The impact of corporate crises on the corporate social responsibility engagement of non-managerial employees : an exploratory research with CSR managers of large companies focusing on the role of CSR maturity and CSR hi

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THE IMPACT OF CORPORATE CRISES ON THE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

ENGAGEMENT OF NON-MANAGERIAL EMPLOYEES:

An Exploratory Research with CSR Managers of Large Companies focusing on the Role of

CSR Maturity and CSR History, Current CSR Engagement and CSR Perceived Motives

ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 FRIDAY 18TH_{AUGUST 2017 – FINAL VERSION} MSC BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION – MARKETING TRACK UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM SUPERVISOR: DR. LARS MORATIS

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 1

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY

This document is written by student Elsie

Ashanti Carrillo Vasquez who declares to take

full responsibility for the contents of this

document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in

this document is original and that no sources

other than those mentioned in the text and its

references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is

responsible solely for the supervision of

completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an essential part of the corporate strategy of any large company striving to become a sustainable, social and ethical company. It is widely known as a tool to buffer the impact of CSR and Non-CSR related crises. In the process, non-managerial employees are the main actors of any CSR measure, and during any corporate crisis is not the exception, their attitudes and behaviors can help or harm the company’s recovery. This master thesis has the objective of understanding that unexplored relation between Corporate Crisis and CSR employee engagement, specifically referring to the question: what is the impact of corporate crises on the CSR

engagement of non-managerial employees? To answer it, three factors that may moderate the impact

of the crisis were chosen: The Current CSR employee engagement, the CSR Maturity and CSR History of the company, and the CSR perceived motives of the employees. Due to the lack of literature, the research is exploratory in nature with a Grounded Theory methodology called Engaged Scholarship based on the insights from 13 semi-structured interviews to CSR Managers of 12 large companies located in the Netherlands. The results confirmed the moderating effect of the 3 proposed factors, the insights added a correlation in between the 3 factors and a strong dependency on the impact of the initial managerial reactions towards the crisis. The research presents what provokes the effects and how these impact the CSR employee engagement, including 3 tables with the general patterns found, a revised conceptual model and refined hypotheses. At the end, Managerial and Academic implications are discussed as well as the Limitations and Future research suggestions.

Keywords: CSR employee engagement, non-managerial employees, Corporate Crises, CSR Maturity, CSR perceived motives, Moderating factors.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 5 1. INT RO DUCT IO N

CSR is an important business tool for companies not just to make profits but to also increase their contribution to the society and the environment. We live in a world with limited resources and increasing population; every year the population growth is around 1.06%1_{(The World Factbook,} 2016) which means it is primordial to preserve the natural resources for our own survival. CSR is not new, but now more than ever before companies are supporting CSR initiatives such as corporate philanthropy, cause related marketing, minority support programs, socially responsible employment and green manufacturing practices with great financial and marketing effort (Bhattacharya, C.B. & Sen, S., 2007). One of the reasons explaining it is the increment of awareness about CSR themes, and therefore the raise of social pressure from different actors, among others: costumers, investors, governments, non-governmental organizations, etc. This effect has been influenced very much by the development of the internet. Society now have the technological facilities to know everything that is happening around them, the use of social media like Twitter or Facebook, give us the power to receive and to give any news in a split second. So, today more than ever society, in general, is more aware and is willing to know more about matters that affect their interests, making the world more transparent (Tapscott, D. & Williams, A.D., 2011).

Within this panorama the companies are not exempt, so corporate transparency is a must nowadays, and in this sense corporations today are encouraged to act socially responsibly and transparently (Dahlsrud, A., 2008). With this in mind, CSR in business is a tool to ‘‘achieve

commercial success in ways that honor ethical values and respect people, communities, and the natural environment’’ (White, A. L., 2006).

Under this context, organizations strive to earn a good corporate image and most companies use CSR as a tool to enhance their corporate reputation and generate goodwill for external stakeholders such as consumers and investors (Chernev, A. & Blair, S., 2015; Lichtenstein, D., Drumwright, M., &

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 6 Braig, B., 2004; Luo & Bhattacharya, 2006, Sen et al., 2006 in Hameed, I., Riaz, Z., Arain, G.A. & Farooq, O., 2016) or using CSR as tool during a corporate crisis to diminish the impact of them (Janssen, C., Sen, S. & Bhattacharya, C.B., 2015). The majority of the studies on CSR, refer mainly on how to create and preserve their virtuous image to the exterior, leaving in a side the interior of a company. In a remarkable way there are fewer investigations towards the relation CSR and the employees, as stated by McShane, L., & Cunningham, P., (2012) also cited by Haidari, A., Strandberg, H., Hellerstedt, K., & Berndt, A. (2016). There is a gap on the CSR literature that needs to be explored, referring to how the employees evaluate the CSR, and going further, Slack, R., Corlett, E., & Morris, S. (2015) in their paper suggested that more research on the CSR employee engagement should be done, additionally, Farooq, M., Farooq, O., & Jasimuddin, S. (2014) raise their voice to motivate the CSR researchers on how the employees can be affected by the change of context, precisely during a corporate crisis.

The present research assesses those gaps combined, the goal is to generate insights to explain the relation between corporate crises and their effects on the CSR employee engagement, and could be considered as a new research topic on CSR. Several insights coming from the literature review were the base to guide the study. The most important studies supporting the research are: first, the results from Våland, T. & Heide, M (2005) whom conclude that the CSR internal tools of a company are the most important moderators of the impact of a CSR crisis. Considering their results, the present research will try to review if their findings replicate in the proposed relation, if the CSR internal tools act as moderators of the impact of corporate crises on the CSR employee engagement. For delimitation purposes the internal moderating factors being analyzed are three: The Current CSR employee engagement, CSR Maturity and CSR History, and CSR Perceived Motives. With the analysis of the three factors the study tries to understand why, how and when the CSR engagement of the employees, decrease, increase or stays ceteris paribus during a corporate crisis.

In order to organize the employees, the study will focus on the non-managerial employees, also called frontline employees (Michailides, T., & Lipsett, M., 2013) which is the biggest group of employees in a company, and will apply the insights from Slack et al. (2015), Rodrigo, P., & Arenas,

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 7 D. (2007) and Hemingway (2005). On one side, they made evident the existent difference on the way the employees engage on CSR, and in the case of the last two, they also proposed an Employee Typology, dividing the employees in three main categories according to their degree of engagement towards CSR: Committed or Strongly Engaged, Indifferent or Moderately Engaged and Dissidents or Weakly Engaged. At the same time the paper divides corporate crises per domain: social and ethical matters are being addressed as CSR related crises, and product or service performance issues as Non-CSR related crises. (Janssen et al., 2015; Sohn, Y., & Lariscy, R., 2015).

