The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, Work Engagement, and Job Embeddedness

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a critical issue in business and scholarly literature in the fields of psychology, management, and the environment. Generally, CSR includes a set of practices and policies that address organizations' relationships with societal stakeholders and the community (Farid et al., 2019). Saeed and Arshad (2012) view CSR as companies' socially responsible behaviors that facilitate the development of organizational and macro-level outcomes. Previous empirical evidence indicates that CSR plays an essential role in organizational performance. However, there is inadequate evidence on CSR's impact on individual, organisational outcomes, such as employees' behaviors and attitudes.

The body of literature on CSR and organizational performance is continuously growing, but there is limited evidence on the association between these practices and specific outcomes such as organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). Besides, previous studies focus on direct relationships between CSR and organizational outcomes but overlook potential confounders, mediators, and moderators such as job embeddedness (JE) and work engagement (WE) (Bozkurt & Bal, 2012). The current study aims to address the research gap on the correlation between CSR practices and OCB with WE as mediator and job embeddedness as a moderator in Iraq. Specifically, the study addresses how CSR's four domains, ethical, legal, economic, and philanthropic activities, predict employees' OCB, JE, and WE. The study also addresses JE's role as a moderator of the relationship between WE and OCB. Such encompasses examining the mediating effect of WE on the relationship between CSR and OCB.

Despite the significant research progress made in CSR over the years, this knowledge body is limited in three key areas. First, the exact nature of the connection between CSR practices and employee attitudes is still unclear (Bozkurt & Bal, 2012). Some researchers consider that social responsibility significantly shapes employees' attitudes (Chun et al., 2013). Besides, Carroll (2016) indicated that socially responsible organizations improve their employees' self-concepts by enhancing their sense of belonging, thus, positively influencing their overall commitment and performance. This study has the potential to contribute to the growing body of literature on CSR and its role in intensifying OCB, WE, and JE among employees in Iraqi Multinational Corporations (MNC) telecommunications companies (Wijayanto & Kismono, 2004). More importantly, the study could improve executives' knowledge and awareness of the significance of the CSR initiatives in promoting employee engagement, OCB, JE, which, in turn, would improve productivity (Abdullah & Rashid, 2012; Lin et al., 2010). Recognising the influence of CSR on employees' OCB, WE, and JE will allow corporations and investors to designate investments effectively to maximise profits.