communications might lead to positive reactions of the general public are not fully
understood. Building on theories on impression formation and social evaluation, we assess how CSR communications
affect perceived morality and competence of a company. We theorize that the organization’s CSR activities would positively
impact on perceived organizational morality rather than on perceived organizational competence and that this
increase in perceived organizational morality leads to an increase in stakeholders’ support. Two experimental design
studies show support for our theorizing. We cross-validated the robustness and generality of the prediction in two
countries with different business practices (UK (N = 203), Russia (N = 96)). We demonstrated that while the general
perceptions of companies and CSR differ between the UK and Russia, the underlying psychological mechanisms
work in a similar fashion. By testing our predictions in western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD)
and in non- WEIRD countries, we also extend current socio-psychological insights on the social evaluation of others.
We discuss theoretical and practical implications.
Original languageEnglish
Article number10
JournalInternational Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility
Volume9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Jun 2024

Keywords

  • CSR
  • Impression formation
  • Social evaluation
  • Morality
  • Experiment
  • WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries
  • Russia
  • UK
  • Stakeholders
  • Corporate communications

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