For the analysis of the first factor, the current CSR employee engagement, the Assimilation-Contrast Theory (Janssen et al. 2015) is been used to predict the effects that the employees could have depending on their distance (or level of engagement) to the CSR program or CSR policy of their company. Employees who are far from the CSR of the company will assimilate the crises, and the ones near to the CSR will be more affected, which implies a contrast effect. The distance to CSR matters is based on the Employees Typology proposed by Rodrigo et al. (2007), and tries to answer the question of how does the current CSR engagement, strongly, moderately and weakly engaged, is affected during a negative event, do they assimilate or a contrast effect occurs? Do they boost, backfire or nothing happens to their CSR engagement?

The second tested factor is the CSR maturity and the CSR history, the first is known as the level of penetration of the CSR on the firms’ activities or CSR strategy (Nijhof, A. H., & Jeurissen, R. J., 2010) and the second, refers are the past accumulated CSR efforts (Shim, K. & Yang, S., 2016), the research is trying to understand when and why the CSR maturity and history help to buffer or backfire the impact of a crisis on the CSR engagement, this is based on the level of CSR maturity of the participating companies, according to the well-known 6 levels CSR Maturity model of Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A., & Benn, S., (2007).

The third, and last, moderating factor to be analyzed is the CSR perceived motives or CSR associations that the employees have about the CSR of the company. The study applies the findings of Ellen, P., Webb, S., & Mohr, D. (2006) by dividing the CSR perceived motives in positive and negative: strategic and value driven motives, as acceptable and positive perceived motives, and

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 8 egoistic and stakeholder driven motives, as not acceptable and negative in the eyes of consumers (Ellen, P. et al., 2006). The study tries to understand if the employees replicate the consumers CSR perceived motives, and extends the research to understand the effects of the CSR perceived motives on the CSR employee engagement during a corporate crisis depending on the division of Ellen, P. et al. (2006).

As the reader may expect, due to the inexistent roadmap to study the mentioned relation, the research is exploratory in nature, the qualitative research methodology to be used is Engaged Scholarship (Van de Ven, 2011) with in-depth semi-structure interviews to CSR Managers. It stands for closing the gap between theory and practice with the active participation or “engagement” of the researcher (scholar) and CSR experts enhancing the field in a richer and more meaningful way than other technics, and therefore, increasing the acceptance of the findings on both areas, the academy and the firms. The research is delimited to large companies (over 250 employees, Eurostat, 2017) located in the Netherlands, and focused on the most important stakeholder when implementing CSR, the employees (Cheng, K. & Sinset, I., 2008 in Haidiri, A. & Strandberg, H. 2016; Slack, R., Corlett, S., & Morris, R., 2014).

To summarize, the investigation has two main objectives, on one hand, to draw the attention of academics to study the proposed relation, and to give them a first overview on how some factors can moderate the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR employee engagement, adding a new dimension on the CSR role during any negative context from an internal point of view. And on the other, to help companies to understand their employees’ reactions towards CSR during a crisis. Why they behave in one way or another, depending on the studied moderators, and therefore to create a better crisis management strategy diminishing the negative impact on the CSR engagement of their employees.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 9 1.1. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

To succeed, the study formulates one main research question (RQ) and three sub questions (SQ) referring to each mentioned moderating factor:

Research Question - What is the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR engagement of non-managerial employees of large companies considering the role of the current CSR engagement, CSR maturity and History, and CSR perceived motives?

Sub Question 1 – Does the current strong, moderate or weak CSR engagement of non-managerial employees boost, backfire or not effect happens during a CSR or Non-CSR crisis?

Sub Question 2 – Does the CSR Maturity and CSR History influence the impact on CSR engagement of non-managerial employees during a CSR crisis and Non-CSR crisis?

Sub Question 3 – Does being known as a company having egoistic and stakeholder driven CSR motives versus strategic and value driven CSR motives impacts differently the CSR engagement during a CSR or Non-CSR crisis?

1.2. MANAGERIAL AND ACADEMIC RELEVANCE

The present thesis research is one of the first papers addressing the topic Corporate Crisis and its impact on the CSR engagement of non-managerial employees in large companies, an internal focus that has not been done. It responds to the gap on the CSR literature on how the employees evaluate the CSR as stated by McShane et al. (2012), specifically focusing on the CSR employee engagement as suggested by Slack et al., (2015) and as advised by Farooq et al., (2014) changing the context of the employees, to a crisis one. The results are expected to facilitate the roadmap for the academics interested in the same CSR literature gap and add important managerial implications for large companies.

The research contributes to the academy on several aspects. Primary, it intends to address the literature gap signaled by McShane et al. (2012), Slack et al. (2015) and Farooq et al. (2014) combined, by understanding and explaining how, why and when the CSR employee engagement are affected, or

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 10 not, during a corporate crisis based on the moderating effect of the three chosen CSR internal factors. It presents the patterns that could boost, backfire or make the CSR engagement stay in status quo during the crisis (CSR or non-CSR related). On the process, the research expects to be able to confirm or refute previews findings and theories that are being used.

The results will confirm, or not, if the findings of Våland, T. et al., (2005) can be replicated on the studied CSR relation; if the CSR internal tools of a company are the most important moderators of the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR engagement. As well, the research will confirm, or not, the heterogeneity of the CSR employee engagement (Slack et al., 2015; Rodrigo, P. et al., 2007; and Hemingway, 2005). If the Employee Typology from Rodrigo et al., (2007) is the most appropriate to study the CSR engagement, or if there is a better Typology. From the insights, it is expected to confirm if there can be positive outcomes from a corporate crisis, specifically if the CSR engagement can be boosted due to a negative event, as stated by Godfrey, P., Merrill, C. & Hansen, J. (2009).

In the case of the three moderators, first, the research will confirm or refute the use of the Assimilation-Contrast Theory (Janssen et al., 2015), to predict the impact of a crisis depending on the current CSR employee engagement. Secondly, it will test and confirm if the CSR maturity and CSR history always plays a role to diminish the impact of a crisis on the CSR employee engagement as stated by Nijhof, A. H., & Jeurissen, R. J., 2010 and will define and explain if the Dunphy’s CSR Maturity model is appropriate to study the present relation (Dunphy, D., et al., 2007). Thirdly, the study contributes to confirm, or refute, if the classification of the CSR perceived motives of the consumers proposed by Ellen, P., et al. (2006) replicate on the non-managerial employees, and based on this, how does the different CSR associations of the employees moderate the impact of the crisis on the CSR engagement, when, why and how the CSR associations buffer or not the impact.

