A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ABOUT THE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSABILITY FOR JOB SEEKERS ATTRACTIVENESS

In the Green Paper1 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined as “essentially a concept whereby companies decided voluntarily to contribute to a better society and environment. This responsibility is expressed towards employees and more generally towards stakeholders affected by business and which in turn can influence its success”. In this paper, it is possible to distinguish two different dimensions related to CSR: the internal one, which especially affects employees and environmental issues, and, on the other hand, the external one, related to the relationships with customers, providers, stakeholders, and to the attention to Human Rights topics. One of the aspects of CSR in its internal dimension deals with human resources management, and refers to issues such as lifelong learning, health, safety and work/life balance. In the CSR approach, special attention must be paid to the workforce, one of the most important stakeholders of the firm. As stated by Millàn & Bereni in 2005 “social responsible practices primarily affect the employees”. In defining CSR policies, literature has pointed out that the key role of human resources is the organization's success (Pfeffer 1994; Snell et al., 1996; Munoz, 2004). These policies act as a communication tool to other stakeholders. For instance, to retain and attract the best candidates is a priority for the organizations and has to be a permanent practice, giving the companies a strategic competitive advantage (Pfeffer 1994; Wright et al., 1995). In this sense, many researchers suggest that not getting involved in social issues has a negative impact on the firm's reputation (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Gatewood et al., 1993; Freeman, 2006), and minimize their attraction capacity to the workforce (McGuire, et al., 1988; Wright et al. 1995; Turban and Greening, 1997; Albinger and Freeman, 2000). The goal of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature, clarifying how potential employees consider the attention to CSR policies as a key factor in choosing their employers. The paper is organized as follows: in the next paragraph, we present a theoretical framework to understand the links between CSR and its capacity to attract potential employees. In the next two paragraphs ...