Bridging corporate social responsibility and affective organizational commitment: The moderated mediation effect of organizational identification and sense of community

Existing literature highlights Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as an important antecedent to employee work attitudes, such as Affective Organizational Commitment (AOC). However, no widely accepted model for exploring how CSR affects AOC yet exists. Based on Social Identity Theory and the conceptual framework of Sense of Community, we posit that membership-related processes (i.e., employees’ identification and sense of community with the organization) play a crucial role in explaining the impact of CSR on employee AOC. First, we hypothesize that the indirect effect of CSR on employee AOC is mediated through organizational identification (OI). Then, we suggest that such an effect is also moderated by community organization sense of community (COSOC). The proposed model was tested on a sample of employees (N = 354) from Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results of the conditional process analysis and the bootstrap method for indirect effects indicate that the overall indirect effect of CSR on AOC through OI is conditionally dependent on COSOC levels, so it is stronger for employees with a higher perception of COSOC. In particular, we suggest the relationship between OI and AOC is stronger among employees with higher perceptions of COSOC, than among employees with lower COSOC levels.