Corporate social responsibility and employee performance: Mediation role of job satisfaction and affective commitment

Abstract The positive impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices has been recognized over the past years. Recently, research has looked into the impact of CSR practices on employee behavior demonstrating positive results. Drawing from a sample of 190 supervisor‐subordinate dyads, we studied the relationship between perceived CSR practices (external and internal) and employee performance (supervisor‐rated) and two mechanisms that explain this relationship. Specifically, we studied if this relationship was mediated by employees' job satisfaction and affective commitment. Results indicate that there is a direct link between perceptions of external CSR and performance and that job satisfaction partially mediates this relationship. Also, perceptions of internal CSR are related to higher performance via job satisfaction, supporting full mediation. On the other hand, although both internal and external CSR were related to affective commitment, affective commitment did not act as a mediator for the CSR‐performance relationship. Implications for practice and limitations of this study conclude the article.