Does treating customers badly increase employee social loafing? The role of disidentification, collective guilt, and moral attentiveness

Purpose Drawing on the theories of social identity and affective events, this research aims to explore the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards customers on employees’ social loafing. In addition, the authors consider that moral attentiveness moderates the relationship of CSR towards customers with employee disidentification and collective guilt. Design/methodology/approach Time-lagged data (N = 152) were collected at three time points (T1, T2 and T3) through the data collection platform Amazon Mechanical Turk from the full-time employees working in the USA. Findings The results suggest that both disidentification and collective guilt significantly mediate the relationship between customer CSR and social loafing. Moreover, moral attentiveness significantly moderates both customer CSR–disidentification and customer CSR–collective guilt relationships. Originality/value This study provides novel insights into the process underlying the relationship between CSR towards customers and social loafing by revealing the mediating role of disidentification and collective guilt, as well as the moderating role of moral attentiveness. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and offer directions for future research on CSR towards customers and social loafing.