Looking Good or Doing Good? A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Employee Perception of Corporate Refugee Support

Drawing on social identity theory, this study takes an employee-centered approach to examine employee attitudes toward corporate refugee support and its consequences. It distinguishes four types of corporate refugee support—advocacy, sponsorship, partnership, and hiring refugees—to assess whether and how they are perceived differently by employees. In addition, a comparative analysis was conducted to examine the perceptions of employees based in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Employees of for-profit organizations (N = 601) were recruited through Prolific to
participate in an online experiment. The results show that corporate partnership and sponsorship are perceived more positively by employees compared with corporate advocacy and hiring employees, and these effects are mediated by perceived organizational morality. Also, the value of corporate advocacy turns out to be better recognized by the employees based in the United States than those in the United Kingdom. The findings provide important guidance for businesses in aligning employees through committing to specific refugee support strategy.