A systematic review of employees' corporate social responsibility attributions and their impact

Organizations impact the common good for all stakeholders through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions, with human resource management (HRM) being a driver of employee CSR engagement and support. Employees' reactions to CSR actions are contingent upon their attribution of their organization's motive for engaging in CSR. However, the literature on the impact of employees' CSR attributions shows contradictory effects and terminological inconsistencies. To uncover the reasons for this, we conducted a systematic and cross-disciplinary review of the extant literature on employees' CSR attributions and their impact using keyword searches of eight EBSCOhost online databases. Our review of 61 articles catalogs the attribution construct, its measurement scale, the context of attribution (referent and nationality), accompanying theory, and the impact of the attribution. We find evidence of the jingle-jangle fallacy across studies, as well as the inconsistent impact of self-centered employee CSR attributions (i.e., those perceived as done to benefit the firm). Our review shows that inconsistencies in this literature stem not only from fragmented terminology, but also from deeper construct-level misalignment in how employee CSR attributions are conceptualized and measured. To promote greater precision and refinement, we organize the existing attribution constructs into other-centered, self-centered, and win-win categories and offer six recommendations to improve conceptual precision, measurement alignment, and theorizing. In doing so, this review helps clarify how employees attribute CSR, allowing for stronger theorizing on how HRM can drive CSR engagement.