The impact of corporate citizenship on workplace behaviours: proposal of a conceptual model

Abstract

Employees are not passive observers of their employer’s citizenship commitments: they are its first evaluators. The mechanisms accounting for their reactions nevertheless remain fragmented. The social exchange framework poorly explains favourable reactions to practices from which employees derive no direct benefit, while the dimensions of perceived citizenship are usually aggregated into a global score that conceals the heterogeneity of their effects. This article proposes an integrative conceptual model linking perceived corporate citizenship, organizational identification and organizational citizenship behaviours. Drawing jointly on signalling theory, social identity theory and self-categorization theory, it defends a simple thesis: citizenship practices operate less as a transactional counterpart than as an identity signal. The model disaggregates both ends of the causal chain. Upstream, perceived citizenship is captured through four dimensions: economic, legal, ethical and territorial. The territorial dimension does not add a fifth category to Carroll’s architecture; it is a contextualized operationalization of the discretionary component, adapted to emerging economies and to the Moroccan setting. Downstream, citizenship behaviours are apprehended through the four facets validated in French-speaking settings by Paillé. Twelve hypotheses are formulated, four of which concern differentiated indirect effects: partial mediation for the economic and legal registers, where reciprocity retains explanatory power, and full mediation for the ethical and territorial registers. Once validated, the model would indicate which registers of commitment human resource departments would do well to concentrate their efforts on.

JEL Classification: M14, M12

Paper type: Theoretical Research