Tags:Corporate moral responsibility, Perceived Corporate Hypocrisy, Shared Values and Stakeholders
Abstract:
Corporations, being inconsistent between their moral responsibility assertions and actions, create perceptions of corporate hypocrisy (PCH) amongst stakeholders. Accordingly, PCH undermines their attitudes and beliefs, and in turn threatens corporations’ reputation, social standing, economic performance, and stakeholder relationships. Given the importance and critical consequences of PCH, this research, through an empirical experiment, analyzes how PCH might be variably evoked in different types of stakeholders, i.e., corporations’ consumers, and employees, based on their shared moral values. The results indicate that retail employees (more than consumers) perceive higher shared value with the corporation’s moral responsibility pledges. However, when corporations fail to follow up to their pledges, these retail employees are more negatively influenced than consumers, leading to higher PCH. The study findings make theoretical contributions to expand PCH literature and draw the industry’s attention to the importance of internal marketing initiatives to communicate with moral responsibility initiatives employees and meet their needs to reduce PCH. With the growing trend of value-based consumers and employees seeking employers with high moral values, the findings not only establish the need for value-based marketing but also indicate the negative implications of a lack thereof.
Pretension of Morality: Stakeholders, Shared Values, and Perceived Corporate Hypocrisy