According to the theory of reasoned action, individuals make decisions based on two major factors, the beliefs and attitudes about the behavior and subjective norms (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980, 2005). Influences of personal beliefs and attitudes of people relate to their personality, their perception of the various alternatives available, and anticipation of the outcome of the action/decision. Subjective norms reflect the opinions of significant others about the action/decision. It includes the desire for organizational members to “fit in” and comply with these norms. Individuals make decisions from among a limited number of alternatives that they know, learn or experience through interactions with others. In terms of beliefs, managers and owners will anticipate congruence of consequences of actions/decisions with these shared norms and beliefs. Both internal and external norms affect these forces (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980, 2005). While these occur within individuals, the consequences can be for the entire organization and its strategy (Conley and Williams, 2005; Cordano et al., 2009).

In evaluating SR decisions, Campbell (2007) claims that one reason may be to exploit tax or other group incentives. These in turn may aid the organization or justify its entry into specific professional societies. Others argue that involvement in SR may be a way to strategically position the firm (Keim, 1978; Besser and Miller, 2004). Others claim that it has motivational and marketing value in that it attracts employees (Rupp et al., 2006; Rodrigo and Arenas, 2008) or helps the organization in its image in the community (Bowen, 2000, 2002).

Using a grounded theory approach, Thornton and Byrd (2013) found that owners and managers of SMEs used social and personal values as well as experience in making decisions about SR. They found relationships often triggered compassionate and visionary SR responses from the organization toward individuals or groups both internally or externally. The study also found that owners and managers who were aware of key stakeholders and confident were more likely to enact SR. This is supported by prior research into personal values (Nonis and Swift, 2001), management attitudes (Marshall et al., 2005), and personality (Hogan et al., 1996; Moberg, 1999; Giberson et al., 2005) and their effect on SR decisions.

According to Carroll (1991), every business performs SR activities that are economic and compliance oriented since these are required to remain viable. Carroll (1991) argues that ethical and philanthropic SR dimensions are voluntary in nature. There is some disagreement with Carroll’s original concept of four overlapping dimensions (Schwartz and Carroll, 2003) since the original publication, including that they are poorly defined and that philanthropic responsibilities are potentially not a true form of SR. Schwartz and Carroll (2003) note that the four factor model “remain (s) a leading paradigm of CSR in the social issues in management field.” Dahlsrud in an evaluation of 37 definitions of SR found five conceptual dimensions that occurred with frequencies greater than 50% (stakeholder, social, economic, voluntariness, and environmental dimensions). This lends support to a multidimensional conceptualization of SR.

Thornton and Byrd (2013) found, in interviews with business owners and managers that they want to do the right thing for their employees, customers, and society at large. In particular, many organizations want to make a difference or create an impact on society. Interviews with managers and owners conducted by Thornton and Byrd (2013) found that ethical treatment of employees/customers, recycling/cost reduction, legal compliance, and volunteering/philanthropy were the most frequently discussed decisions for SME engagement. These decisions were mapped to Carroll’s four dimensions of financial/economic (recycling/cost reduction), legal/regulatory (compliance), ethical (employee/customer treatment), and discretionary (volunteering/philanthropic).

For SR decisions and actions to occur, there have to be norms and values supporting and even encouraging them. The norms are expressed through how people act with each other and the nature of their relationships. Boyatzis (2008) and Schwartz and Carroll (2003) describe how sustained, desired change emerges through a complex system. The emergence of each stage in the process in organizations appears to be invoked by a tipping point in the mood of the people in the organization that Boyatzis (2013) referred to as shifts between a negative and a positive emotional attractor (see other papers in this special topic for more detailed explanation of these states and their dynamics). Thornton and Byrd (2013) found in interviews that owners and managers in about 1/3 of the cases indicated that they began or increased SR after a negative emotional event focused them on a particular issue.

While the ultimate decision may rest with upper management, people in an organization would have to value and perceive the desirability and justification of the decisions and actions in a similar manner. This is where the nature and quality of their relationships become the enabling factors. Each person is pulled into a mood state by the degree to which they believe their relationships as having shared compassion (SC), shared vision (SV), and a shared overall positive mood (OPM). These are the norms in the relationships that may enhance the likelihood of seeing the desirability for SR or not, and possibly which dimension SR is more important to them. The perception that relationships in the organization are shared means that individuals perceive that the image of the ideal or desired future of the organization is common (Boyatzis, 2013). This shared relationship means that a degree of trust and caring for each other in the organization and that a common or shared view of the future is hopeful and bright.

