Corporate Social Responsibility as Shaped by Managers’ Role Dissonance: Cleaning Services Procurement in Israel

Public procurement provides an excellent window into the shaping of corporate social responsibility of companies contracted by the government. To this emerging scholarly realization, we want to add that public procurement provides also the opportunity to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) as practiced by public sector organizations. This opportunity enables the investigation of the conditions under which public sector organizations endorse CSR guidelines, adherence to which demonstrates accountability for their service providers’ legal, employment-related practices. Our study examined the possibility that public sector organizations’ CSR is enhanced by maintenance managers’ role dissonance emerging in response to an ethical mismatch between them and their organizations’ official stance concerning whether unethical employment practices of service providers should be sanctioned. We analyzed interviews with 13 managers in charge of contract administration in the area of cleaning and maintenance. Our findings suggest that the role dissonance that emerges in cases of mismatch in ethical orientation rarely enhances more responsible treatment of cleaning employees. We introduce a model indicating the conditions supporting this incident.