The Effect of Perceived Social Responsibility of Organizations on Compassion at Workplace according to the Mediating Role of Procedural Justice, Organizational Self-Esteem, and Emotional Commitment (Case Study: Fars Industry, Mining, and Commerce Institute)

Considering the dynamics of the environment and globalization, one of the emerging variables in today's research is social responsibility of organizations, which is necessary for supporting employee’s attraction, retention, motivation, commitment, and creativity. Paying attention to this concept is necessary and important, mainly to strengthen the sense of harmony and unity between members of organizations and the society. Social responsibility provides a set of obligations and duties that an organization performs in order to maintain, care, and help the society, in which it operates (Fleming, 2012). Therefore, recent researches in the literature of organizational behavior have investigated employees’ attitudes, behaviors, and performances in response to the social responsibility of organizations. Their results have shown that employees’ perceptions about social responsibilites of their organizations reflect their attitudes and behaviors like socially responsible behavior (compassionate behavior). According to the theory of emotional events, employee’s perception of social responsibility in organizations affects his/her cognitive-emotional states, i.e., organizational justice, organizational self-esteem, and emotional commitment. Subsequently, it affects his/her behavioral reactions, such as compassion at workplace. Therefore, the main question of the current research was whether the employees' understanding of the social responsibility of Fars Industry, Mining, and Commerce Institute had a significant effect on compassion at workplace considering the mediating role of their procedural justice, organizational self-esteem, and emotional commitment.
 
 

The current research was an applied one with a descriptive-correlation method in terms of purpose and of a survey type in terms of implementation. The statistical population of the present study included all the employees working in Fars industry, mining, and commerce institute (271 people). 159 people were selected as the statistical sample size by using the simple random sampling method. The data collection tool consisted of the standard questionnaire of social responsibility used by Su & Swanson (2019) with 5 items, the standard questionnaire of procedural justice applied by Kim et al. (2021) with 4 items, the standard questionnaire of organizational self-esteem employed by Kim et al. (2021) with 4 items, the standard questionnaire of compassion at workplace employed by Hur et al. (2016) with 3 items, and the standard questionnaire of emotional commitment utilized by Meyer and Allen (1997) with 8 items. Their reliabilitied were confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability. The divergent and convergent validities of the measurement tools were also confirmed. To test the hypotheses, the structural equation modeling technique was used.
 
Discussion of Results and

The research findings showed that the employees’ perceptions of organizational social responsibility had a positive and significant effect on procedural justice, organizational self-esteem, emotional commitment, and compassion at workplace. Also, their perceptions of procedural justice increased their organizational self-esteem and emotional commitment in Fars industry, mining, and commerce institute, but procedural justice did not lead to their compassionate behaviors. The results further showed that their self-esteem alone did not lead to their emotional commitments Also, their emotional commitments led to compassion in Fars industry, mining, and commerce institute. Finally, the research findings revealed that procedural justice had a mediating role in the effects of perceived social responsibility of organization on organizational self-esteem and on emotional commitment. However, their serial mediating roles were not confirmed in this research. Therefore, in the current research, it was found that the employees' perceptions of the organization's social responsibility was an important aspect of their perceptions of the organization's justice towards themselves, organizational self-esteem, and their emotional commitments, which ultimately led to changing their attitudes and behaviors towards compassion at workplace.