Corporate social responsibility of small- to medium-size enterprises as a solution to out-migration: an example from the hospitality sector

Local and regional authorities are often held responsible for implementing social and economic “population drain reduction” policies but at the same time are constrained with little fiscal power and inability to access resources. Being considered the “backbone” of local economies, it is on small- to medium-size enterprises (SMSEs) to come up with an “out-migration” solution which would be effective; yet at the same time sustainable, and adding social value to the local or regional development. Therefore, using a sample of 24 SMSEs from the hospitality industry environment, this paper empirically examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a prerequisite for employees’ affirmative work attitudes, such as job satisfaction (JS), effective organizational commitment (OC), and employees’ voluntary retention (R). Inspired by Carroll’s (2015, 2016) four-dimensional concept of CSR (economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic dimension), the findings suggest a significant causal relationship between CSR and the examined employees’ desirable behavior outcomes. However, it is mainly the ethical and legal dimension of CSR that influence all three employees’ affirmative work attitudes - JS, effective OC, and voluntary R. The contribution of this paper also lies in amounting to the body of scholarly literature on CSR in respect to employees. Most works focus on other stakeholders but employees, or are set in different cultural settings or geographical regions, mainly in Asia, and thus their findings might be difficult to implement in the Central European context.

Highlights for public administration, management and planning:

• CSR as a prerequisite for sustainable management of employees’ retention in small-to medium- size enterprises.