The Linkage of Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Identification in Microfinance Institutions: Evidence from the Colombian Experience

This paper examines the association between perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational identification (OID) in social enterprises (SEs) located in developing countries. We do this by performing a... [ view full abstract ]

This paper examines the association between perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational identification (OID) in social enterprises (SEs) located in developing countries. We do this by performing a qualitative content analysis of 34 interviews conducted with individuals working for a middle-sized purpose-driven micro-financial institution (MFI) in Colombia. This is carried out by applying some features of artificial intelligence in order to make linguistic structural comparisons, followed by conventional data interpretation. Results are coincident with previous contributions that show that CSR is effectively related with OID. However, the study also identifies two distinct clusters of employees based on their own notion of CSR: a small normative group and a large instrumental one. Besides its methodological novelty, our work contributes to a better understanding of the micro CSR field of study and is applied to previously unexplored contexts. Finally, it highlights the potential distortion of the moral concept of CSR in light of the individuals’ sense of belongingness, which apparently occurs even in purpose-driven backgrounds.