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‘Symbolic’ CSR engagement not sufficient for employees


Magda Donia

A new study led by Professor Magda Donia from the Telfer School of Management suggests that merely engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) may not be sufficient for employees: it must also be perceived as substantive in order to inspire positive employee attitudes and behaviors.

“We already knew that a company's corporate social responsibility engagement produces positive outcomes. Now, however, we see that a company jumping on the corporate social responsibility bandwagon just for show or greenwashing doesn't fool its employees,” said Professor Donia of the research, which developed and tested a measure of substantive and symbolic corporate social responsibility using three samples aggregating more than 1000 working adults.

View the press release from Wiley, the publisher of Applied Psychology: An International Review.

View the study online.

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