AIMS

Mattelin pierrard Caroline
Liberated companies: Are they more socially responsible?

Liberated companies tend to enlarge the scope of their responsibilities and integrate stakeholders’ expectations, even more social ones as revealed by their distinctive managerial practices. While employees should be key recipients of liberated companies’ benefits, results coming from existing empirical studies do not rich a consensus about real and expected effects. Consequently, this study aims to determine effect(s) of managerial practices related to liberated companies on social performance mobilizing Corporate Social Performance literature. More precisely, the theoretical model of Clarkson (1995), grounded in stakeholder theory, provides a framework to link the managerial dimension of stakeholders to related outcomes. Research design is drawn on a quantitative quasi-experimental study that was conducted in a partially liberated industrial firm. 109 employees were interrogated. Results of regression analysis indicate that some distinctive managerial practices of liberated companies improve social performance and that liberated companies are more socially responsible than non-liberated ones. Discussion suggests that liberated companies are enabling organization regarding their distinctive bundles of managerial practices.