Individual Personality Factors That Affect Normative Beliefs About the Rightness of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

What types of persons are likely to believe in a narrow view of corporate social responsibility—that is, that managers should seek only to maximize profits in the interests of shareholders? Prior research suggested that such persons seemed likely to defer unquestioningly to organizational authority and thus to approve of unethical activities performed for organizational benefit. This article examined additional implications of such deferential tendencies among high social traditionalism scorers. In three samples of employed respondents ( N = 491), social traditionalists emerged as Machiavellian, had an entitled pattern of equity sensitivity, had an external work locus of control, were self-denying and authoritarian, felt that misfortune accrues to deserving people, and scored low on principled moral reasoning. These findings suggest that normative views about the rightness of social responsibility are closely tied to fundamental personality traits, attitudes, values, and thinking patterns. Therefore, resolving the long-standing social responsibility debate by determining once and for all whether social responsibility is good or bad may be an elusive goal.

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