Project List

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has received substantial attention in Europe in the last decade. An incremental number of initiatives gave it high visibility both in the academia and in the public sphere. However, there is scarce research on the meanings attributed by the European public to CSR, and how these relate to their values, identities and choices as consumers. Moreover, there is a lack of comparative studies that can help to better understand how supra-national regulations contribute to the circulating representations about CSR. This project intends to examine the current social representation of CSR in different countries across Europe. The main goal is to develop a comparative perspective between member-states that have entered the European Union in different accession phases (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Slovenia), and have thus different time-frames of exposure to EU soft laws on CSR. This will also allow to update the knowledge about the social representation of CSR in relation to previous research (Duarte, et al., 2010, Golob, 2011), and analyze whether it has kept stable or changed in the last decade. A second goal is to examine psychosocial factors that can contribute to identify segments of the public that are differently engaged with the CSR principles and practices. Three factors are examined in this project: values, pro-environmental identity and sustainable consumption behaviors. Crossing these variables will allow us to examine if and how are these individual characteristics associated with a specific representation of CSR at the country-level. The project will allow gathering information that contributes for a better understanding of the relationship the European publics establish with companies’ socially responsible principles and practices.

The popular press has given voice to increasing dissatisfaction with performance management (PM) systems shared by both managers and employees, as well as to proposals for “alternative” systems. Illustrative are two articles that appeared in Harvard Business Review in April 2015: one reporting anecdotal evidence of the misuse of performance appraisals to serve a hidden agenda; the second telling how Deloitte is transforming its PM system with the aim of filling the gap between declared purposes in the company (driving employee engagement) and current shape (ratings entrenched in bureaucracy that are of limited help to fuel performance). Deloitte is not the only company restructuring or even dropping their performance evaluation system, as many large multinationals are following the same path (Cappelli & Tavis, 2016). Scientific research has also questioned the utility and effectiveness of PM systems as attested by a lively debate within the scientific community. Latest of a series is a focal-paper in Industrial and Organizational Psychology (flag-journal of SIOP, Division 14 of the American Psychological Association). The article (Adler et al, 2016) summarizes opposing views on the matter as suggested by the title: “Getting rid of Performance Appraisal, Genius or Folly?” and was followed by a large number of engaged commentaries that discussed, among others, how PM could be amended by adopting a focus on the relationships and interpersonal exchanges inherent in this practice. While the critiques raised in such commentaries are persuasive, empirical research dedicated to this topic is still lacking although, theoretically, experts in the field advocate a more “informal” approach (Pulakos et al, 2015). This would be entrenched in the daily work activities to ensure that the main purpose of performance management – employee motivation, learning and development – is accomplished. Hence, this project aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on how to improve PM an...