On the other hand, the research aims to help large companies to understand and explain the role of the three chosen internal factors and their moderating effect on the impact of corporate crisis over the CSR employee engagement. The resulting insights are the first attempt towards a new conceptual model for them to visualize how does the proposed studied relation operates. The study’s resulting patterns will help large companies to understand and predict better the impact of a corporate

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 11 crisis on the non-managerial employees. As a result, it is expected that it will help them to decrease the negative impact on the CSR engagement. Additionally, in the case of having a CSR Crisis Management Plan (CMP), it can help them to improve it, and in case of not having one, the new findings could guide them to start building one. Also, according to other investigations, CSR was found to be related to the ﬁnancial benefits of the firms (Porter, M.E. & Kramer, M.R., 2002, 2006; Orlitzky, M. 2008; Oosterhout, J. & Heugens, P., 2008) so by decreasing the negative impact on the CSR employee engagement during a crisis, the economic loses are expected to decrease too.

Finally, it is expected to find patterns across the qualitative research insights to explain how the three factors can boost, backfire or not affect the CSR engagement and under which circumstances, they will help both areas. At the end, it is also the objective to confirm, refute or refine the proposed preliminary conceptual model, this will be presented at the end of the literature review.

1.3. THESIS STRUCTURE

The thesis is divided in four main sections. The first section, presents the literature review of the current work that has been done related to the topic, it presents the main concepts, theories to be used, preliminary hypotheses and the preliminary conceptual model resuming all the main variables implicated on the research and how these interact. The second section, describes the research methodology as the technic to get the data that will let the study to create insights. The third section, contains the results from the research, including demographics of the participants and the findings over the preliminary hypotheses. Lastly, section fourth refers to the discussion and conclusions, including a refined conceptual model and new proposed hypotheses. Followed by the academic and managerial implications, limitations and future research.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 12 2. L IT E RAT URE RE VIE W

2.1 CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY DEFINITION

The idea that companies have responsibilities to society beyond that of making profits for the shareholders or owners has existed for centuries. However, it expanded largely after the World War II, and it was not until the 60s with the civil rights movement, consumerism, and environmentalism that affected society’s business expectations and the term of Corporate Social Responsibility was originated (Carroll, A.B & Shabana, K.M., 2010; Baric, A., 2017)

The topic of Corporate Responsibility has been known under many names including Corporate Citizenship, Business Ethics, Social Responsibility, Strategic Philanthropy among many others. But what they have in common is their reference to the purposeful role of business in society. So despite the label, today the most accepted concept is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its main task is based on the idea of the creation of “Shared Value” which means to create value not just for the shareholders or owners but for the society and therefore a win-win proposition (Rangar, k., Chase, L.A. Karim, S., 2012; Porter, M.E. & Kramer, M.R., 2006 in Nijhof, A. H., & Jeurissen, R. J., 2010). Until today there is no official definition for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), just in one study there were analyzed 37 definitions from different perspectives (Dahlsrud, A., 2008). Carroll, A.B. & Shabana, K.M., (2010) discussed in their research that even Dahlsrud’s study was underestimating the real number and perspectives of definitions out there, in part because the CSR discussion is not exclusive of the academy and there are various CSR practitioners contributing. In fact, when searching in Google for CSR definitions the most often found are the definitions created by organizations such as the Commission of the European Communities, CSRwire and the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) (Carroll et al., 2010). For the present study, it is taken the BSR definition, one the most cited by practitioners and academics: “CSR is a tool for the companies to achieve

commercial success in ways that honor ethical values and respect people, communities, and the natural environment.’’ (White, A. L, 2006; Carroll, et al., 2010; Bhattacharya, C.B., et al 2007). In order to

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Stakeholders from Freeman (1984) defined as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” e.g., employees, suppliers, shareholders,

customers. So, to the definition proposed by the BSR is added the stakeholders’ concept, originating the CSR definition being used and proposed by this research: “CSR is a tool for the companies to

achieve commercial success in ways that honor ethical values and respect stakeholders, communities, and the natural environment’’.

2.2 CSR AND THE EMPLOYEES

The widespread of the practices of CSR in the corporate world attracted the attention of academics and practitioners to understand how CSR affect the different stakeholders such as consumers, investors, suppliers, the government and the employees (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012 in Hameed, I. et al., 2016). Among the stakeholders, the employees are vital to any discussion of the origin and outcomes of CSR (Aguilera, R., Rupp, D., Williams, C., & Ganapathi, J., 2007). According several authors, (Cheng, K. & Sinset, I., 2008 in Haidiri, A. & Strandberg, H. 2016; Slack, R., Corlett, S., & Morris, R., 2014), the employees are the most important stakeholder when implementing CSR. They are the key to support the CSR initiatives, social activities and CSR policies of the organization, they are who execute the CSR strategies and who get directly involved on the CSR programs (Slack et al., 2014). However, most of the research that has been done is focused on external stakeholders, specially investors and consumers (Rodrigo, P. et al. 2007; Lichtenstein et al., 2004; Luo & Bhattacharya, 2006; Sen et al., 2006 in Hameed, I., et al. 2016) or internal stakeholders, mainly the shareholders (Godfrey, P., et al., 2009) leaving the employees in a second class, neglecting their key role as integral stakeholders for the companies (Larsonetal.,2008 in Hameed, I., et al., 2016).

When analyzing the current academic studies about CSR and the employees, it is found that they are focused on the employees’ outcomes or benefits from CSR: talent attraction, recruitment and retention, ethics, productivity, commitment, and employees trust and pride. (Slack et al., 2014; McShane & Cunningham, 2012; Haidari, A. et al., 2016). Especially now that the Millennials (Born 1978-1998) are the largest generation in the workforce. According to the worldwide recognized marketing and communications agency CONE (2016), 76% of Millennials consider CSR aspects when

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 14 choosing their employer, 83% will be more loyal to a company with CSR and 88% will be happier when they are provided with opportunities to make a positive impact on social and environmental issues. Nevertheless, far less investigation has been done on the differences between the employees towards the CSR. Rodrigo et al. (2007) exposed that it gives the impression that the researches assume that the employees’ expectations, attitudes and behaviors are homogeneous. The truth is that the employees are different from one to another and they are in constant evaluation of the organization, including the CSR program or CSR policy.

