| There was a time when the most powerful organizations were those linked to religion. Then that power shifted toward governmental institutions. Today, some of the most powerful entities are businesses (Cohen & Greenfield, 1997), but with power comes responsibility. According to Davis (1973), organizations that do not use power in ways that society considers responsible will tend to lose it. Hence, it is not uncommon for organizations to integrate social initiatives that attend to society's needs and demands into their operations. Taking on social initiatives is referred to as corporate social responsibility (CSR). The importance of CSR has been documented (e.g., Carroll, 1979; Turban & Greening, 1996). From a marketing perspective, CSR activities have been found to have a positive influence on consumers' patronage intentions. From a management perspective, CSR initiatives have been found to influence organizational attractiveness, organizational citizenship behaviors, and employees' attitudes. However, most scholarly work in the area of management has been of a conceptual nature and has not analyzed in depth the extent to which employees' perceptions of CSR initiatives influence important attitude-related outcomes such as organizational identification. Therefore, the researcher conducted a study that attempted to fill in this gap. Specifically, the researcher developed and empirically tested a model that examined the relationship between employees' perceptions of CSR initiatives, organizational identification, employees' attitudes toward CSR, and two behavioral variables.;The study was composed of a pilot study and a main study. The results of the pilot study demonstrated that some changes needed to be made to the scale in order to improve its psychometric properties. The changes consisted of adding items and changing the wording of other items. All changes were made before the main study was conducted.;Two samples were collected for the main study. The idea behind collecting two samples (sport and non-sport) was to test if the results varied by organizational context. The results led the researcher to conclude there were no significant differences among employees working for sport organizations and non-sport organizations. Regarding hypothesis testing, the results were mixed. Although the structural model provided an acceptable fit to the data, several of the hypotheses were not supported. The hypotheses that were supported provide evidence that employees' perceptions of CSR motivation have a positive impact on their organizational identification. Furthermore, organizational identification was found to be a positive predictor of organizational citizenship behaviors and personal social action.;This study is an initial attempt to test the model proposed by the researcher. This study contributes to the advancement of the study of CSR and its impact on employees. Furthermore, because organizational studies are very limited within the field of sport management (Wolfe, Weick, Usher, Terborg, Poppo, Murrell, Dukerich, Crown Core, Dickson, & Jourdan, 2005), it also contributes to the advancement of such type of studies within the sport realm. |
