Perceived corporate citizenship: a scale development and validation study adopting a bottom-up approach

The objective of this study was to address the predominant top-down, Western orientated measures of Corporate Citizenship by conducting a comprehensive scale development exercise within an Eastern context. This was achieved through exploring the perceptions of Corporate Citizenship from multiple stakeholder perspectives using a bottom-up approach within Malaysia, South-East Asia. A multi-method multi-stage approach was adopted using, concept mapping, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory composite analysis, as well as various means to validate the results throughout. The study attempted to reconceptualise and develop a measurement instrument to capture Perceived Corporate Citizenship. A case study was used allowing the company to remain fixed whilst multiple stakeholder groups were interrogated. The integrative mixed method approach of concept mapping is used to combine the stakeholder’s thoughts together, which involves five steps; create statements, sort statements, multi-dimensional scaling of sorted statements, cluster analysis, and label clusters. The create statements stage was conducted using multiple stakeholders’ perspectives and was then ‘sorted and rated’ by a further group of respondents. Once the domain of Corporate Citizenship had been conceptualised, the statement list was further validated and refined, consisting of; exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory composite analysis involving 1001 participants to develop the measurement instrument. The resulting instrument consisted of nineteen statements and divides into five factors, namely; Environmental Oriented, Philanthropic Oriented, Products and Services, Legal and Ethical Responsibilities, and Community Development. Together, these studies provide evidence of the psychometric soundness of Perceived Corporate Citizenship for stakeholder evaluation of the case study firm. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.