McShane et al. (2012) and Haidiri, A. et al (2016) found that there is a big gap on the literature on how does the employees evaluate the CSR, making it very difficult to predict how they can respond in certain contexts. Slack et al. (2014) suggested more investigation about CSR employee engagement and Farooq et al. (2014) suggested that more research should be done on how changing organizational realities affect the employees, such as the context of a corporate crisis. In order to close the gap and contribute to the CSR literature as suggested by CSR academics, the present research will investigate the CSR employee engagement and how this is affected when changing the company’s reality, specifically what, why and how does their CSR engagement change (or not) throughout a change of context, during a corporate crisis.

For delimitation purposes, the CSR engagement will be studied on the frontline or non-managerial employees, the biggest group of employees on any company, defined as ‘‘individuals who

have direct or indirect interaction with a company stakeholder as they perform their respective business-related tasks to generate revenues for the organization” (Michailides, T. et al, 2013). For

simplification, from now on the frontline or non-managerial employees are going to be referred also as employees.

2.3 EMPLOYEE TYPOLOGY

According to Slack et al. (2014) in CSR: “employees carry the main responsibility for

implementing a firm’s CSR activities, and the employee willingness to collaborate will highly impact the outcomes”. Slack et al. (2014) concluded that not all the employees get engaged equally due to the

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 15 fact that the CSR efforts generally go beyond the signed work contract between the employee and the company. So, the CSR activities in general are seen as an extra effort, as voluntary job from the employees, and on behalf of the company, therefore the attitudes towards the CSR of a company change from employee to employee.

For the study, the non-managerial employees are divided according to the proposed Employee Typology of Rodrigo et al. (2007). It is formed by three groups, based on the level of CSR engagement of the employees: Committed or strongly engaged, Indifferent or moderately engaged, and Dissidents or weakly engaged.

The first group is the committed or strongly engaged, these employees had experiences and/or have studied topics related to CSR, so generally have an intrinsic and personal motivation; they are concerned about social justice and the environment, they receive CSR initiatives with enthusiasm. They are optimistic about the company’s social role and therefore they feel identified with it (Rodrigo et al., 2007).

The second is the indifferent or moderate engaged, their concerns turn towards their own interests like their own career, they share many ideas about social welfare and justice but just in theory, their efforts are focus on their own career, they see the CSR activities as an obligation and usually they will try to fulfill as best as they can, they would not say that are for or against CSR. (Rodrigo et al., 2007).

The last group are the Dissidents, skeptics or weakly engaged, these employees basically do not believe in CSR, for them rather than spend the money on intangible and external CSR topics, it should be spent on increasing their salaries or in offering them incentives. In general, they are keen for social justice, but they are focus on themselves or their immediate group. They want the benefits of social justice but as they feel in disadvantage or marginalized they do not contribute, at best they are interested in social justice “for their kind”. They are not interested on the role of the company on CSR unless they receive direct benefits. These are the same people that in general do not feel identify with the company and their contributions are delimited to what they have been specifically asked for. Any implementation about CSR often frustrates them and this is often expressed to their colleagues. This

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 16 type of employees is more often found at the lower levels of the company, employees without professional studies (Rodrigo et al., 2007).

Once the employees are classified according to their attitudes and behaviors towards CSR, the questions to be done are: How does a corporate crisis impact of them? What is a corporate crisis? How can we organize the crises? In the next section, it is presented the literature review about corporate crises.

2.4 CORPORATE CRISIS

Even during the best circumstances, the company’s activities can create negative impacts at any time (Godfrey, P. et al., 2009) and the employees, as an important asset turns more critical during those negative events. According to field research there is empirical evidence that humans react emotionally, attitudinally and behaviorally upon injustice even if it is not directly to them transcending economic self-interest (Rupp et al. 2006). The employees’ reactions, depending on the situation, have automatic reactions, either positive or negative. Also, academics have argued that an organization’s ability to prevent or effectively respond to a crisis depends on the accuracy of the management knowledge and assumptions concerning its employees’ behavior in the context of crises (Mitroff & Kilmann, 1984; Nathan & Mitroff, 1991; Pearson & Clair, 1998; Perrow, 1999; Ulmer, 2001, in Janssen et al, 2015) advising the management to study and understand their employees as the best insurance to react in best possible way during negative events.

There are several definitions for corporate crisis, emphasizing different elements, for Shim & Yang (2016) it is “a low-probability, high-impact event that threatens the viability of the organization

and is characterized by ambiguity of cause, effect, and means of resolution”. Another important

element added in several definitions, is the surprise effect, crises strike with little or no warning (Smith et al., 1996, Reilly, 1987, Lerbinger, 1997a, Kovoor-Misra et al., 2000 in Andvik, E. E., & Vodahl, H. A., 2011), an example is Heath’s definition of crisis: “a disruption of normal patterns of corporate

activity by a sudden or overpowering and initially uncontrollable event” (Heath, 1997 in Andvik, E.E.

et al., 2011). And finally, the damaging effect is particular the focus of Coombs et al (2010) “perception

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impact the organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes”. Thus, for this paper the

definition to be used is a combination of the three main elements that those definitions mentioned, so a corporate crisis would be: A low probability, high impact and sudden event initially uncontrollable

that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders (external and internal) and can seriously affect the organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes.

Godfrey, P. et al. (2009) states that there can be positive and negative outcomes from a negative event. Positive outcome could be for example a crisis about a product defect that resulted on the discontinuation of certain product of service which will benefit the employees and/or costumers, however there are negative impacts that can be very harmful such as the closure of a plant or environmental disasters. In any case the stakeholders, including the employees, will punish the company, from badmouthing to revoking the right to do business (Godfrey, P. et al., 2009). The intensity of the punishment will depend on two factors: the negative effects of the crisis and the perceived motives or intentions of the company. Some studies conclude that the CSR engagement builds moral capital and mitigates the negative impacts (Fombrun, Gardberg, and Barnett, 2000; Godfrey, 2005 in Godfrey, P., et al. 2009). The goodwill generated by CSR initiatives can reduce the severity of the impacts when there is ambiguity on the perceived motives by encouraging the stakeholders to give the “benefit of the doubt”. (Uzzi, 1997 in Godfrey, P. et al., 2009)

Sohn et al. (2015) and Janssen et al. (2006) classifies the corporate crises in two, according to their domain, Non-CSR related crisis and CSR-related crisis. To make the distinction between the two, they added the term Corporate Ability (CA) defined as the “expertise in producing and delivering

product and/or service offerings” (Sohn et al., 2015). Their study defined the Non-CSR related crisis

or CA crisis as: “Critical event that primarily affects corporate reputation associated with expertise

of product and service, technological innovation, and industry leadership”; and CSR related crisis as:

