The discussion of creativity and innovation in workplaces is ever increasing in the existing literature (Aksoy, 2017; Awan et al., 2019) as it is evident from the literature that creative organizations are expected to overrun their rivals (Manfredi Latilla et al., 2018; Jeong and Shin, 2019) through their superior performance. Given this, organizations that want to be a pioneer in their field or want to maintain this position desire to develop strategies aimed at the development of service and production processes in a creative way (Sutanto, 2017). The stiff competitive situation, in every business sector, has further increased the importance of creativity for contemporary businesses (Ismail, 2015). Perhaps this is why many global players, in the current age, not only realize the importance of employee creativity (EC), but they encourage their workforce to be engaged in creative processes. Google is a relevant case as it encouraged employees to spend 20% of their working hours in creative thinking. The results of Google’s 20%-time project have been incredible because Google was able to introduce Gmail as an outcome of EC (Mccracken, 2014). Organizations without any meaningful differentiation in their market offerings are unlikely to achieve any significant success in the long run (Darvishmotevali et al., 2020). The importance of EC and innovation in organizations cannot be ignored and may be regarded as key factors to the success of an organization.

The literature argues that employees’ perceptions about an organization can significantly influence their attitude and behavior (Cropanzano et al., 2001; Hur et al., 2018; Deng et al., 2022). In this regard, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been found a key factor to shape the attitude and behavior of employees at the workplace. A plethora of research studies have acknowledged the importance of CSR to achieve different employee-related outcomes (Khaskheli et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2020; AlSuwaidi et al., 2021). However, the link of micro-level CSR (ML-CSR) with EC in the context of hospitality sector was less explored previously. To define ML-CSR, this study uses the definition of Rupp and Mallory (2015) who referred ML-CSR as “CSR activities of an organization at the level of individuals.” Though some researchers have investigated EC in a CSR framework (Hur et al., 2018; Guo et al., 2021), however, such a sparse explanation is insufficient to advance the field. Therefore, the current research study aims to test the relationship between ML-CSR and EC with the mediating effect of work engagement (WE). The mediating role of WE was also proposed previously (Chaudhary and Akhouri, 2018, 2019; Asif et al., 2019), nevertheless, WE as a mediator in a CSR framework, especially in the context of the hospitality sector, was less focused in previous studies.

The current study considers the hotel sector of Pakistan to test the proposed relationships. This sector was intentionally selected for the current survey due to the following reasons. First, like other service sectors, the hotel industry is also an industry that is recognized as a labor-intensive industry in which employees play a crucial role in achieving different organizational objectives. Thus realizing the importance of employees in such a labor-intensive sector is critical for every hotel. The authors’ argument here is that employees are prone to show their commitment toward extra roles, such as creativity, when they are given a supportive environment. In this regard, ML-CSR engagement of an organization is one of those strategic enablers that is well observed by the employees to enhance their extra-role commitment for an organization. Other scholars also acknowledged the importance of CSR to enhance the extra-role behavior of employees (Afridi et al., 2020; Chaudhary, 2020). Thus, it will be important for this sector to see what the contribution of ML-CSR is for inducing employee creative capability. Second, globally the hotel sector is one of those service sectors in which a high turnover rate is evident (Glenn, 2016; Erica, 2019; Amanda, 2020). The same holds in the case of Pakistan’s hotel sector where high turnover is reported (Shaikh and Zahid, 2016). In this regard, the authors argue that the image of a socially responsible hotel is something that attracts the attention of the employees and urges them to stay with a hotel. Put simply, a socially responsible hotel has a positive perception among employees, and it is expected that in such hotels, the employee will stay longer and even will be willing to contribute more for its success by performing extra-roles. Different scholars have also acknowledged that a socially responsible hotel is in a better position to receive a positive evaluation from employees as compared to the ones which do not have this image (Dedeoğlu et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2018). Lastly, in the hotel sector, physical elements have a significant impact on novelty perceptions of customers. For instance, renovating the decorations or adapting to technological advancements could lead customers to have high novelty value perceptions for a specific hotel. However, these kinds of physical creative initiatives are easily imitable. Therefore, physical creative investments could result in a short-term competitive advantage. On the contrary, personnel delivering services in a hotel play a very significant role in terms of competitive advantage as the creativity through employees is not easy to imitate because such type of creativity is idiosyncratic in detail. Hence, employees through their creative skills can bring a long-term competitive advantage in this sector.

