Influence of environmental CSR on Employer Branding in  Pakistan's Telecom Sector
Creators: name: Awais Butt, Ahmad
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Corporate Social Responsibility
Employer Branding
Environment
Communication
Millenials
Stakeholders
Telecom
Pakistan
Employer Attractiveness
Social Identity
Morals
Culture
Multinational Corperations (MNCs)
Awareness
Environmental Issues
Organizational Identification
CSR Reporting

description: Environment has been largely ignored in the implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility concept in the developing world. For activating employees as key stakeholders, it is imperative to create awareness about their potential role towards enforcing environmental CSR via employer branding. This study is about investigating the influence being exhibited by millennial employees’ perception about environment driven CSR practices, on the employer branding of telecom sector companies operating in Pakistan. This study is first of its kind in the developing country context of Pakistan in where environmental side of CSR has been explored. Pakistan is experiencing serious environmental challenges especially air pollution and degradation, and this study intends to raise awareness among millennials about social responsibility of employers towards the environment.

Qualitative research method driven by multiple case study approach has been used in this study for addressing the research objectives and in parallel the interpretivist philosophy and inductive reasoning approach has been applied. The subjective opinion of millennial employees working in telecom companies was required to be extracted so that reality can observed from the lens of different experiences and awareness level possessed by millennials. Five major companies (four MNCs and one local) are operating in the telecom sector of Pakistan, from which three companies were selected as sample including two MNCs and one local company. Semi-structured interviews have been used as data collection tool and thematic analysis method has been adopted for analysing the results. 

Thirty interviews are conducted from millennials working in the three telecom companies with each interview consisting of 26 questions. It has been found that the understanding and awareness of millennial employees about environmental side of CSR is of very basic level and shallow, which has restricted their opinion about employer branding. Presence of moral and social identity among millennials has been found whereas, organizational identification is at minimum and stakeholder theory is not being adhered neither do any of the globally recognized CSR frameworks. Moreover, millennials are not receiving regular and clear communication about the CSR activities of their employers and work pressure faced by millennials keeps them distracted from CSR issues.

Socio-cultural factors of Pakistan, personal characteristics of millennials and disinterest from telecom companies are not allowing millennials to improve their awareness level about interplay of CSR and employer branding. It is recommendation is to develop a formal strategy for CSR, using social media communication for driving internal branding, plan individual initiatives and also join hands with government and non-government agencies for practically contributing towards environmental CSR and ultimately giving themselves a chance to achieve high employer branding in the eyes of millennials.