“a major event that poses a threat to reputation associated with norms and values cherished by society,

and socially expected obligations. The social obligations may involve environmental friendliness, commitment to diversity in employment, community involvement, and corporate philanthropic activities”. This is the classification that will remain through all the research.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 18 Other very important insights were proposed by Våland, T. & Heide, M (2005), they studied the moderating factors of the CSR crises and their impact on the companies, finding that the most important moderator are the Internal Tools of a company (e.g. CSR policy, CSR employee engagement, CSR Maturity, CSR perceived motives), over CSR drivers (e.g. public media, mainly eager journalists to detect corporate incidents) and CSR enablers (e.g. external laws, governmental and non-governmental organizations) due to the fact that the first can influence or drive the two other. However, the present research extends their findings arguing that their results can replicate, taking the internal tools as the most important moderating factor during a corporate crisis and this moderating effect can be seen and tested on the CSR employee engagement. So now the question is: what internal tools can moderate the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR employee engagement? In order to answer this question for delimitation purposes with the given timeframe, the research is focused into three main internal factors that could moderate the impact of a corporate crisis on CSR employee engagement, also by the important fact that these are the factors that companies can work and influence easier than the external ones. The internal moderators to be studied are: the current CSR employee engagement, the CSR Maturity of the company, and the CSR motives of the company that the employees perceived.

In the next three sections are presented the most important literature on each factor in reference to their moderating effect during a crisis, preliminary hypotheses and the preliminary conceptual model.

2.5 MODERATOR 1: CURRENT CSR EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

It has been mentioned in the previews sections in several occasions the concept of CSR employee engagement, in order to settle down the reader in the same perspective, next it is presented its proper definition according to the literature review, including its difference over the employee engagement per se. There are several papers who explain the distinction between CSR employee engagement and employee engagement. Godkin (2015) offers a simple and direct explanation, employee engagement is “a strategic asset for the organizations” (Shuck et al. 2011 in Godkin, 2015) and “a source of tactical power to drive performance” (Harter et al. 2002; Macey & Schneider 2008;

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 19 Saks 2006). Erickson (2005), as cited in Macey, W., & Schneider, B. (2008), relates the employee engagement with passion and commitment and defines it as: “the willingness to invest oneself and

expend one’s discretionary effort to help the employer succeed”. Therefore, engaged employees are

the best fuel for the company, they put their head and heart into their work, and thus they are the most productive workers, the best team players and the most committed to the organizational goals (Haidari et al., 2016). Then if employee engagement can drive organizational performance, Godkin (2015) defines CSR employee engagement as: “ethically motivated employees that energize CSR-related

performance”, in other words the, CSR employee engagement drives the CSR performance. As

mention before, the employees are the main actor for the CSR initiatives to work out, so their willingness to participate will impact the outcomes (Cheng, K. et al.2008 in Haidiri. A. et al. 2016; Slack, R. et al., 2014).

Reviewing the current published literature on CSR about the impact of corporate crises on the CSR employee engagement and as moderating factor the current CSR employee engagement, there was no evidence of the existence of published studies, instead there were mainly found several journals about the impact of crises on the external stakeholders, one of them is “Corporate crises in the age of corporate social responsibility” by Janssen et al. (2015), they explain the costumers’ reactions from a crisis with the Assimilation-Contrast Theory, from the Turkish psychologist Muzafer Sherif and the American psychologist Carl Iver Hovlandf (1961), which stays that: “individuals’ judgments exist

relative to reference points, such as those induced by the context in which the judgment takes place. Such reference points distort individuals’ judgment and can produce two opposing effects when new information surfaces: the distance between the contextual information and the new information can appear either smaller than it actually is (assimilation effect) or larger (contrast effect)”. In simpler

words, if a person is far from a topic, and receives new information about the topic, there will be an “assimilation effect” where the people, pardon the redundancy, assimilate the information so the impact of the received message will be lower, than if on the other hand, the person is near the topic, and receives new information regarding the topic of interest, then a contrast effect occurs which means that the impact will be higher.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 20 Janssen et al (2015) are using the Assimilation-Contrast theory for external stakeholders, specifically to study the impact of corporate crises on consumers. For the purpose of the research and the lack on theory on the studied relation, we will apply the assimilation-contrast theory combined with the Employee Typology (Rodrigo et al. 2007). The Employee Typology will be considered as the context of reference, and the corporate crises as the new information, so following this logic: committed or strongly engaged employees are the nearest to the CSR topic therefore they will backfire with the crises due to the contrast effect; indifferent or moderate, based on their description, are employees that tend to be more positive than negative towards CSR but not as near as the committed or strongly engaged, so they will backfire too in a lesser extent; and the dissidents or weakly engaged employees, as far from the topic, they will have an assimilation effect, so the impact will be minimum. With the objective of finding patterns in the reactions of the employees, and determining if the theory replicates the same way on the non-managerial employees during the CSR and non-CSR related crisis, the research proposed the next three preliminary hypotheses:

H1. A strong (weak) CSR employee engagement will backfire more (less) negatively during a CSR crisis

H2. A strong (or weak) CSR employee engagement will backfire more (or less) negatively during a Non-CSR related crisis.

H3. A moderate CSR employee engagement will backfire during a CSR or non-CSR related crisis

2.6 MODERATOR 2: CSR MATURITY AND CSR HISTORY

The second moderating factor is the CSR Maturity and CSR History. The CSR Maturity is a concept referring to the development of CSR on a company, in other words, how evolved is the CSR in the company activities. One of the most recognized and studied theories on the topic is the model built by Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A., & Benn, S. (2007) also cited by Nijhof et al. (2010) and Moratis, (2014). They proposed a six stages model for the evolution of CSR Maturity (1. Rejection, 2. Non-responsiveness, 3. Compliance, 4. Efficiency, 5. Strategic proactivity, 6. The sustaining corporation).

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 21 The Rejection stage involves companies which think that the resources, employees, community infrastructure and the environment are there to be exploited for economic gains and there is nothing else to be done. The stage two, Non-Responsiveness, unlike the first stage, these companies lack awareness and are ignorant about CSR, they just act “business as usual” ignoring the issues about CSR. The Compliance Stage, includes companies which care just to meet the minimum regulations imposed to continue the business. In the stage four, called Efficiency, are the companies that start to be aware about the economic benefits of CSR, so their practices focus on reducing costs and being more operational efficient. The stage five, Strategic Proactivity, here we can find companies that foreseen the CSR benefits and convert it as a competitive advantage, they proactively integrate the CSR and usually are the CSR leaders on their industry. And finally in stage six, we will find the Sustaining Corporations, these are companies which have internalized sustainability, and are active promoters of CSR. These companies embedded sustainability all over their processes, they are actively building reputational capital, and they work and train their workforce, so they are contributing to regenerate the environment authentically.

