Employee Engagement and CSR: Transactional, Relational, and Developmental Approaches

Abstract

This article looks at the relevance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for engaging employees, including its impact on their motivation, identity, and sense of meaning and purpose. It explores three different ways that companies engage their employees through CSR: a transactional approach, where programs are undertaken to meet the needs of employees who want to take part in the CSR efforts of a company; a relational approach, based on a psychological contract that emphasizes social responsibility; and a developmental approach, which aims to activate social responsibility in a company and to develop its employees to be responsible corporate citizens.