A Contingent Role of Leader Morality in Translating CSR into Organizational Performance: A Multi-level Moderated Mediation Model

Extant research on the performance implication of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has mainly focused on how CSR affects the external stakeholders, yet it is relatively understudied how CSR affects the “internal” stakeholders (i.e., employees) to be translated into organizational performance. Using the 6-wave time-lagged survey data of 3,082 employees in 330branches as well as archival data on objective performance from one of the largest Korean commercial banks, we first examine if CSR? performance link is mediated by organizational trust (OT), and further investigate whether a leader’s internalized morality moderates this mediation. The results show that OTis an important underlying mechanism, buta leader’s internalizedmoralityplays an important moderating role in the associations between CSR and OT to ultimatelyfinancial performance.When leader’s internalized morality is high, the positive effect of CSR on OTand performance is strengthened, but when low,the positive effect is weakenedsince employees may doubt about the authenticity of CSR. Ourfindings suggest thatCSR can bring benefits to an organization only when employees perceive CSR to be authentic through a lens of a leader’s moral character.