Dunphy et al. (2007) stated that at most of the stages, in the first five, the idea of including ethical activities is not necessary, in this sense the first five stages focus more in rejecting an authentic and honest CSR, fulfilling the minimum CSR requirements or building credibility by the reduction on energy costs, economizing the use of materials, and seizing strategic business opportunities, following mainly a logic of commerce or economical reflections (Porter & Kramer, 2006 in Nijhof et al.,2010) and it is not until stage six where the companies start building genuine and honest societal and environmental practices.

In contrast, other researchers state that Dunphy’s Model is not the best way to build CSR, and that the ethical reflections, genuine CSR actions related to social and environmental issues, should start since stage one. There is a very important concept driving the acceptance of CSR from the stakeholders of a company, and it is the CSR History, “previous CSR effort closely relates to the evaluation of

constancy in CSR”, and that constancy building CSR efforts boosts the success at the last stage (Shim

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 22 stage it can be counterproductive, by doing that the companies get the risk of not been taken serious , not reliable, and the audience can take them as a temporary showcase (Moratis, 2014; Shim et al., 2016) losing credibility and damaging their image, especially during a crisis.

More importantly, Shim et al. (2016) even though he couldn’t prove by quantitative methods, he concluded that there are real benefits of having an ethical CSR history during a corporate crisis (CSR or non-CSR related). He stays that accumulated CSR’s efforts buffer the negative impact on the company’s reputation during a negative event. Additionally, a company without CSR history will struggle more to recover from any type of crisis and the result could be an increment of skepticism (Shim et al., 2016; in Schietz & Epstein, 2005).

Following this logic, the research has the next preliminary hypotheses:

H4. During a CSR crisis if a company’s CSR maturity has CSR history from stage one (stage six) the lesser (more) is the negative impact on CSR employee engagement

H5. During a non-CSR crisis if a company’s CSR maturity has CSR history from stage one (stage six) the lesser (more) is the negative impact on CSR employee engagement

2.7 MODERATOR 3: CSR PERCEIVED MOTIVES

The third studied moderating factor influencing the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR employee engagement, and according to Godfrey, P. et al. (2009) one of the two main moderators influencing the reactions of the employees are the CSR perceived motives or CSR corporate associations that the employees have about the CSR activities of the company, what they think about the CSR of the company, if they believe on it, if their thoughts related to CSR are positive or negative. Corporate associations play an important role in the corporate outcomes (Ellen, P., Webb, S., & Mohr, D.,2006). The CSR perceived motives or CSR corporate associations are defined as "associations that

reflect the organization's status and activities with respect to its perceived societal obligations"

(Brown & Dacin 1997 in Ellen, P., et al. 2006). Then the challenge of every company is to create and maintain central, enduring and distinctive positive corporate associations (Ellen, P. et al., 2006).

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 23 Drumwright (1996) cited by Ellen et al. (2006) discovered that even though the managers know that the organization’s CSR motives are mixed type, with social and economic goals, those same managers described that people judge their CSR motives in a more simplistic way, either serving economic ends or authentic social concerns. Whetten and Mackey (2002) in Ellen et al. (2006) reaffirmed this relation, with what they called “minimum boundary condition”, which means that any social actor differentiates between the self-serving motives, perceived motives that are in the company’s benefit, so negative associations, and other serving motives, perceived motives to help authentically and honestly the society and environment, so positive associations.

Ellen et al. (2006) and Williams et al. (2002), challenged that dichotomy in their research, and as expected, in their results people reacted much more complex, with mainly mix perceived motives, their researches categorized the motives into four categories, first dividing the self-centered motives in positive and negative, and not just negative as was believed before, the positive self-serving motives are called strategic motives which are business related, “inherent in the existence of a company as a

social actor and are widely accepted” (Whetten & Mackey, 2002 in Ellen et al., 2006), people with

perceived strategic motives understand that the companies are businesses and see the CSR as a positive and valid tool to get more costumers, sales and improve their image. Then, the negative self-serving motives are called egoistic motives, these motives appear when people perceive that the CSR is being used for negative economic benefits like for example, tax evasion or keeping donations. Likewise, for other centered motives were divided in positive and negative too, they reacted positively, when companies where perceived as value driven meaning when were seen as honest and genuine motives caring about others and the environment, and negatively, when perceived as stakeholder driven motives which reflects a response to the expectations of different stakeholders, so the CSR is not perceive as genuine and more as a requirement that was demanded. So contrary to the simplistic judgement proposed by Drumwright (1996) and Whetten et al (2002), most of the participants graded the motivations of the company with a combination of perceived CSR motives.

Another study that support the mix perceived motives was by Becker-Olsen, K. L., Cudmore B. A., and Hill, R. P. (2006), they understood that people have an active role, for them even though

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 24 from first sight the CSR intentions would looked societal oriented, people will go deeper to try to understand the underlying motivations. When people question the motives (Friestad & Wright, 1994, 1995 in Becker et al., 2006) they elaborated with a cognitive process to evaluate the motives. They explain this phenomenon based on the motivations on the Attribution Theory (Jones and Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967, 1972 in Becker et al., 2006) applied on consumers, “consumers will attempt to

understand firms’ motives embedded within marketing communications… specific attributions that underlie perceived motivations are likely to influence evaluations of firms” (Boush et al., 1994;

Campbell and Kirmani, 2000; Ellen et al., 2000 in Becker et al., 2006) and divide the motives resulting from the cognitive evaluation in the same way as the last research by Ellen et al. (2006), self-serving motives (economic and image means) and other serving motives (societal and environmental means). It is very important to mention that during the literature review, there was no evidence of investigations about the CSR perceived motives on the employees per se, the mentioned studies were done to understand the consumers and stakeholders’ attitudes and behaviors arousing from the CSR perceived motives (self-serving or other serving motives). For the present research purposes, it is being assumed that this classification of CSR perceived motives can be replicated and used as an initiating point to start building the path towards the reactions of the employees. Even though they might have also mix perceived CSR motivations, we expect that during a CSR crisis they will always weigh their perceptions with the crisis and take a side, either positive or negative. It is also considered that during a non-CSR crisis there won’t be any change on the CSR engagement because simply these crises are not being related to CSR and therefore their CSR engagement will stay ceteris paribus. So, using the insights from the current literature and our assumptions, are proposed the next 3 preliminary hypotheses:

H6 – During a CSR crisis, if employees perceive mainly egoistic and/or stakeholder driven motives their CSR engagement will decrease.

