Translating Corporate Social Responsibility into Financial Performance: A Contingent Human Resource Based View

Grounded on human resource based view, this study examines how and why corporate social responsibility(CSR) contributes to corporate bottom line by focusing on the mediating role of work engagement of employees and the moderating role of strategic integration between market and non-market (i.e., CSR) strategies. With a3-wave longitudinal survey data of 3, 343 organizational members from 518 branches as well as performance records from one of the largest Korean commercial banks, we found that an employee’swork engagementmediates the CSR-performance relationship, and two market strategies differentially moderate the mediated relationship. Specifically, the customer-oriented strategy strengthens the positive influence of CSR on work engagement and subsequent financial performance of a branch, whereas the competition-oriented strategy makes the positive influence of CSR disappear. Our findings suggest that organizations can maximize financial returns from CSR through engaged employees only when CSR, as a non-market strategy, goes hand in hand with the market strategy.