earticle

영어

Corporate social contribution (CSR) has evolved to a management strategy embodied in the overall business activities of modern management. However, it has still remained questionable whether CSR is mostly driven by management activities with relatively passive participation of employees. We conducted a survey study regarding CSR to rank-and-file employees. Survey respondents are working for three different companies belonging to pharmaceutical industry, heavy industry, construction industry. Using the survey results, we analyze the relationship between organizational commitment and CSR activities. The main interest of our study lies in the research question, whether CSR activities could enhance organizational commitment of employees. If employees turn out to get a stronger organizational commitment through participating CSR activities, then the result would imply that CSR would contribute to value creation. According to the survey results, employees keep significant level of awareness and agreement on CSR activities of their firms. This result implies that CSR has been spreading and diffusing to the entire enterprise, not just remaining in the management level. We have also confirmed that employees have considerably higher level of confidence in the value of CSR. The survey results report that employees believe that CSR activities of their firm would significantly enhance firm reputation and brand power. However, employees feel that they have somewhat little chance in involving in policy- and consensus-building process of CSR. The result also shows that employees feel no significant difference in effectiveness in leading CSR activities between management and workers’union. In analyzing the relationship between organizational commitment and CSR activities, we choose several proxy variables for organizational commitment and CSR activities. Proxy variables for organizational commitment include employees’ affection and pride in their firm, job satisfaction, and labor-manager relationship. Variables for CSR activities are categorized by three kinds: 1) variables measuring the degree of employees’ voluntary involvement in CSR activities, 2) employees’ belief in positive effect of CSR on corporate value creation. 3) less critical sentiment of employees to CSR. From the order logit regression analysis, we have found a strong between CSR and organizational commitment. Employees with more engagement on CSR activities have stronger organizational commitment, i.e. more affection, higher pride and stronger satisfaction in their firms. They also maintain closer communication between labor and management. On the other hand, employees who are critical against CSR have less affection, pride, and satisfaction in their firms. Prior studies by Gilder et al. (2005), Larson (2001), Maignan et al. (1999) claim that the direct involvement and experience in CSR activities lead to a positive job attitude and eventually to performance improvement. Our empirical study provides with supportive evidence of prior studies. The main contribution of this study is to provide empirical evidence that shows a positive correlation between CSR and organizational commitment. Since we have not, in this study, incorporated objective financial data of firms, we could not provide more direct relationship between CSR and firm value maximization. We would leave it for future research. We note a limitation of our study regarding causality between CSR and organization commitment. The result of our study cannot be directly interpreted as strong evidence that CSR determines the level of organizational commitment because the reverse relationship can still hold. That is, the results of empirical study cannot exclude the possibility that employees with more affection, higher pride and stronger satisfaction in their firms may involve more actively with CSR. Thus the results of our study would be interpreted evidence for showing the positive correlation between CSR activities and organizational commitment, rather than cause and effect relationship between them.

한국어

본 연구는 기업사회공헌 활동과 조직몰입과의 관계를 확인하기 위한 연구로 평직원을 대상으로 진행된 설문조사 및 조사 결과에 대한 순서 로지스틱 회귀분석을 통해 이루어졌다. 설문조사 결과에 의하면, 기업사회공헌에 대한 평직원의 인지도 및 공감도는 상당한 수준으로 확인되었다. 이는 기업사회공헌이 경영 관리층의 인식에서 확산하여 기업전체의 경영이념으로 확산하고 있음을 의미한다. 또한, 기업사회공헌의 가치에 대한 신뢰 수준도 상당히 높은 것으로 나타났다. 그러나 회사의 기업사회공헌 경영 방침에서 직원들의 참여 및 의견수렴 과정은 다소 미약한 것으로 나타났다. 회사 경영관리층과 노조 중 기업사회공헌 활동을 누가 주도하는 것이 더 효과적인가에 대해서는 유의한 차이가 존재하지 않는 것으로 나타났다. 기업사회공헌과 조직몰입의 관계를 분석한 회귀분석 결과에 의하면, 기업사회공헌 활동에 대한 직원의 참여도/인지도/공감도가 높을수록 회사에 대한 애사심/자부심/만족도가 강하고 노사 간 의사소통이 원활한 것으로 확인되었다. 또한, 직원들이 기업사회공헌의 가치를 신뢰할수록 회사에 대한 애사심/자부심/만족도가 강한 것으로 확인되었다. 반면, 기업의 사회공헌 활동에 비판적인 직원은 회사에 대한 애사심/자부심/만족도가 약한 것으로 나타났다. 따라서 기업사회 공헌과 조직몰입 간에 유의미한 관계가 있음을 확인할 수 있었다. 기업사회공헌에 관한 선행연구들은 기업사회 공헌 활동에 대한 직원의 직접적인 참여 경험이 기업에 대한 소속감과 몰입도를 향상하고, 긍정적인 태도를 형성하는 성과를 이끌어낸다고 주장한다. 본 연구결과는 이들 선행연구의 주장을 실증적으로 지지하고 있다. 다만, 본 연구 결과만으로 기업사회공헌 활동의 영향에 의해 조직몰입의 강도가 결정된다고 판단하기에는 한계가 있을 수 있다. 애사심이 높은 직원이 기업사회공헌에 적극적일 수 있는 역의 인과관계가 존재할 수 있기 때문이다. 따라서 본 연구는 기업사회공헌이 애사심을 고양할 가능성이 있다는 부분적 증거로 해석하는 것이 타당할 것으로 판단된다.