If there is a sense of shared purpose or vision, people feel a common context and direction. They also experience a positive emotional attractor (PEA) mood state, which is both psychological and physiological (Schwartz and Carroll, 2003). It is the this mood state, characterized by positive affect, increasing intensity of it and neurological activation of the networks, that enables a person to be more open to new ideas, people and moral concerns (Boyatzis et al., 2014). Openness to new ideas and moral concerns can invite SR thoughts and values. The author proposes that relationship quality creates an opening for broader thinking about the organization’s purpose and role in society and the community, resulting in expansion of the mental models of key stakeholders to be broader than investors do.

Relationship quality has been linked to succession in family businesses (Overbeke, 2010) as well as longer term financial success of family businesses (Neff, 2011). Clayton (2009) reported perceived SV one of the two most significant predictors of championing behavior in mergers and acquisitions, and SV was the strongest predictor of the other mediator, autonomous motivation. A patient’s perception of the quality of their relationship to the physician was shown to mediate treatment adherence for Type II Diabetics (Khawaja, 2012). Pittenger et al. (2012) found that the quality of the relationship between managers and information technology teams enhanced the perception of organizational engagement. In addition, Eisenberg and Miller (1987) argue that when positive emotions are stronger than negative emotions, there is an increase in pro-social behavior. According to Brief and Motowidlo (1986), positive affect has been repeatedly shown to have a positive effect on pro-social behavior, such as helping others. They also note that negative affect does not always lead to decreased pro-social behavior.

The nature of the relationships among those in an organization communicates emotions as well as norms and values. Positive relationships appear to invoke a more open rapport that considers not only the needs and interests of others but the broader community due to the nature of the neural and hormonal arousal (Boyatzis et al., 2014). In this manner, SV, SC, and shared OPM might enhance SR decisions and actions. This has been related to more individualistic ways of thinking about the world (Boyatzis et al., 2000).

Thornton and Byrd (2013) found that individual CEOs/Owners of SMEs are influenced by their own prior success in attempting new and different things and that prior success led to a sense of self-efficacy in many arenas, but in particular when addressing SR. According to Bandura (1982, 1991, 1998), self-efficacy is the sense that a person believes in their own ability to perform an activity successfully and suggests that self-efficacy would predict future activities within the same general realm, such as SR. Penner et al. (1995) found that self-efficacy played a strong role in why individuals act in a pro-social manner. They suggest that this may be due to people believing that their actions are effective in helping others. They also believe that the consequences of their decisions and actions are their own responsibility. The author posits that self-efficacy is strengthened by relationship quality since relationships are often seen as providing legitimacy to SR related issues and activities. Therefore, the following hypotheses were developed for this study:

H1a: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between self-efficacy and SR.

H1b: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between self-efficacy and legal SR.

H1c: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between self-efficacy and ethical SR.

H1d: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between self-efficacy and Philanthropic/Discretionary SR.

According to Roberts et al. (2005) conscientiousness is often viewed as a broad personality domain made up of a variety of somewhat similar concepts that are related including: industriousness, order, self-control, responsibility, traditionalism, and virtue. Conscientiousness is associated with conformity and self-regulation (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) leadership and effectiveness (Barrick et al., 1993) and as an expression of virtue (Aguilera et al., 2007). Conscientiousness has been used as a predictor of organizational citizenship behavior at individual (Organ and Ryan, 1995) and organizational (Taylor et al., 2010) levels. Brief and Motowidlo (1986) note that conscientiousness, in terms of perseverance, diligence and putting forth extra effort, is prosocial organizational behavior. Conscientiousness is also seen as conforming to values of the organization (Podsakoff et al., 2000) which can be thought of as individual initiative. Thornton and Byrd (2013) found evidence that CEOs/managers were concerned with doing the right thing and making responsible decisions. CEOs/managers worked to promote a sense of responsibility in their employees and an understanding of why it is important to give back. Based on the results of Thornton and Byrd (2013) that people want to do the right thing (be virtuous) be responsible for their actions and persevere, the author hypothesizes that individuals will perceive economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic/discretionary SR as being related to conscientiousness and that this relationship will be strengthened by relationship quality. Therefore, the following hypotheses were developed for this study:

H2a: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between conscientiousness and SR.

