Stakeholder Existential Authenticity and Corporate Social Responsibility
Abstract
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) research has been slow to address the impacts of CSR on stakeholders, especially in terms of the mechanisms explaining how CSR translates into positive stakeholder outcomes. We introduce a new mechanism into this literature – stake holder existential authenticity (SEA) – that helps explain how stakeholder participation in CSR can enhance stakeholder wellbeing through the experience of being authentic. We develop an original conceptualization of SEA and integrate this into a model explaining the relationships between CSR participation, SEA, eudaimonic happiness, and subjective wellbeing, as well as the moderating effects of individual stakeholder attributes and CSR activity design. We explain our contributions to the literature on society-centric CSR, authenticity in CSR, CSR implementation, and authenticity in management more broadly, before suggesting directions for future research and outlining the practical implications of our study.
Authors
Dr Oyinkansola Odunjo is Lecturer of Business Management at Greenwich Business School, University of Greenwich, UK. Her research is primarily on corporate social responsibility with a specific focus on authentic CSR , CSR communication and social partnerships between profits and not-for-profits.
Dr. Andrew Crane is Professor of Business and Society and the director of the Centre for Business, Organizations and Society (CBOS) at the University of Bath, UK. A multi-award-winning author and teacher, as well as a popular speaker and media commentator.
Dr. Pierre McDonagh is Professor of Critical Marketing & Society, School of Management, University of Bath. Developed the theory of Sustainable Communication while working at Cardiff University. His work has been published widely, including leading management journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, British Food Journal, and the European Journal of Marketing.
Keywords
authenticity, societal impact, stakeholders, subjective well-being