H7 – During a CSR crisis, if the employees perceive mainly strategic and/or value driven motives their CSR engagement will increase.

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H8 – During non-CSR related crisis, employees will not judge the perceived CSR company’s motives. So their CSR engagement will remain ceteris paribus (status quo)

2.8 PRELIMINARY CONCEPTUAL MODEL

In resume, the current literature confirmed the lack of research on the relation between CSR employee engagement and corporate crises. There were not studies found explaining the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR employee engagement and what can influence it. To start building theory were selected three internal factors as moderators of the impact of the crisis on the CSR engagement: Current CSR Employee Engagement, CSR Maturity, and CSR perceived motives. According to Våland, T. et al., (2005) the internal tools are the most important moderators due to the fact that the companies can influence and control them in an easier way than external factors (Social media, the news, consumers, public opinion, etc.) and according to them the internal tools drive the external ones.

Below is presented the preliminary conceptual model that resumes, guides and presents in a visual way the thesis research, it represents the Research Question: What is the impact of a corporate crisis on the CSR engagement of non-managerial employees of large companies considering the role of the current CSR engagement, CSR maturity and CSR perceived motives?

The studied issue is represented in the preliminary conceptual model, the relation between corporate crisis (CSR related or Non-CSR related) as independent variable, and CSR employee engagement, as dependent variable. The relation shows the moderating effect of the three chosen CSR internal tools: current CSR employee engagement, CSR maturity and CSR perceived motives. Eight preliminary hypotheses were proposed to facilitate the research, based on the existent related theory.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 27 3. ME T H O DO L O G Y

3.1 RESEARCH METHOD AND SAMPLE

Due to the lack of literature and theory regarding the problematic of the present thesis, the research approach is qualitative-exploratory in nature, it stands for investigating problems when there are few or no earlier studies to refer to or rely upon to predict an outcome (Labaree, R., 2009) which is the case of the research gap. First, the main objective, theoretically speaking, is not to prove anything but rather to start understanding the proposed topic, as Eysenck (1976) mentioned in his work

“Sometimes we simply have to keep our eyes open and look carefully at individual cases –not in the hope of proving anything, but rather in the hope of learning something”. Secondly, the qualitative

approach in social research is the most appropriate simply because it “derives from the nature of the

social phenomena to be explored” (Morgan & Smircich, 1980) and third, it is fundamental to

understand individual perceptions and social interactions (Hurman & Miles, 2002) to get patterns and explanations to start building theory, which fulfill the purposes of the present study.

One well known technic to make a qualitative research is Grounded Theory from the two sociologists, Glasser and Strauss (1967). About 50% of the qualitative researchers participating in a study worldwide were using it as their main research methodology (Gibbs, G.R., 2012). The main goal is to generate theory or discover theory, “grounding the theory”, in this case as an inductive approach, generating explanations while interpreting the obtained data. Commonly, the Grounded Theory is used to discover or expand the social and psychological processes behind the phenomenon in question, in this case, to understand the social and psychological processes affecting the CSR employee engagement of the non-managerial employees in the context of a corporate crisis, so fits very well with the aims of the study.

The Grounded Theory methodology chosen for the research is the Engaged Scholarship from Van de Ven (2011), it stands for closing the gap between theory and practice with the active participation during the research of the key stakeholders in order to understand the issue in question, so it is about obtaining the insights from a conversation between the practitioner and the researcher or

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 28 scholar. It is about the scholar and the expert “engaging” in a relationship, where the respect, professionalism and collaboration will let them enhance the field in a richer way. Ideally, the researcher will leverage from the different perspectives, and therefore Van de Ven (2011) argues that the Engaged Scholarship can produce knowledge that is more penetrating and insightful in pro of the learning community giving better results than when the two key stakeholders work the problem separately with one-sided focus, either academic or corporate (Van de Ven, A. et al., 2008).

This methodology was chosen for three main reasons, first, due to the fact that is the first time the problematic is being studied. Engaging with several CSR experts whom are interested on the topic, and want to have clearer solutions for unexpected challenges as the corporate crises, it is considered the most enhancing and insightful method for both parts, the Academy and the Firms, compared to other methodologies that neglect the active participation of the researcher. Secondly, related to the first, due to the fact that the new problematic it is regarding the management of employees, thus, what a better way to start building theory, or hypotheses than engaging with CSR Managers, the final users of the findings. And third, it is a very complete methodology that encourage for a higher acceptance of the insights from the companies and therefore, to increase the attention on the issue from the CSR researchers.

Given the time frame and as suggested by Aguinis, H., & Glavas, A. (2012), the research focuses on the individual level of analysis: on the employees. Delimited to the employees of large companies (over 250 employees, Eurostat, 2017), this based to the fact that larger companies have more transactions or activities, internally and externally, resulting in higher probability of negative events (Godfrey, 2009). Additionally, according to Rindova, Pollock, and Hayward (2006) larger firms are at much greater scrutiny from the media and stakeholders. As a consequence, the large companies are expected to be more interested, and willing to participate than medium or smaller firms. The employees are also considered the unit of analysis, they are part of the gap on the CSR literature (Aguinis, H., & Glavas, A., 2012), and so, the study is trying to create patters by understanding their reactions on their CSR engagement during a corporate crisis.

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 29 The CSR Managers, are the direct participants on the research whom provide the insights. They were chosen based on Theoretical Sampling, which means that were chosen as the best source to start building theory (Patton, 2001 in Cohen, D., 2006; Marshall, M., 1996). As practitioners their insights from first hand are considered the most valuable to start building theory and/or formulating hypotheses. The chosen participants are working in large companies located in the Netherlands. The place was chosen due to geographical proximity of the researcher, researcher´s budget to travel and due to the Dutch CSR professional network of the Thesis supervisor. As for the type of large company, it was just needed to make certain that the companies participating have a CSR policy or CSR program ongoing to participate, otherwise, they were not going to be able to give answers. To ensure this, the companies were chosen based on the supervisor’s recommendation to focus on the list of large firms provided by the “CSR Netherlands” (MVO Nederland in Dutch), a governments initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs (www.mvonederland.nl) which invites companies that are active on CSR to join their network.

