Does CSR Enhance Employer Attractiveness? The Role of Millennial Job Seekers' Attitudes

TLDR: In this paper, the authors examine how millennial job seekers' attitudes toward CSR influence perceived CSR-based employer attractiveness (EA), and find that individual attitudes play a key role in understanding how job seekers perceive CSR signals and eventually impact CSRbased EA.

Abstract: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important in labor market communication. To express organizational identity, reinforcing commitment to sustainable development and stakeholder engagement, organizations report their CSR activities. The impact of a company's employer branding (EB) strategy depends on how information recipients interpret corporate messages. Therefore, we assume that job seekers may show diverse attitudes toward CSR. The extant literature has hardly explored the interplay between CSR, EB, and job seekers' attitudes, so we identify a relevant research gap to be tackled. The aim of this paper is to examine how millennial job seekers' attitudes toward CSR influence perceived CSR-based employer attractiveness (EA). We conducted an empirical study in Poland, collecting data from a sample of Millennials – highly sensitive toward CSR issues. Our results generally confirm that individual attitudes toward CSR play a key role in understanding how job seekers perceive CSR signals and eventually impact CSR-based EA. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment