CER as a workforce strategy: investigating how and when corporate environmental responsibility promotes organizational attractiveness

Purpose Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) has become a global focus for businesses. While existing research has predominantly emphasized CER’s institutional and environmental outcomes, its psychological mechanisms in shaping employee perceptions remain underexplored. Drawing on the instrumental-symbolic framework of organizational attractiveness, this study aims to investigate how CER influences organizational attractiveness through two psychological pathways – specifically, fostering organizational pride (as a symbolic attribute) and improving perceived treatment (as an instrumental attribute) – and to examine the moderating role of corporate ability. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a multi-method design. It includes two studies: Study 1 is an experiment with 200 potential employees, and Study 2 is a multi-wave survey of 423 current employees. Findings The results indicate that CER positively influences organizational attractiveness. Organizational pride and perceived treatment serve as parallel mediators, jointly explaining the relationship between CER and organizational attractiveness. Additionally, corporate ability negatively moderates these relationships: CER exerts stronger effects in organizations with lower corporate ability. Originality/value This study centers on employees’ psychological responses to further understand how CER functions as a micro-level strategy to enhance organizational attractiveness. These findings not only expand the literature on corporate environmental management but also provide practical insights for integrating environmental initiatives into workforce strategies.