CSR and public relations in the Middle East: Relationships among diversity climate, perceptions of CSR and employee engagement

Public relations and communication management scholarship in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have generated a substantial body of scholarship from a strategic, instrumental perspective (Coombs & Holladay, 2012; Dhanesh, 2014; Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010). The strategic approach argues that being socially responsible can generate mutual benefits for organizations and their publics, particularly reputational, relational and legitimacy returns for organizations. However, most of the work generated in this area of scholarship has focused on the customer stakeholder group, although employees have been identified as an important stakeholder group with respect to CSR. Responding to the call for more research on employees and CSR, scholars have started examining CSR as a tool for enhancing organizational attractiveness to prospective employees, enhancing organizational commitment and strengthening organization-public relationships (Dhanesh, 2012; 2014; Kim & Park, 2011, Lin, Tsai, Joe, & Chiu, 2012; Seltzer, Gardner, Bichard & Callison, 2012). This study proposes to augment research on CSR from the perspective of employee publics by examining relationships amongst diversity climate, perceptions of CSR and employee engagement