Wages and corporate social responsibility: entrenchment or ethics?
ISSN: 0142-5455
Article publication date: 5 December 2022
Issue publication date: 1 February 2023
Abstract
Purpose
In this article the authors examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the wage policy of firms. At the first glance, one may think that socially responsible firms want to attract employees via ethical concerns and corporate culture, thereby inducing a negative link between CSR and wages. On the other side, socially responsible firms can be expected to increase wages as social entrenchment strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to correct for potential endogeneity bias, the authors employ a simultaneous equation model (SEM) on a French data set that includes 13,186 employees.
Findings
The authors show that CSR has an ambiguous impact on corporate wage policy depending on the type of monetary incentives and employee's occupation considered.
Originality/value
The authors extend prior research on the CSR–wage relationship by distinguishing between different forms of monetary incentives: the base wage, total wage and premium wage. Their results draw attention to the fact that the employees' occupation do matter. The evidence confirms that the effect of CSR on the wage is not to be taken for granted: it is wage form and occupation specific.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Corrigendum: It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article, Crifo, P., Diaye, M.-A. and Pekovic, S. (2023), “Wages and corporate social responsibility: entrenchment or ethics?”, Employee Relations, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 495-515. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-03-2022-0154 did not include full funding information for the article.
Our guidelines state that funding information should be included at initial submission.
“Patricia Crifo acknowledges the support of the program IdR FDIR-Sustainable finance and responsible investment (2016-2022)” has been amended to “Patricia Crifo acknowledges the support of the program IdR FDIR-Sustainable Finance and Responsible Investment (2016-2025) and the Energy4climate (E4C) Interdisciplinary Center of IPParis and Ecole des Ponts, which is in part supported by 3d programme d'investissement d'avenir (ANR-18-EUR-0006-02)”.
Citation
Crifo, P., Diaye, M.-A. and Pekovic, S. (2023), "Wages and corporate social responsibility: entrenchment or ethics?", Employee Relations, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 495-515. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-03-2022-0154
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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