The corporate social responsibility (CSR) employer brand process: integrative review and comprehensive model

ABSTRACT

Firms are increasingly drawing on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in their employer branding to improve attractiveness and engage current and potential employees, and to ensure consistency in employee brand behaviours. However, there is a dearth of literature synthesising CSR and employer branding research to understand employee engagement with CSR-firms from a branding perspective. In this article, the authors carried out an integrative literature review of CSR and employer branding literatures. Informed by signaling theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of the CSR employer branding process as a cohesive view from the potential and current employee perspective. Our review highlights the need for firms to achieve CSR consistency in terms of (a) embeddedness of CSR values, and (b) levels of internal CSR. These two factors frame a typology that enable managers to better execute their CSR employer brand identity to achieve favourable results, such as a high-quality talent pool and positive affective, cognitive and behavioural employee outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility employer brand
• CSR
• employer brand
• internal CSR
• CSR branding

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, and to Manjit Yadav for his encouragement and constructive feedback which contributed greatly to this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Further information available at (websites accessed October, 2018): benandjerrysfoundation.org, glassdoor.com, google.com/search/howsearchworks, reputationinstitute.com/csr-best-practices, smartRecruiters.com, toms.com and volkswagenag.com/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joan Carlini

Joan Carlini is a lecturer within the Department of Marketing in the Griffith Business School, Griffith University. She specialises in corporate social responsibility and consumer engagement. She has significant industry experience having worked extensively in marketing and international communication, and has published several book chapters, white papers and in the Journal of Event Management.

Debra Grace

Debra Grace is Professor of Marketing at the Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. Her research interests include services marketing, franchising, branding and consumer behaviour. She is widely published and has published in journals such as Journal of Retailing, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Journal of Brand Management and Journal of Services Marketing.

Cassandra France

Cassandra France researches in branding, with a particular emphasis on brand co-creation and customer-brand relationships. She teaches Branding at the University of Queensland and her current research focuses on exploring active customer contributions to the brand. Her work appears in Marketing Intelligence & Planning and the Journal of Brand Management. She brings recent branding industry experience to her research and is interested in both theoretical development and its practical application.

Joseph Lo Iacono

Joseph Lo Iacono teaches a variety of Marketing subjects for Griffith University. He holds a Bachelor of Business, Masters of Marketing with Honours and a PhD. He has published in the Journal of Services Marketing and the Journal of Service Theory and Practice. His research interests include services marketing, internal marketing and value creation.