Corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is defined as the commitment of an organization toward the improvement of welfare for local communities, the environment, and consumers (Yumei et al., 2021), has become an important business imperative (Meseguer-Sánchez et al., 2021), primarily because of claims that it has positive impacts on corporate financial performance (Jahmane & Gaies, 2020). Therefore, it is not surprising that CSR is a focus of attention for researchers.

The relationship of CSR with employee creative behavior has attracted great attention in the literature because CSR activities can exert considerable influence on employees’ attitudes and behaviors (Gond et al., 2017). Some researchers have found a positive and significant relationship between CSR and employee creative behavior, both directly and indirectly through mediators such as psychological safety, work engagement, and work attitudes (Chaudhary & Akhouri, 2019; Gharleghi et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2021). However, employees in different cultures will react differently to CSR activities (McNamara et al., 2017). Wei et al. (2014) conducted a comparative study and found that, when perceiving CSR, employees in Taiwan, a region nurtured by Confucian culture, showed more organizational commitment compared to their Canadian counterparts who were not nurtured by this culture. Employees have a greater appreciation of CSR practices in Confucian societies because their expectations for these practices are relatively lower. Wang et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analysis and revealed that employees in societies with low-level (vs. high) individualism are more creative when they receive the benefits of CSR activities. However, the authors did not explain this result. They merely observed that this finding may arouse researchers’ interest as to why these differences exist in the link between perceived CSR and employee creativity. Thus, there is still a wide scope for researchers to explore the mechanisms underlying the CSR–employee creative behavior relationship.

Wang et al. (2020) called for more research to examine the relationship between CSR and employees’ outcomes in Confucian cultural contexts. China’s culture is rooted in Confucian ethics that emphasize wu lun (five cardinal guanxi, i.e., a network of personal and social relationships) consisting of sovereign–subject, father–son, husband–wife, elder–younger brother and friend–friend (X. Zhang, 2018). In this context, Chinese employees attach much importance to supervisor–subordinate guanxi, and make efforts to develop a good personal relationship with their leaders (Wu, 2006). According to the Confucian scholar Zeng Guo’fan, member creativity relies on the abilities of leaders to make the best possible use of members and the relationships they establish in the process (Shi, 2012). Cai et al. (2021) revealed that supervisor–subordinate guanxi was positively related to employee creativity. Y. Zhang et al. (2015) found that low-level guanxi practice contributed to enhanced employee creativity. Thus, our aim in the current study was to extend the research on the relationship between CSR and employee creative behavior by examining the mediating effect of supervisor–subordinate guanxi, which may explain the processes linking CSR to employee creative behavior in the Chinese cultural context. The conceptual model is presented in Figure 1.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Creative Behavior

Researchers have reported finding that employees’ perceived organizational CSR is helpful in boosting their creativity (Chaudhary & Akhouri, 2019; Gharleghi et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2021). CSR has been considered a crucial precursor of employee attitudinal or behavioral outcomes, meaning that employees show positive outcomes when they perceive organizational CSR (Gond et al., 2017). CSR activities can also enhance organizational pride (John et al., 2019). In other words, organizations in which the staff are engaged in CSR activities develop a climate of self-confidence where employees show potential for creative problem solving (Hahn & Lee, 2017).

From the perspective of social identity, organizational identification functions as the most frequently used mechanism underlying the relationship between CSR and employees’ behavior (Gond et al., 2017). CSR activities are closely correlated with organizational image and reputation (McWilliams et al., 2006). When an organization is involved in CSR activities, employees are willing to identify more strongly with their organization, and employees with strong organizational identification exert effort on creative work involvement (Brammer et al., 2015). Thus we formed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Corporate social responsibility will be positively related to employee creative behavior.

Mediating Role of Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi

An element of CSR is considered to be a moral obligation to provide equal educational opportunities, quality vocational training, and human rights protection for employees to enhance their welfare (Gharleghi et al., 2018), meaning that managers pay attention to the needs and wants of their employees. In such organizations, a strong organizational trust in employees can be established (George et al., 2020). As indicated in prior research, trust is an important building block of supervisor–subordinate guanxi (Miao et al., 2020).