The current study has some important contributions to the extant literature. To begin with, the current study adds significantly to the hospitality sector from an ML-CSR perspective. In this regard, majority of studies have focused on the macro-level of CSR previously (Rhou et al., 2016; González-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Franco et al., 2020). Similarly, the current study adds to the existing literature of organizational behavior in a way that it introduces ML-CSR as an enabler to promote EC at the workplace. The majority of the previous studies in the domain of ML-CSR have established the link between ML-CSR and employees’ pro-environmental behavior (Afsar et al., 2018; Suganthi, 2019; Tian and Robertson, 2019). However, the link of ML-CSR with EC, especially in the hospitality sector, did not receive due attention in the current literature. Moreover, the current study introduces WE as a potential mediator between ML-CSR and EC. The concept of WE is well-linked with EC in the existing literature (Sarfraz et al., 2019; Khan et al., 2020), yet it is unclear from the previous studies how ML-CSR through WE can foster EC. Another important contribution of the current study is that it extends the boundary conditions of social identity theory (SIT) by Tajfel (1978). This theory provides a foundation to explain employees’ behavior at the workplace. Generally, in the previous studies, SIT was limited to explaining employees’ formal behaviors like job satisfaction (Brunetto and Farr-Wharton, 2002; Todd and Kent, 2009), motivation (Van Knippenberg, 2000), and performance (Gundlach et al., 2006). However, linking this theory to explain employee’s extra-role behavior (creativity) was less emphasized.

The remainder of the current article is divided into four major sections. Section “Theory and conceptualization” discusses the related literature to establish different hypotheses of the current study, followed by the methodology section in which the sampling process, data collection, and instrumentation are discussed. Sections “Results” and “Discussion,” respectively, include results and analysis section in which the statistical results are discussed and a final discussion of the results in comparison to the previous studies along with implications.

This research study uses the lens of SIT to formulate hypotheses. Having its roots in the seminal work of Tajfel (1978), this theory postulates that the self-concept of an individual, at least in parts, is derived from the perceptions of an individual about a social group he/she belongs. With this regard, Ashforth and Mael (1989) were among the first who extended SIT from social psychology to an organizational context. Indeed, SIT has largely been employed by different previous researchers to explain individual behavior in a specific context. Even, with regard to the CSR framework, researchers have considered this theory to explain individual behavior (Turker, 2009a; Abdullah et al., 2017; Ko et al., 2020; Ahmad et al., 2022). Following the crux of this theory, the authors of this draft argue that employees working in a socially responsible organization are inclined to identify themselves with an ethical organization. In this context, the CSR engagement of an organization portrays its image of a good corporate citizen, and thus employees are expected to identify themselves strongly with such organizations. The study of Hu et al. (2020) mentioned that SIT explains why there is value congruence between employees and a socially responsible organization. Indeed, when employees see that their organization acts ethically for the larger interest of society and community, it motivates them to strongly identify themselves with such an ethical organization. This strong identification of employees leads them to regard organizational success as their success, and therefore they engage themselves in attitudes and behaviors including extra-role behaviors that could lead their organization toward success. Moreover, in a socially responsible organization, employees feel secure and assume their work is more meaningful and put greater effort by taking risks, being open, and thinking in creative ways of doing things. This argument that employees strongly identify themselves with a socially responsible organization is also supported by several extant scholars (Hameed et al., 2016; Chaudhary and Akhouri, 2018; Opoku-Dakwa et al., 2018).

