The underlying thesis continues the journey of research into specific CSR activities and their impacts on firms’ performance. Particularly, the investigations concentrate on mechanisms that might at least refinance a charitable donation given by a firm, either by increased cooperation levels of employees working in teams or by an increased willingness to pay of customers.
Parts I – III concentrate on settings in which social responsibility is shared between a company and the employee. In contrast to the existing literature that focuses on individual donation incentives, we focus on including a donation incentive within a team setting to enhance cooperation in teamwork. The first three parts use the method of laboratory experiments, which use a public good game to capture the cooperation levels within teams and to investigate the donation incentive. Part IV focuses on sharing the responsibility between a company and the customer. Therefore, we conducted a field experiment analyzing the willingness to pay of customers within a pay-what-you-want setting, including a fixed donation share. In contrast to the existing literature, we examine such a setting within a service environment, where the payment is implemented in public within a group.
On the one hand, the thesis at hand contributes to the existing literature on the effects of charitable giving within social dilemma situations. Our research indicates that a donation incentive tied to public good contributions might function as an incentive for higher cooperation in teams. On the other hand, this thesis might contribute to the call for action for firms to take on responsibility in the real world. A cautious interpretation of our results might display two ways of implementing strategic CSR within a firm. Our results indicate that the increased cooperation level within teams and the increased willingness to pay for a service due to including a donation share might outweigh or even exceed the cost of the donation payment. Therefore, the interference does not negatively affect companies’ profits. Of course, it requires further investigation within corporate settings to strengthen our results and to give reliable suggestions for long-term implementation.