On the other hand, good supervisor–subordinate guanxi ignites employees’ feeling of energy, which eventually results in their involvement in creative work (Ahmed et al., 2014). In social exchange theory, Cropanzano and Mitchell (2005) suggest that employees’ reactions to the leaders of their organization are guided by reciprocity norms, which implies that if managers of organizations create a positive relational atmosphere for their employees, this will be conducive to increasing employees’ creative behavior. Cai et al. (2021) found that supervisor–subordinate guanxi is an exchange-based mechanism supporting that employees in a high-quality supervisor–subordinate guanxi are more willing than are those who do not have this high-quality guanxi to reciprocate by engaging in creative activities. On the basis of the above arguments, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Supervisor–subordinate guanxi will mediate the relationship between corporate social responsibility and employee creative behavior.

Method

Participants and Procedure

Our study received ethical approval from Xi’an Jiaotong University. We collected data from employees and their direct leaders across multiple industries (manufacturing, banking, retail, and hotel) spread throughout the Pearl River Delta region, with the help of the Oriental Academy for Analytical Psychology. To reduce potential common method bias, the survey packages were emailed separately to subordinates and supervisors. We assured all those taking part that their participation was voluntary, and all responses would be kept confidential. We asked subordinates to rate their perception of CSR and supervisor–subordinate guanxi. Supervisors rated subordinates’ creative behavior. We distributed 375 survey forms and received 239 valid responses after removing unmatched responses and surveys with missing data (response rate = 63.73%).

Among the subordinate participants, there were 148 (61.92%) men and 91 (38.08%) women with a mean age of 41.27 years (SD = 9.55, range = 33–48) and a mean organizational tenure of 8.12 years (SD = 4.37, range = 4–15). As regards level of education, 41 (17.15%) had a junior college education, 125 (52.30%) had a bachelor’s degree, and 73 (30.55%) had a master’s degree or higher academic qualification. Among the supervisor participants, there were 50 (64.94%) men and 27 (35.06%) women with a mean age of 49.52 years (SD = 11.38, range = 37–55) and a mean organizational tenure of 14.36 years (SD = 6.73, range = 8–20). As regards level of education, 216 (70.13%) had a master’s degree or higher academic qualification, and the remaining 23 (29.87%) had a bachelor’s degree.

Measures

All measures were originally developed in English and have been demonstrated to be valid and reliable for use in the Confucian cultural context. Two bilingual researchers who are native speakers of Chinese helped us to translate the measures into Chinese. All items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.

Corporate Social Responsibility
We measured employees’ perceived rather than actual CSR of the organization. A four-item CSR scale was adopted from Jung and Ali (2017). An example item is “I think my company encourages employees to be involved in community service.”

Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi
We used Law et al.’s (2000) six-item scale to measure supervisor–subordinate guanxi. An example item is “I always actively share my thoughts, problems, needs, and feelings with my supervisor.”

Employee Creative Behavior
We adopted the four-item scale developed by Farmer et al. (2003) to measure employee creative behavior. This measure has been used in Taiwanese organizations, and some Chinese researchers have also used it in the Chinese context (e.g., Fan, 2021). An example item is “This employee generates groundbreaking ideas related to the field.”

Data Analysis

SPSS 22.0 and Amos 24.0 software were used for data analysis. First, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the construct validity of all scales and evaluate the model fit through chi-square/degrees of freedom ratio (χ²/df), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), normed fit index (NFI), and comparative fit index (CFI). Second, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses, and the bias-corrected bootstrapping method to generate 2,000 bootstrapped resamples and calculate 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of parameter estimation.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics, correlations, Cronbach’s alphas, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE) of study variables. There were significant positive relationships among all constructs. All three factors had acceptable internal reliability values (α > .70). The CFA results show that the hypothesized three-factor model (including CSR, supervisor–subordinate guanxi, and employee creative behavior) yielded a reasonably good fit to the data, χ² = 107.95, χ²/df = 1.46, RMSEA = .04, NFI = .93, CFI = .98, and that the fit was better than that of the single-factor model combining all items into one factor, χ² = 611.73, χ²/df = 7.95, RMSEA = .17, NFI = .61, CFI = .64. All AVE values exceeded .50, and the square root of the AVE of each factor was higher than its correlation with other factors. All CR values were higher than .70. These results indicate that the measurement scale had good convergent and discriminant validity.

