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Journal of Business Ethics

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30-01-2018 | Original Paper

Frontline Employees as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Ambassadors: A Quasi-Field Experiment

Authors: Laura Marie Edinger-Schons, Lars Lengler-Graiff, Sabrina Scheidler, Jan Wieseke

Published in: Journal of Business Ethics | Issue 2/2019

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Abstract

As past research has identified frontline employees as the primary communicators of a company’s CSR, this paper reports on a large-scale quasi-field experiment aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the levers of successful in-store, point-of-sale, CSR communication. In cooperation with a large international retailer, the authors analyzed the effects of varying in-store CSR communication strategies in 48 unique stores, combining data from a customer survey (N = 38,999), company records of customers’ real visits and purchases, and interviews with store managers. Taking into account the nested structure of the data, the authors reveal that CSR-related training of frontline employees bestows its favorable effect on customers and customer behavior only if it is accompanied by the store managers’ personal support for CSR.

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Title: Frontline Employees as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Ambassadors: A Quasi-Field Experiment
Authors: Laura Marie Edinger-Schons
Lars Lengler-Graiff
Sabrina Scheidler
Jan Wieseke
Publication date: 30-01-2018
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Business Ethics / Issue 2/2019
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3790-9

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