Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis study explores how the employees of a financial firm use emotional arguments to construct different views of their employer's corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is theoretically based on the recent literature regarding employee perspectives of CSR, and especially on the role of emotions in CSR. Furthermore, the study utilizes rhetorical theory as a framework for data analysis. A qualitative study, based on face‐to‐face interviews, was conducted among 27 employees in a Finnish financial firm. The study identifies six categories of emotional arguments the employees used to construct views of where their employing organization's CSR is derived from. These categories relate positive emotions to satisfaction with the employing organization's CSR and negative emotions to dissatisfaction. The results show that employees also experience external pressures for CSR, but only implicitly, because they do not wish be embarrassed by their employer. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

AbstractWithin recent years, the literature on employee–CSR relations has grown significantly. However, the research is fragmented throughout various journals and disciplines, and we still lack a comprehensive literature review on the topic to show what we currently know about the employee relationship with CSR, and what we do not know. In this study, we conduct a systematic literature review on employee relations with CSR, based 331 journal articles. We analyze their methodological and theoretical approaches. Based on their key findings, we build a categorization of dominant research findings and their connections. Building on our review, we show how the research has been dominated by a focus on the organizational implementation of CSR and organizational benefits. Employees have been mainly perceived as implementers of top‐down sustainability policies and as mediators towards organizational CSR‐related benefits. We also discuss the need for future research on the more active role of employees in CSR relations, especially bottom‐up change processes and understanding the role of tensions and complexities.

Purpose
Although emotional tensions related to organizational sustainability have been identified, little is known about how employees aim to resolve such situations. This study aims to explore how employees use sensemaking to resolve emotionally tense situations concerning organizational sustainability.


Design/methodology/approach
The authors studied a case in which, while employees attached positive emotions to organizational sustainability, external stakeholders viewed it negatively. Specifically, the study analyzed how employees used sensemaking to resolve such tense experiences and how this sensemaking eventually influenced their actions. To this end, the authors interviewed 25 employees at an energy company who had experience participating in its sustainability work.


Findings
The analysis revealed three sensemaking mechanisms for resolving emotional tensions related to organizational sustainability caused by discrepancies between external reputation and internal personal experience: rational sensemaking, experiential sensemaking and identity work. The complexity of sensemaking was reflected in the mixed-use of these three mechanisms, as employees constantly moved from one to another.


Originality/value
This study demonstrates employees' tendency to defend their positive emotions about their organization's sustainability in tense situations. It further provides insights into related sensemaking processes and shows how they can result in different levels of action.

Sustainability reports have recently become a central tool for a corporation in convincing different stakeholder of their sustainability performance. The research and especially criticism towards sustainability reports is increasing. One solution for the criticism would be that companies provide more monetary arguments of their sustainability work. Currently there is a research gap of the content of the monetary sustainability reporting. This paper aims to address this gap by analysing how three Finnish companies construct the classification of stakeholders in terms of monetary information in their sustainability reports between 2003 and 2012. We studied three Finnish companies which represented three different business sectors, namely aviation, energy and financial. The sustainability reports of these three case companies from 2003-2012 were used as research material in this study. The reports were content analysed. Monetary information is understood here as quantitative information in connection with a currency unit. We identified seven different stakeholder groups in relation to monetary information in the sustainability reports: corporation, internal stakeholders, governmental stakeholders, financial stakeholders, supply chain stakeholders, societal stakeholders and service provider stakeholders. The corporation was the most often mentioned stakeholder but also internal and supply chain stakeholders were rather often mentioned. We further categorized the monetary information within the stakeholder groups into descriptions of the aims, benefits, futures, investments, philanthropic actions, recognitions, statements, sufferings and trends. Most often the monetary information was represented as statements and trends. The results portray the limitedness of monetary information in the sustainability reports. Monetary information is still clearly the minority of the sustainability information provided by the companies. In addition, the monetary information remains mainly disjointed with the rest of the content of the report. The sums, their magnitudes or developments are not commented. Based on the findings of this study, we encourage companies to reconsider the use of monetary information in the reports. Monetary information would serve as a powerful argument for sustainability in business. However, the current disjointed and unexplained use of it is more likely to increase criticism towards sustainability reports than to serve the integration of sustainability into business and stakeholder relationships. ; peerReviewed