Hypothesis Testing

The SEM results show that CSR was significantly and positively related to supervisor–subordinate guanxi and employee creative behavior, respectively, β = .40, p < .01, 95% CI [0.28, 0.53]; β = .19, p < .01, 95% CI [0.05, 0.33], and that supervisor–subordinate guanxi was significantly and positively related to employee creative behavior, β = .40, p < .01, 95% CI [0.26, 0.54]. Additionally, CSR had an indirect effect on employee creative behavior through supervisor–subordinate guanxi, .16, p < .01, 95% CI [0.09, 0.25]. It is evident from the results that supervisor–subordinate guanxi partially mediated the relationship between CSR and employee creative behavior. Thus, Hypotheses 1 and 2 were supported.

Discussion

In this study we developed a model incorporating CSR, supervisor–subordinate guanxi, and employee creative behavior, and examined the mediating effect of supervisor–subordinate guanxi. The results supported our two hypotheses. Among our participants, CSR was positively related to employee creative behavior, and supervisor–subordinate guanxi functioned as a mediating mechanism in this relationship. These results contribute to the existing research by exploring a mediator to explain why CSR facilitates employee creative behavior in the Chinese cultural context.

Theoretical Implications

Most existing CSR research depends on organizational-level analysis and the focus has been on the Western context (Jamali & Karam, 2018). We discussed CSR from employees’ perspective in the Chinese cultural context, therefore contributing to the literature on CSR in Chinese businesses. Our findings provide empirical support for existing research on the relationship between CSR and employee creative behavior, such as the work of Chaudhary and Akhouri (2019), Gharleghi et al. (2018), and Kim et al. (2021), and emphasize the importance of the context in which employees exhibit creative behavior in Chinese organizations.

We found that CSR may indirectly facilitate employee creative behavior through supervisor–subordinate guanxi. This is in line with Paulus and Dzindolet’s (2008) creative process model, in which they suggested that input factors—including group, task, and situation context—generate creative outputs through various operating processes, such as cognitive, motivational, and social processes. As an input factor, CSR may exert a positive impact on employees’ social processes like supervisor–subordinate guanxi, which, in turn, results in their creative outputs. Thus, by unfurling the underlying processes describing the association between CSR and employee creative behavior, this work extends understanding of the link between CSR and employee creative behavior by opening a new path.

This study enriches extant research on the antecedents of employees’ creative behavior from the perspective of the relationship between supervisor and subordinate in a non-Western culture. Previous studies have paid much attention to the influence of leader–member exchange on employee creative behavior. Different from leader–member exchange, which focuses on work ties, supervisor–subordinate guanxi emphasizes personal ties (L. Zhang et al., 2014). Our study is one of few in which supervisor–subordinate guanxi has been linked to employee creative behavior, and our findings lend support to Cai et al.’s (2021) finding of a significant positive association between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and employee creative behavior.

Practical Implications

The results of our study have important practical implications for organizations. First, our findings suggest that CSR is positively related to employee creative behavior. Employee creativity has been found to be an essential force in spurring organizational innovation (Thompson & Choi, 2005). Thus, it is important for leaders of organizations to understand the role of CSR for sustainable competitive advantage. Managers may launch CSR programs that are directed at community, environment, and customers, and enhance employees’ perception of organizational CSR activities through effective CSR communication. Second, regarding the mediating role of supervisor–subordinate guanxi, in organizations importance should be attached to the development of high-quality guanxi between supervisors and their subordinates. For example, decision makers in organizations may promote emotional connection and understanding, by having supervisors perform more ethical behaviors, or decrease abusive behaviors, to cultivate good relationships with subordinates (Chen et al., 2009).

Limitations and Future Research Directions

Two main limitations should be considered in this study. First, because the research design was cross-sectional, we could not obtain evidence about causality. Further, cross-sectional data might lead to the potential for common method bias, even though the results of CFA show that common method bias was not a major concern. Future studies could use longitudinal or experimental designs to be better able to draw causal inferences. Second, we examined supervisor–subordinate guanxi as a mediating mechanism in the CSR–employee creative behavior relationship. Leader–member exchange, which is a concept that originated in a background of Western culture, is similar to, yet different from, supervisor–subordinate guanxi. Supervisor–subordinate guanxi (vs. leader–member exchange) shows less relative weight in predicting attitudinal, behavioral, and perceptual outcomes, such as job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and trust (Miao et al., 2020). Future researchers could examine if leader–member exchange likewise mediates the relationship between CSR and employee creative behavior.

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Zhenjie Song, School of Humanities and Social Science, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No. 28 Xianning West Road, Beilin District, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710049, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]