Fraught Expectations: How Corporate Social Responsibility can Backfire in Recruitment

CSR is an asset for recruitment: that is the dominant narrative among business practitioners and academics alike. However, nascent research has given reason to pause and question this assumption. Accordingly, we develop theory to explain how CSR can also backfire in recruitment. Responding to calls to integrate the CSR and HRM literatures and account for the dynamic role of CSR in recruitment, we present a process model that introduces three theoretical perspectives to the micro-CSR literature. First, drawing from dual-processing attribution theory, we assert that CSR can activate cognitive processes that enable job seekers to appraise CSR in more nuanced ways than previously considered. Second, invoking expectancy violation theory, we propose that the more job seekers attribute CSR to authentic motives, the higher their expectations of employers will be, and the more likely they will be disappointed. Third, leveraging work on the dynamic nature of organizational fairness perceptions, we argue that job seekers update their appraisals of employers in a recursive cycle that trends downward over time. In so doing, we shift the discussion about CSR in recruitment away from static fixed-in-time accounts, toward a more representative description of its dynamic nature over time.