H2b: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between conscientiousness and legal SR.

H2c: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between conscientiousness and ethical SR.

H2d: Relationship quality will mediate the positive relationship between conscientiousness and Philanthropic/Discretionary SR.

The target population for this study includes both publicly and privately owned organizations in the US food and beverage industry. This industry was selected based on the industry focus on customer service and product quality. The data collection was conducted on-line using Qualtrics, Inc. software. The initial data were collected from 308 people. One hundred and ten cases were dropped because the surveys were less than 50% complete. Twenty cases were from outside the US and dropped for consistency of the sample and to control for culture. Eleven cases had more than 500 employees and were dropped to control for size of organization. Ten cases were missing demographic information, and eight cases were from non-food or beverage industries.

The final sample consisted of 149 respondents, with a mean age of 40.4 years (SD 14.3 years), 84 were female, 81 were in management positions, representing 11 public companies, and 138 private companies (including non-profits).

The presence of multivariate non-normality was excessive for use with covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM), exceeding the level suggested by Byrne (2010) of less than 7. Thus, further analysis of the data was conducted using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), which is non-parametric and robust (Ringle et al., 2005; Hair et al., 2010).

A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the data was completed in SmartPLS. When used for CFA, PLS provides evidence of convergent and discriminant validity of the measurement model. In particular, the program provides factor loadings for each measurement and t-statistics for the significance of the loading to the latent variables. Measurement variables that had loadings that were not significant were dropped from the analysis.

The final measurement model showed good discriminant validity with no evidence of significant cross loading by measures on other factors. Convergent validity is demonstrated by average variance extracted (AVE) values above 0.50 and CR values that are greater than AVE values, while discriminant validity is demonstrated by loadings of individual variables only on the appropriate latent variables. Table 1 provides the construct correlations, means, SD, and Cronbach alphas. While there is always some bias related to surveys, allowing individuals a choice of completing a survey results in fewer external validity threats.

Because the data were gathered using a single instrument, the presence of common method variance (CMV) may be a potential bias. CMV was assessed using the Lindell and Whitney (2001) marker variable technique. CMV was non-significant at a 0.05 level of significance.

The data from this study were analyzed using SmartPLS v2.0 M3 (beta; Ringle et al., 2005). The PLS method provides standardized betas and R² values relative to the outer and inner models, where the outer model represents the measurement model and the inner model represents the structural model. Bootstrapping determined the level of statistical significance (t-statistics), AVE, CR, Cronbach alpha (α), communality, and redundancy in the model. The reliability, validity, betas, and R² values indicate good model fit. The fit assessment was performed using a blindfolding technique as discussed in Tenenhaus et al. (2005). According to Wold (1982), the model is run while a selected construct is removed at specified intervals ranging between 5 and 10, where the interval is not divisible into the sample size. An omission factor of seven was selected for this evaluation. This allowed the creation of cross-validated communalities (Q²) for each latent variable, where the Q² values (greater than zero) indicated that the latent variables were well constructed and results were relevant and predictive (Tenenhaus et al., 2005).

One limitation of this study is the size and nature of the population surveyed. The relationships to different dimensions of SR discovered may be different in large companies, public sector organizations or non-profits. The use of a single type of data (self-report) is known to create potential for CMV, which was addressed in this study using a marker variable technique (Lindell and Whitney, 2001).

Further research is needed to test the linkage between individuals and organizational SR along specific dimensions, especially in terms of the effect of positive and negative emotions. In addition, subsequent research should investigate other personality dispositions, like agreeableness, to determine if they have an impact of different facets of SR, or even traits like general mental ability. Given the results of this study, a follow-up study should examine the differential effects of SV, SC, and shared PM. It would also be desirable to study composite views of people in an organization on their perceptions of each SR dimension and relate this to individual traits and perceptions.