The Engaged Scholarship method is divided in four interrelated parts: Problem Formulation,

Theory Building, Research Design based on theory and Problem Solving. The two stakeholders,

researcher and the CSR Managers, are involved in each stage. For the main purpose of this research (the creation of new important insights) just the first two stages are being covered:

1. Problem formulation - Grounding the research problem being examined. In hand with the experts, the objective is to define the relevance of the problem.

2. Theory building - Developing plausible theories to address the research problem. The objective is to analyze in-depth the three moderators’ role (CSR perceived motives, CSR maturity and the current CSR employee engagement) to support or reject the preliminary hypotheses based on the literature review theories and confirm or reject the proposed conceptual model based on the results. Creating reliable and mindful insights.

To develop understanding and explanations of a non-studied phenomenon with this methodology, it is best to make interviews, Seidman, I. (1998) explains, interviewing is a technique used to understand the experiences of others, seeks to describe the meanings of a central theme in the

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 30 life of the participants or to provide detailed descriptions of individuals and events in their natural settings (Weiss, 1994 in Alshenqeeti, 2014). When the events are not observable, as is the case, talking to people would be one of the most effective methods for attaining and exploring the social topics (Kvale, 1996 in Alshenqeeti, 2014).

The chosen type of interview that suits better the research is the semi-structured, known as the flexible version of the structured interview because “it allows depth to be achieved by providing the

opportunity on the part of the interviewer to probe and expand the interviewee's responses” (Rubin &

Rubin, 2005 in Alshenqeeti, 2014). When interviewing experts, a semi-structured interview is recommended, due to the flexibility on the organization of the questioner, it can be adapted according to the expert’s answers, so the order could change depending the fluency of the conversation and principally the expert’s insights. The researcher can go as in-depth as it is needed (Leech, 2002). Experts usually have strong theoretical basis and experience, so the riches way of getting more meaningful insights is by giving them the freedom to talk, and the interviewer task is to guide the conversation accordingly (Drever, E., 1995) therefore the structure is decided during the interview so it varies from one interview to another.

As mentioned before, the objective of the Engaged Scholarship methodology is to have participative interviews, open professional conversations, either face to face or using the available technology, including Skype, What’s App, FaceTime, and regular Calls. In any case the interviews are planned to be recorded and transcribed for validity purposes. The semi-structured interviews were planned to be of maximum one hour, respecting the managers tide schedules, but letting them space to express their theories, experiences, questions and points of view. The interviews will try to give answer to the research questions, hypotheses and to support or reject the initial conceptual model (Figure 1), for that discussing the role of the three proposed moderators is essential.

There are some disadvantages when doing interviews, the main one is the bias that both the interviewee and interviewer could have. In the case of the present research on one side the CSR managers could give answers in pro of their company, giving a too optimistic overview of the reality, and on the other, the interviewer could push towards verification of his/her preconceived thoughts. In

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 31 order to overcome this possible bias, the researcher clarified since the beginning the lack of research and literature in the topic, setting up the stage on the importance of the objective of starting to create the path with relevant insights and hypotheses that could potentially help the participants, other professionals, and the academy. In order to generate confidence and comfort, the terms of confidentiality were discussed, leaving the participants with the security that neither their names nor their company were going to be disclosed if preferable. For the researcher, the fact that there is nothing to be probe and there is no literature on the topic, encourages to be open and curious to discover new insights and patterns, without real preconceived thoughts. Another disadvantage, could be the duration of the interviews, this can be insufficient to get all needed answers. To overcome this issue and to be efficient, there is a preconceived general structure template to guide all interviews, a checklist, to not miss relevant information, and additionally the investigator practiced the interview before.

In order to get the theoretical sample, a personalized invitation was sent by mail to a total of 75 CSR Managers representing their companies on MVO Nederlands. The list of contacts was facilitated by the supervisor, from those 75 sent mails, and reminders, 13 accepted to participate; 10 declined due to unavailability; 35 simply did not answer; 13 were automatically return as failure; and 4 were automatic responses due to absence. In the invitation the researcher presented herself, specifying that the research was part of a Master Thesis of Business Administration from the University of Amsterdam focusing on CSR. In the same mail were shared the main objectives and the main research question, afterwards the terms of confidentiality and the length of the interview were presented, estimating interviews of maximum 60 minutes. In the mail was also proposed to have the interview in person or by Skype, whatever was more convenient for the CSR manager. And finally it was given the time frame for the interviews stage which was for about 5 weeks, starting from Monday 8 May 2017 until Tuesday 13 June 2017.

For the 13 CSR Managers who accepted to participate, another mail was sent asking for their availability information, when, how and where, day and time, their most convenient channel for the interview and location just in case that Face to Face was preferred. From the 13 mails just 12 answered to the second mail, giving the final 12 participants. From the final 12, 2 agreed to participate Face to

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ELSIE ASHANTI CARRILLO VASQUEZ – 11294817 32 Face from these two one was a double interview with 2 persons of the same company, so the researcher visited their offices (One company in Gouda and one company in Amsterdam), 6 were by Skype Video Call, 2 by What’s App Video Call, 1 by FaceTime and 1 by normal cellphone call due to technical problems with Skype for Businesses, the link sent by the company did not work (See Appendix 1 Respondents list). The demographics of the participants are shown in the results area, presenting type of industry and gender of the participants, anonymity was preferred by 10 out of 12 participants, the remaining 2 let it open at the researcher’s convenience, to keep it homogenous the researcher decided to present all respondents as anonymous, making the supervisor the only person able to access the final list with participants’ names and companies.

3.2 RESEARCH PROCEDURE

According to Patton (1980), an interview protocol is loosely defined, there are several proposals to make a research interview. For the present research, the general research procedure was divided in 5 main stages, named after the main goal of each stage: Preparing the field, Opening,

Explaining the Conceptual Model, Discussion, and Closing. Once the participants accepted and the

interview was scheduled and confirmed, the interview protocol was as follows:

1. Preparing the field: If the interview was going to be by any technological means other than Face to Face, about one hour before the interview a very concrete e-mail with the Initial Conceptual model was sent. The main text was: “…Please find as attachment the conceptual

model of my thesis. It is just a visual way to understand the main idea behind the research and the organization of the interview. I'll explain in detail during the interview…”. For the

participants Face to Face a printed copy in recyclable paper was given at the very beginning on the interview. The same conceptual model of Figure 1 without the hypotheses area, this was done with the purpose of making it clearer and easier to understand for the participants without confusing them. In this way the respondents were able to have a first glance of the topic and prepare their questions and ideas for the discussion.

The impact of corporate crises on the corporate social responsibility engagement of non-managerial employees : an exploratory research with CSR managers of large companies focusing on the role of CSR maturity and CSR hi