Yours ethically: The role of corporate social responsibility and employee engagement in shoplifting prevention

Purpose: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly considered a central tenant of marketingstrategy and a source of competitive advantage within the retail sector. As such, it may affect a supermarket’scustomer, employee, and other stakeholder attitudes and behaviours. This research explores how asupermarket’s involvement in CSR activities may influence employee engagement and how this may manifestitself in positive employee behaviours. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to empirically examine therole of CSR and its impact on employee engagement and consequently, employee propensity to exhibitintervention behaviours to prevent in-store retail crime.Design/methodology/approach: This research uses a phenomenological approach through semi-structuredin-depth interviews with shop-floor employees of a national supermarket chain.Findings: Findings suggest that external and internal CSR practices of supermarkets are important inshaping organisational engagement behaviours among employees. Additionally, heightened employeeengagement may have a significant impact on employee propensity to engage in shoplifting preventionbehaviours. A conceptual model is developed based on these findings.Practical implications: Retail managers should fully communicate CSR practices to employees toincrease employee engagement and consequential shoplifting intervention prevention behaviours.Originality/value: The contribution of this paper is twofold. First and from a theoretical perspective, itoffers both a conceptual foundation and empirical-based evaluation of CSR and its impact on employeeengagement and specifically, shoplifting prevention behaviours. Second and from a pragmatic perspective,the conceptual model derived from this research may aid retailers in developing and communicating CSRstrategies that engage employees and consequently lead to shoplifting prevention behaviours