When doing good feels wrong: the dual influence of perceived organizational opportunism on employee CSR behaviour

Lu, J., Li, Y., Laker, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0850-9744, Wang, C., Duc Toan Huynh, L., Onyia Babatope, V. and Song, M. (2026) When doing good feels wrong: the dual influence of perceived organizational opportunism on employee CSR behaviour. Journal of Management Studies. ISSN 1467-6486 doi: 10.1111/joms.70117

Abstract/Summary

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are widely recognized for generating benefits such as enhanced reputation, stronger stakeholder trust, and improved employee engagement. These outcomes, however, often depend on the perception that organizations pursue CSR out of a sincere commitment to social and environmental values. Yet many employees question the sincerity of CSR efforts, especially when these initiatives are seen as opportunistic and self-serving. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, we develop and empirically test a dual-pathway model explaining employees' behavioural responses to perceived organizational opportunism (i.e., the strategic use of CSR to advance self-interested motives rather than genuine social impact). Across two time-lagged studies conducted in distinct organizational contexts, we demonstrate that such perceptions elicit divergent employee reactions: heightened moral disengagement and symbolic CSR behaviour alongside diminished moral ownership and substantive CSR engagement. We also show that psychological empowerment moderates these mechanisms by weakening the effect of perceived opportunism on moral disengagement and mitigating its adverse effect on moral ownership. Overall, our findings contribute to research on micro-CSR and organizational behaviour by clarifying the moral processes through which employees interpret and respond to inconsistent organizational cues.