Doing good for other people and the planet and/or obsessed with your career? Personal value orientation as a predictor for internal CSR preferences of young professionals

Abstract

In striving for sustainability success in organizations, the proactive behaviour of employees in times of irreversible climate change is of great importance: employees with an awareness of sustainability and their subsequent extra-role work behavior are required. As ambassadors for corporate social responsibility (CSR), they might convince their colleagues of the importance of CSR for business success. Sustainable and Green human resource management (HRM) concepts (e.g. participation in cultural campaigns, green vs social projects and green awareness training) promote this sustainable employee behavior. Our fundamental research question is therefore whether the personal value orientations (PVO) of candidates and/or employees predict internal CSR preferences that later promote sustainable employee behavior. In our integrative literature review, we focus on young, highly qualified job seekers who are facing the grand challenges of the 21st century. Applying Schwartz's personal values framework, empirical studies are reviewed to examine the proposed relationship between Schwartz’s personal values framework and employees’ internal CSR preferences. Our review yields heterogenous results: Schwartz’s self-transcendence values either positively or negatively impacted the internal social and environmental CSR dimensions, but the influence of self-enhancement values on employee focused CSR dimensions was consistent. Future research directions are set out along with practical implications. Finally, we give an outlook on our planned empirical work including hypotheses on a comparative sample of German and Irish students