A work environment characterized by a sense of responsibility and an aspiration to help all stakeholders encourages the employees to think in new and creative ways to solve different societal problems (Aguinis and Glavas, 2019). A socially responsible organization is expected to equip its workforce with an environment that is safe and less restricted such that employees are ultimately urged to take the risk, explore new experiments, and think about creative ideas to better serve the stakeholders (Kim et al., 2021). According to Woodman et al. (1993), creativity can be regarded as “the creation of novel, valuable and useful ideas related to product/service, process or procedures by a person in a social system.” The study of Abdelmotaleb et al. (2018) also used the above definition of EC in a CSR framework. An organization that shows greater concern for the wellbeing of all stakeholders including the internal stakeholders (employees), inspires the employees, motivating them to support such organizations through their extra roles, and their creative behavior is one such extra-role (Abdelmotaleb et al., 2018; Tong et al., 2019). Employees working in a socially responsible organization are expected to have a high intrinsic motivation to identify themselves with such organizations (Skudiene and Auruskeviciene, 2012). This high level of intrinsic motivation of employees induces their creative capability (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Hur et al. (2018) identified that ML-CSR activities of an organization positively affect the sense-making process of an employee, which in turn is linked with their creativity. Following SIT, the positive sense-making of an employee about a socially responsible organization urges him to support his organization beyond the formal obligation by performing different extra roles (Tong et al., 2019). According to SIT, the employees are expected to perform different extra roles for their organization because they identify themselves with the organization and they have a strong desire to boost the reputation of the group to whom they belong (organization in the current case).

A plethora of research studies have argued that developing an ethical context such as CSR in an organization cultivates a job attitude among employees which is beneficial for others (Skudiene and Auruskeviciene, 2012; Lee et al., 2013; Gao and He, 2017; Chen et al., 2019). Specifically, EC is closely linked with the ethical conduct of an organization because employees’ perception of their organization’s ethical orientation fosters organizational mindfulness pertinent to creativity and innovation (Hur et al., 2018). Organizations that cultivate an environment characterized by CSR orientation help their employees develop a feeling of “unconstrained work environment” in which they are encouraged to think creatively to produce better products or services for the community and the organization (Glavas and Piderit, 2009; Jones et al., 2017). To conclude, the ML-CSR orientation of an organization builds positive sense-making for a socially responsible organization among the employees, and they feel proud to identify themselves with such an organization. Thus, in line with SIT, employees desire to strongly identify themselves with an organization that is socially responsible and put every effort to earn a good reputation for their firm. Moreover, they are expected to engage themselves in different extra roles for the success of their organization. Hence, the authors propose the following hypothesis:

Corporate social responsibility and WE research is relatively new, but there are studies that prove that there is a mutual relationship between CSR and WE. Jia et al. (2019) found that WE depends upon employees’ positive perceptions of CSR. Gürlek and Tuna (2019) also validated a direct link between CSR and employee engagement. Nazir and Islam (2020b) suggest that the rationale for the direct link between ML-CSR and employee WE lies in greater meaning and value in work due to the CSR engagement of an organization. Explicitly, CSR allows enterprises to go beyond formal obligations that appear in their formal value statement (Kim and Stepchenkova, 2021; Srivastava and Singh, 2021) and focuses on the wellbeing of the workers beyond the formal routines. In turn, it sends signals to employees about the company’s values, which is consistently reported in a host of research that found a positive correlation between CSR and employee value congruence (Munro et al., 2018; Donia et al., 2019; Rodrigo et al., 2019).

In addition, CSR can also be a way to get more value in the work. Various researchers acknowledge CSR as a way for employees that increase their meaningfulness at the workplace as the employees assume that being the worker of a socially responsible organization they are not only working for the betterment of their organization but also for the betterment of the community (Lythreatis et al., 2020; Nazir and Islam, 2020a; Nazir et al., 2021). In addition, Grant et al. (2008) found that this sense of working for the betterment of the community makes employees feel better for themselves, which ultimately improves their organizational identification to enhance their self-concept in line with SIT.

This analysis defines WE in line with Schaufeli et al. (2002), who argued that WE is a positive, performance-enhancing state of mind with strength, commitment, and absorption in a work environment. Engaged workers are strong, enthusiastic, deeply immersed in the work, and work toward organizational goals and organizational prestige (Shuck and Wollard, 2008). Again, in line with SIT, when employees work for an organization that is value-driven, that is, a socially responsible organization, they are more likely to develop strong identification with it. This sense of belonging within the organization can increase the motivation of employees to display different extra-role attitudes and behaviors that support an organization to achieve extraordinary outcomes. One of such extra role is the employee’s engagement in creativity at the workplace. Therefore, when employees have a good understanding of their organization’s CSR activities, they are more likely to bring more energy, as well as higher commitment and absorption to the job. Therefore, it can be expected that the employees will be able to maintain their real zest at the workplace in order to maintain the reputation of their organization and contribute to its success.

