The Impact of employer branding and corporate reputation on social responsibility with customer orientation

In the present century, the success of the organizations judged not only based on their financial functions but also their impact on improving the social condition and environment. This reflects on organization’s social responsibility. The aim of this study is to offer some ways to improve social responsibility in Bank Melli as well as studying the effect of its reputation and employer brand along with analysis of its customer oriented mediation role.      The present study is applied and casual research. This research is hypothetical-deductive in nature descriptive survey. The population size has 250 employees of Bank Melli Iran branch on Kargoshaei but the sample size is 151 (female and male) that selected by using simple random sampling. For data collections, the standard questioner used and for analysis data, structural equation modeling and smart PLS software used. To assess the reputation of the organization, the Ponzi et al. (2011) questionnaire used, which included four items. To measure social responsibility, the questionnaire of Shin et al. (2016 including 3 items) used. Burton et al. (2005) questionnaire used to measure the employer brand, which included 25 items.To measure customer orientation, Tom et al. (2002) questionnaire used, which includes two dimensions of pleasure and needs, which includes 12 items. Reliability assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Given that for all variables, this value is above 0.7. In addition, as you can see, for all variables, the value of AVE is greater than 0.40 and the value of CR is greater than 0.7; Therefore, it can be said that the tool has good reliability. To evaluate the diagnostic validity of structures, two criteria proposed, one of which is the cross-sectional load of items.  The result of data analysis shows that the reputation and Bank Melli’s employer branding has a meaningful and positive effect on social responsibility. Moreover, there is a meaningful and positive relation between reputation and social responsibility rejected. The mediation role of customer orientation in relation between employer brand and social responsibility of Bank Melli also rejected. The result shows that the investment of Bank Melli’s managers on popularity of its employer brand can have a remarkable effect on improving its social responsibility. Findings showed that the effect of employer brand on social responsibility of Bank Melli employees is stronger than the effect of corporate reputation on social responsibility. The implicit guideline in this conclusion states that Bank Melli employees use the bank's internal marketing activities, which are effective in strengthening the attractiveness of the employer brand, in encouraging them to play social responsibility roles, more effective than external marketing actions that determine corporate reputation. In other words, the employees of Bank Melli consider working in a bank that has a high attractiveness in the employer brand to be more effective in playing their social roles than working in a bank that has a high reputation in the financial market. Therefore, based on this research result, it seems that the managers of Bank Melli should prioritize strengthening the employer brand in comparison with corporate reputation in order to fulfill their social responsibility. According to the findings, customer orientation cannot be a good mediating variable between the independent variables of Bank Melli reputation and brand and the dependent variable of social responsibility. As well as customer orientation cannot affect social responsibility, it suggested that future researchers work on new variables that can affect social responsibility. The reason for rejecting this hypothesis is that the employees and managers of Bank Melli consider customer orientation as a part of their main duties that expected by the customer and consider the fulfillment of social responsibility to depend on other activities. According to the findings, Bank Melli's reputation does not affect customer orientation. It suggested that Bank Melli employees and managers pay attention to the fact that in relation to customer orientation, they cannot rely on Bank Melli's external reputation.   According to the statistical results, the necessary conditions for confirming the role of customer orientation mediator in the relationship between the employer brand and social responsibility of Bank Melli. There is no orientation in the relationship between the employer brand and social responsibility of Bank Melli, so the research hypothesis that the role of customer orientation mediates between the employer brand and social responsibility rejected. Given that, the value of the coefficient of significance (t-statistic) for the two research variables is 3.21, so the research hypothesis as a relationship between reputation and social responsibility is a positive and direct relationship confirmed. Considering that the value of the significance coefficient (t-statistic) for the two research variables is more than 8.36, so the research hypothesis is established as a positive and direct relationship between the brand of employer and social responsibility. Considering that, the value of the coefficient of significance (t-statistic) for the two variables of the research is 1.49, so the fourth hypothesis of the research entitled the relationship between reputation and customer orientation do not confirmed. Considering that, the value of the significance coefficient (t-statistic) for the two research variables is 4.32, so the research hypothesis established as a positive and direct relationship between the relationship between the employer brand and customer orientation.