Corporate Volunteerism, the Experience of Self-Integrity, and Organizational Commitment: Evidence from the Field

We examined the relationship between the motives underlying employees' participation in corporate-sponsored volunteerism and their organizational commitment. In both a pilot study and in the main study, employees' motivation to volunteer based on the desire to express personally meaningful values (also known as the values function of volunteerism) was positively related to their organizational commitment. Additional findings from the main study helped to explain why this was so: being motivated by the values function of volunteerism was positively related to how much participants experienced self-integrity in the workplace, which in turn was positively related to their organizational commitment. That is, experiencing self-integrity in the workplace mediated the relationship between how much employees were motivated by the values function and their organizational commitment. The results of subsidiary analyses provided further evidence that corporate volunteerism was positively related to organizational commitment, and that the experience of self-integrity mediated this relationship. Implications for both the corporate volunteerism and functions of volunteerism literatures are discussed, as are practical implications and suggestions for future research.