Employees v.s. customers’ perceptions of CSR, organizational identification and work engagement: a moderated mediation model

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted growing attention in the micro-CSR literature because of its potential influence on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. However, most prior research treats CSR as a unitary construct, overlooking the possibility that employees differentiate between CSR activities directed toward different stakeholder groups. Addressing this limitation, this study adopts a stakeholder-based micro-CSR perspective to examine how employee-oriented and consumer-oriented CSR jointly shape employees’ organizational identification and work engagement. Drawing on social exchange theory, social identity theory, and signaling theory, we develop a moderated mediation model in which employee-oriented CSR enhances work engagement through organizational identification, while consumer-oriented CSR strengthens this relationship by reinforcing the organization’s external reputation and moral standing. The findings indicate that employee-oriented CSR positively influences both organizational identification and work engagement, with organizational identification partially mediating this relationship. Furthermore, consumer-oriented CSR positively moderates the relationship between employee-oriented CSR and organizational identification, thereby strengthening its indirect effect on work engagement. By distinguishing between internal and external stakeholder-oriented CSR, this study advances the micro-CSR literature and offers a more nuanced understanding of how different CSR dimensions interact to shape employees’ identification and engagement within organizations.