Does “how” firms invest in corporate social responsibility matter? An attributional model of job seekers’ reactions to configurational variation in corporate social responsibility

Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices can increase firm attractiveness, this process can be undermined if CSR activities signal the “wrong” motives to job seekers. Yet, how these attributed motives form, and why job seekers are likely to infer favorable or unfavorable causal attributions underlying CSR activity, remain open questions. We draw on Kelley’s covariation model to address this gap. We develop and test an attributional model exploring job seekers’ reactions to distinct CSR attributional configurations derived from job seekers’ perceptions of CSR consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. Across a multi-trait, multi-method, multi-sample series of four studies, we demonstrate that different CSR attributional configurations are related to discrete causal attributions (i.e. values-driven, strategic-driven, and egoistic-driven), which are associated with distinct perceptions and employment intentions. We address recent calls to open the “black box” of CSR causal attributions, deepening understanding of why job seekers might also respond negatively to CSR, and the (attributional) psychological processes driving these negative reactions.