Publications
5 results found
Gatignon A, Bode C, 2023, When few give to many and many give to few: Corporate social responsibility strategies under India's legal mandate, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Vol: 44, Pages: 2099-2127, ISSN: 0143-2095
- Author Web Link
- Cite
- Citations: 1
Bode C, Rogan M, Singh J, 2022, Up to no good? Gender, social impact work and employee promotions, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol: 67, Pages: 82-130, ISSN: 0001-8392
Firms increasingly offer employees the opportunity to participate in firm-sponsored social impact initiatives expected to benefit the firm and employees. We argue that participation in such initiatives hinders employees’ advancement in their firms by reducing others’ perceptions of their fit and commitment. Because social impact work is more congruent with female gender role stereotypes, promotion rates will be lower for participating men, and male evaluators will be less likely than female evaluators to recommend promotion for male participants. Using panel data on 1,379 employees of a consulting firm, we find significantly lower promotion rates for male participants relative to female participants, female non-participants, and male non-participants. A vignette experiment involving 893 managers shows that lower promotion rates are due to lower perceptions of fit, but not commitment, and greater bias against male participants by male evaluators. Taken together, the results of the two studies suggest that the negative effect of participation on promotion is conditional upon participant and evaluator gender, underscoring the role of gender in evaluation of social impact work. In settings in which decision makers are predominately male, gender beliefs may limit male employees’ latitude to contribute to the firm’s social impact agenda.
Bode C, Rogan M, Singh J, 2019, Sustainable cross-sector collaboration: building a global platform for social impact, Academy of Management Discoveries, Vol: 5, Pages: 396-414, ISSN: 2168-1007
Addressing societal issues increasingly requires multistakeholder collaboration. Yet, cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are often difficult to form and maintain because of coordination problems and conflicting interests of the organizations involved. To better understand how organizations overcome these challenges, we take a micro-foundational approach. First, we conducted an in-depth case study of a consulting firm to examine the emergence of a platform for CSPs. Second, using survey data from 665 employees, we identified critical elements that contributed to the stability of the platform. Our findings reveal how a for-profit organization can play a key role in coordinating other organizations to achieve social impact. We found that the emergence and stability of the platform were based on a novel operating model that aligned senior leaders’ interests in improving employee retention, employees’ desire for meaning in their work, and employees’ willingness to make short-term financial sacrifices to participate. Our study suggests that for-profit firms can play a central role in social impact collaborations but that doing so requires alignment of internal interests through intrapreneurship. It also underlines the potential value of using a micro-foundation approach in future research into CSPs.
Bode C, Singh J, 2018, Taking a hit to save the world? Employee participation in a corporate social initiative, Strategic Management Journal, Vol: 39, Pages: 1003-1030, ISSN: 0143-2095
Research Summary: Companies often justify their corporate social initiatives by citing talent management benefits. We examine the extent of, and the reasons for, employee interest in such an initiative in a global management consulting firm. We find a large fraction of employees to be interested in participation in the initiative even when participation requires a personal sacrifice in the form of a salary cut. However, this interest is driven not just by prosocial motivation: Expectations regarding private benefits, such as improved career prospects from new skills acquired, also play a role. Considerations of social impact and private benefits are equally salient when no salary cut is required, but private considerations become more prominent when participating employees are asked to accept a salary cut.Managerial Summary: Many companies are moving from stand‐alone corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects to social initiatives integrated into strategy. Providing employees with the opportunity to participate in such initiatives is said to help attract, motivate and retain talent. In this study, carried out in collaboration with a management consulting firm, we examine how much and why employees value participation in a corporate social initiative. Based on interviews and survey data, we find that employees are not only interested in, but often even willing to accept, a temporary salary cut for the opportunity. However, altruistic motivation is not the only driver of this interest: Employees also expect and value the possibility that the experience would lead to private benefits, such as developing skills likely to enhance their career prospects.
Bode C, Singh J, Rogan M, 2015, Corporate social initiatives and employee retention, Organization Science, Vol: 26, Pages: 1702-1720, ISSN: 1047-7039
Firms are increasingly launching initiatives with explicit social mandates. The business case for these often relies on one critical aspect of human capital management: employee retention. Although prior empirical studies have demonstrated a link between corporate social initiatives and intermediate employee-related outcomes such as motivation and identification with the firm, their relationship with final retention outcomes has not been investigated. Our study fills this gap. Using individual-level data for approximately 10,000 employees in a global management consulting firm, we present empirical evidence of a positive retention effect associated with employee participation in a corporate initiative with explicit social impact goals. In addition, we offer arguments for moderating conditions that weaken this relationship and present evidence consistent with our arguments. Further econometric analysis based on a stringent matching approach as well as additional analyses based on survey and interview data suggest that the retention effect can at least partly be attributed to treatment and is not all just a manifestation of sorting of certain types of employees into the social initiative. Overall, by demonstrating a positive association between social initiative participation and employee retention, this study highlights the need for further research into how corporate social engagement can serve as a tool for strategic human capital management.
This data is extracted from the Web of Science and reproduced under a licence from Thomson Reuters. You may not copy or re-distribute this data in whole or in part without the written consent of the Science business of Thomson Reuters.