What drives employee's involvement in corporate volunteering? Bright and dark side of consequences to organization

Purpose This study assesses the relevance of both individual and contextual factors as an antecedent to employee participation in corporate volunteering (CV) activities and affective organizational commitment and inter-role conflict as an outcome of employee volunteering. This study draws from the functional theory of motivation, social exchange theory and role strain perspective to explain hypothesized relationship of the study constructs. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was administered with 461 employee volunteers who had participated in company-sponsored volunteering programs. The authors adopted structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the study hypotheses. Findings The findings from the survey suggest that altruistic motives and organization CV capability will impact employee's participation in CV. The results highlight that employee participation in CV enhances affective organizational commitment, indicating that employee volunteering creates inter-role conflict. Research limitations/implications Though the study has identified inter-role conflict as a potentially unfavorable outcome, exploring when and how employee volunteering will create a negative effect will add significant value to organizations to protect the interest of their employees. Practical implications This study provides insights to understand the relative effects of self- and other-oriented motives. The results suggest that organizations have more directed and carefully designed employee volunteering activities to enable more favorable benefits to employees. Originality/value This study contributes to expanding the knowledge on the phenomenon of employee volunteering by introducing and empirically validating an integrated framework of antecedents and consequences of employee volunteering.