The impacts of socially responsible human resources management on organizational legitimacy

Social demands for corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been increasing in recent years. Organizations understand the need to follow socially responsible behavior to receive stakeholder support. In addition, the application of CSR principles within human resources (HR) management has become more relevant, and more empirical research is needed. In fact, enterprises will be considered legitimate if they are viewed as socially embedded not only externally but also internally. Under this scenario, the main objective of this research is to analyze the relationship between the implementation of socially responsible HR management and organizational legitimacy. Furthermore, the relevance and performance of diverse CSR policies will be analyzed through the implementation of the importance-performance matrix (IPMA). For this purpose, the evaluations made by 157 CSR experts on approximately 30 multinational companies are considered. PLS-SEM is applied to the data and shows a strong and positive relationship between CSR practices focused on employees and organizational legitimacy. The results offer relevant information for company managers to improve their resource optimization and internal stakeholder management through the correct and efficient introduction of CSR policies.