Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities are carried out by managers to protect the interests of their organizations, as well as to develop and protect the general interests of the society. The perception related to the organization's practices and activities within the scope of CSR will increase organizational commitment (OC). Being one of the key factors for an organization's success, the commitment of employees to their organizations is becoming increasingly important, and organizations want their employees to be at the highest level of loyalty. In this context, CSR audits are considered as a tool used to examine in detail the working conditions affecting the employees, and they make it possible to evaluate the relationship between these conditions and OC. From this point of view, this study aims to examine the effect of employees' perception related to the working conditions examined in CSR audits on OC in the textile sector. The PLS-SEM approach was used to evaluate the hypothesized relationships.
TopIntroduction
Organizations have responsibilities to support economic, environmental, cultural, and social development with their employees, their employees’ families, local community and the whole society in order to improve the quality of life of the society and to ensure sustainability. CSR is defined as a tool that plays a key role in the fulfillment of this responsibility and in making organizations stand out and be preferred in the globalizing world economy and intense competition conditions.
Different definitions related to CSR have been made in order to define the connections and existing responsibilities that organizations will establish with the stakeholders with whom they are in contact economically and legally. Bowen (2013) defines CSR as “the obligations of managers to pursue policies, make decisions, and take actions in a way that is desired in terms of objectives and values of the society”. According to the European Union, CSR is a concept that organizations voluntarily integrate social and environmental concerns into their commercial activities and interactions with their stakeholders (Commission of the European Communities, 2001). According to ILO, CSR is a voluntary initiative driven by organizations that is beyond legal compliance (International Labour Organization (ILO), 2012). CSR is defined as the use of resources by organizations for the benefit of society (Stahl & Grigsby, 1997), the organizations’ ethically responsible behaviors towards their stakeholders (Hopkins, 2003, 2012) and the responsibility of organizations to increase the welfare of society and to improve living conditions (Kotler & Keller, 2016).
Ferrell vd. (2019) stated that the concept of social responsibility could be evaluated from both a normative and a descriptive perspective. While descriptive perspective defines, explains and/or predicts the existence of a phenomenon (S.D. Hunt, 1991); normative perspective, on the other hand, explains the requirements for evaluating and developing professional ethical values (Laczniak & Kennedy, 2011). CSR can be associated with laws and regulations from a descriptive perspective, while focusing on values and principles to fulfill economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities from a normative perspective (Carroll, 1991). Shortly, CSR can be defined as “the importance that organizations attach to their responsibilities to all stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, etc., as well as their own commercial interests”.
Today, the values of organizations are determined not only by the quality of the product they produce or the service they offer, but also by what they bring to the society. This situation obliges organizations to act with social responsibility awareness. In this context, CSR is considered as a process that enables organizations to create value and stand out from their competitors. Nowadays, it is extremely important to create and maintain this value as employees want to be able to contribute to the world with their work as individuals of the organization they work in and at the same time as an individual of the society. Employees who are among the stakeholders who have expectations from organizations within the scope of CSR, attach importance to issues such as evolving employee-employer relations policies, health and safety conditions in the workplace, financial security conditions, provision of opportunities like child care, etc. (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001).
The fulfillment of CSR requirements by organizations primarily increases their own reputation and brand value. Integrating social responsibility with the brand plays an important role in enhancing brand value and personality (Melo & Galan, 2011; Polonsky & Jevons, 2006). In this way, both customers’ and employees’ sense of trust and thus their loyalty to the organization increases. In these kind of organizations, while the performance of employees increases, their tendency to leave the job decreases. This means that the relevant organization works more efficiently and increases its profitability. For organizations, CSR studies should be considered not only as a cost or constraint or as just doing the right thing, but also as the main source of competitive advantage (B.-J. Kim et al., 2018; C.-Y. Lee et al., 2017; Madison et al., 2012; M. E. Porter & Kramer, 2002; Smith, 2003).