Internal contributions to initiating corporate social responsibility in sport organizations

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role that employees play in helping embed a corporate social responsibility (CSR)-advocated culture into their organizations through a voice behavior. This study examines: first, the effect of employees' negative perceptions (i.e. persuasion knowledge (PK)) of CSR on voice behavior; second, the influence of employees' motivational dispositions regarding goals (i.e. promotion focus) on voice behavior; and third, the positive moderating effect of promotion focus in the negative relationship between PK and voice behavior. Design/methodology/approach - Data were gathered from 168 employees representing all five Korean professional sport organizations at an inaugural sport marketing workshop, a moderated multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses. Findings - The results indicated a marginal negative effect of PK on voice behavior and a significant positive effect of promotion focus on voice behavior. Further, it was found that promotion focus played a positive moderating role in the negative relationship between PK and voice behavior. Originality/value - Although employees bear much of the burden of and responsibility for enacting ethical and competitive CSR practices, a paucity of the research has addressed their contributions to CSR as internal promoters of the activities. The present study contributes to the CSR literature by focusing on the role of employees in voicing CSR and empirically examining how promotion focus played a positive role in the relationship between PK and voice behavior.