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Can Ivory Towers be Green? The Impact of Organization Size on Organizational Social Performance

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Abstract

Organizations differ tremendously in the extent to which they engage in socially responsible behavior and the extent to which this behavior is evaluated by stakeholders. This research examines the complex role of organization size as a driver of perceptions of an organization’s socially responsible behavior and its social performance. Using a unique data set of 302 organizations in the higher education industry, we find that the strength of the organization size–organizational social performance (OSP) relationship is contingent on whether the organization is autonomous from community stakeholders and resource pressures. Our results show that the organization size–OSP relationship is stronger when stakeholders in the organization’s community are more involved in the organization itself and decision-making processes, and that this relationship is weaker when greater financial and human resources are available to the organization.

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Notes

  1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/2009fedleader_eo_rel.pdf.

  2. Corporate, or organizational, social responsibility, in contrast, refers to the activities that the organization implements. OSP is an evaluation of these activities (Brower and Mahajan 2013).

  3. http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/descriptions/size_setting.php.

  4. http://www.epa.gov/region1/assistance/univ/pdfs/bmps/BatesReformat1-8-07.pdf.

  5. We use the term community to refer to a group of individuals in a geographical area or “local residents” (Maignan and Ferrell 2004, p. 4). Prior research highlights the importance of geographic communities on an organization’s socially responsible behavior (Marquis et al. 2007).

  6. We additionally estimated the following models using a Tobit and OLS specification to test the robustness of the results. Even when we assume that the dependent variable is continuous and not categorical, the results change only marginally and do not influence the support of our hypotheses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business Administration, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, USA

    Meike Eilert

  2. David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, California State University – Northridge, Northridge, USA

    Kristen Walker & Jenny Dogan

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  1. Meike Eilert
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Correspondence to Meike Eilert.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

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Table 4 Green report card categories
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Eilert, M., Walker, K. & Dogan, J. Can Ivory Towers be Green? The Impact of Organization Size on Organizational Social Performance. J Bus Ethics 140, 537–549 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2667-4

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