The authors argue here that CSR perception of employees of their organization enhances their WE, as validated by various extant scholars (Gao et al., 2018; Hu et al., 2020; Ismael and Yesiltas, 2020). This enhanced level of WE as a result of employees’ CSR perception of their organization is expected to motivate them to initiate creative and risk-taking behaviors driven by an inner feeling to meet social and organizational challenges. In addition, engaged employees are more likely to have positive emotions toward expanding their intellectual capability, which pushes them to explore new and creative ways of doing the work (Hur et al., 2018).

These positive psychological stimuli encourage employees to learn, discover new information, and build intelligent and creative solutions for the socially responsible organization they work for Jones et al. (2017). Moreover, engaged employees retain more energy needed for creativity than non-engaged employees (Cohen-Meitar et al., 2009). Supporting the above discussion, several contemporary scholars validated a positive link between WE and creativity (Toyama and Mauno, 2017; Asif et al., 2019; Bakker et al., 2020). The above discussion and literary arguments encouraged the authors to propose the following hypotheses.

This analysis validates all three proposed hypotheses (H1, H2, and H3) framed with the help of theoretical support and related literature in previous sections. Furthermore, ML-CSR activities of a hotel are confirmed in this study to be helpful in boosting EC in a positive way. Similarly, the importance of the underlying mechanism of how this relationship is explained through the mediating effect of WE was also highlighted. The argument here is that CSR activities of a hotel are likely to create two kinds of reciprocity effects, restricted reciprocity, and generalized reciprocity. In so far as restricted reciprocity is concerned, the ML-CSR activities of a hotel create positive feelings among the employees, and they feel obliged in response to such CSR activities that are related to the employees. Generalized reciprocity is concerned with the general feelings of the employees about their hotel when a hotel is involved in general CSR-related activities not specifically related to employees. These general CSR activities are also well taken by the employees as member of a macro group of stakeholders including, society, and the environment. In fact, Gürlek and Tuna (2019) also acknowledged this effect of general reciprocity of CSR activities in the context of the hotel sector of Turkey. In like manner, Farooq et al. (2014) also mentioned restricted and generalized reciprocity as an outcome of CSR. Thus, when hotels are engaged in ML-CSR activities, employees are likely to repay such organizations with their greater level of WE and creativity.

More specifically, the current analysis extends the work of Glavas and Piderit (2009), who acknowledged that employees’ CSR perception is directly related to their creativity but failed to observe the underlying mechanism of WE as a mediator. The current analysis indicates that despite the direct effect of ML-CSR on creativity, CSR perception of the hotel employees augments their creativity through WE as a mediator. Moreover, this analysis also extends the work of Gürlek and Tuna (2019), who acknowledged the positive link of ML-CSR activities with WE, but they did not consider that this relationship further can induce EC, so imperative where competition is the sine qua non for every sector. Different extant researchers have also reported the direct and indirect effect of CSR on EC in different cultures and industries (Brammer et al., 2015; Abdelmotaleb et al., 2018; Hur et al., 2018). The current work also extends the boundary for the work of Nazir and Islam (2020a), who identified the relationship between ML-CSR and WE in the hospitality sector. However, they provided no further link on how better-engaged employees can be creative workers in response to ML-CSR. Lastly, this analysis extends the work of previous researchers in the same field (Chaudhary and Akhouri, 2018; Ko and Choi, 2020).

To conclude, the current research opens a new arena for the hotel sector of Pakistan as it attempts to introduce CSR as an enabler for workplace creativity, which is very important for this sector to remain competitive in the industry. The empirical findings of the current analysis revealed that employees’ CSR perception of their hotel serves as a base for the employees to identify with a hotel and put extra efforts to induce the overall performance of their hotel. Further, it is also revealed that CSR should not be considered a philanthropic motivator, it should be incorporated at further levels if a hotel wants to enjoy its full benefits, including EC. In this regard, it is recommended that the policymakers engage their employees in designing different CSR-related strategies so that they can better develop these strategies to produce better outcomes not only for the employees but also for society and the environment. Lastly, policymakers need to provide their employees with a better workplace characterized by CSR orientation if they want to use their employees as a source of creativity to keep their business alive in this sector.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

All authors contributed to conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, and writing and editing the original draft.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.