Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

When does Employee Giving Spill Over into Subsequent Ethics? The Role of the Organization of Employee Giving Program

• In Event: Nonprofits, Social Responsibility and Opportunism

Abstract

Companies increasingly organize employee giving programs to engage their employees into charity and to motivate more ethical behavior from their employees. We experimentally examine whether the organization of such employee giving programs matters for activating the link between employee giving and subsequent ethical behavior of employees. We predict that employee giving programs that disclose relative performance information (RPI) on the employee’s contribution to charity can enhance the positive relation between this contribution and subsequent ethics. This beneficial effect of RPI will only materialize when employee giving programs ask employees to contribute money but not when they ask employees to contribute time. Our results support these predictions. When employees contribute money the positive effect of the contribution on subsequent ethics (i.e., reduced misreporting) is stronger when RPI is present relative to when it is absent. This positive interactive effect between RPI and contribution on reducing misreporting does not materialize when employees contribute time. Our results have implications for practice. Stimulating employees to contribute money to charity and providing them with RPI can have more potential to promote ethics in organizations.

Authors

• Eddy Cardinaels, Tilburg University and KU Leuven

• Qinnan Ruan, Tilburg University

• Huaxiang Yin, Nanyang Technological University