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Is too much as bad as too little? The S-curve relationship between corporate philanthropy and employee performance

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Abstract

The literature on the effect of corporate philanthropy (CP) on employee outcomes is inconsistent and inconclusive. Drawing on resource-based view and social identity theory, we examined the curvilinear relationship between CP and employee performance through a sample of 592 employees in China. The results showed that CP had an S-shaped effect on employee performance. In other words, corporate philanthropy, either in an amount too small or too large beyond a threshold, will not improve employee performance. Furthermore, we also found that the S-shaped relationship was moderated by employee benevolent attribution. Implications for research and practice, research limitations, and future research directions are discussed subsequently.

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Acknowledgement

The authors are appreciated for the contributions of the editors and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on revising this manuscript. This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71,802,134, 71,771,125) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2018 M632124).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Finance and Business, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, People’s Republic of China

    Mingchuan Yu & Xiaotao Zheng

  2. Antai College of Economics and Management University, Shanghai, 200030, People’s Republic of China

    Mingchuan Yu

  3. School of Engineering Audit, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Public Project Audit, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing, 211815, People’s Republic of China

    Han Lin

  4. Soules College of Business, University of Texas at Tyler, 3900 University Blvd Tyler, TX, 75799, USA

    Greg G. Wang

  5. School of Finance, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai, 201209, China

    Yuan Liu

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  1. Mingchuan Yu
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Correspondence to Yuan Liu.

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Yu, M., Lin, H., Wang, G.G. et al. Is too much as bad as too little? The S-curve relationship between corporate philanthropy and employee performance. Asia Pac J Manag 39, 1511–1534 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-021-09775-9

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