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theses

Though corporations depend on the work of employees to achieve important socio-environmental outcomes, research on employee engagement in corporate social initiatives (CSI) remains rare and fragmented. Building on existing studies, I propose a theoretical model explaining when and why CSI, based on their characteristics, would be engaging to employees. Adopting the multiple-motive perspective, I position employees as potential agents of social change whose efforts are enabled through CSI that have potential for meaningful impact on stakeholders including the employees themselves, their employing organizations, and the general public. I test the model via two studies using employee volunteering as a study context. In study one, I test via an experiment whether objective CSI characteristics promote employee engagement through their perceived impacts. In study two, I test via an online field survey whether these effects depend on contact with beneficiaries and communication about the CSI, which would increase awareness of CSI impacts; and on the employee’s identity, which determines the types of CSI impacts that are more meaningful to the employee and therefore more conducive to engagement. My findings indicate that moral intensity and employee development opportunities are CSI characteristics that promote engagement, and that perceived CSI impacts mediate the effects of CSI characteristics and identity variables on engagement.

ETD_8924

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Akwasi Opoku-Dakwa

doi:10.7282/T3WW7N30

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.