Employer Attractiveness of EMNEs: The Role of CSR in Overcoming Country-of-Origin Image Constraints in Developed Host Countries

Attracting a qualified workforce is a challenge for all companies but in particular for foreign subsidiaries of emerging market MNEs (EMNEs) in developed countries due to their double disadvantages of liability of foreignness plus liability of emergingness. Based on signaling theory, this study investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to overcoming these liabilities. A web-based experiment with realistic recruitment webpages, involving 490 potential applicants from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, reveals that potential applicants in developed host countries have lower job-pursuit intention to EMNEs than to developed market MNEs, but that good CSR helps mitigate this negative effect. Nonetheless, we find that applicants are not intensively searching for CSR information on a recruitment webpage, constituting an impediment in EMNEs’ attempts to reap maximum benefits from their CSR engagement.