Purpose: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an evolving concept which is increasingly being adopted by companies with the purpose of creating sustained organizational growth. However, while the impact of CSR practices on employees' behaviors and attitudes has been recognized over the years, the relationship between CSR practices and employee performance remains underexplored.Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on social identity theory and using the partial least squares structural equation method, this research examines the impact of CSR practices on employees' performance in a sample of 171 employees belonging to the construction industry.Findings: The findings do not support the existence of a direct relationship between employees' perception of CSR and their performance; instead, they indicate that this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction and organizational trust.Research limitations/implications: The data concerns employees' self-reported measures on their perceived CSR and the study was conducted in a single industry.Practical implications: Adopting CSR initiatives in company strategies is worthy as the perceptions of employees and their performance is positively influenced by their organization's CSR activities. Managers should properly communicate and involve internal stakeholders in socially responsible practices to increase their awareness.Originality/value: This article analyzes the impact of employees' perception of CSR on employees' performance through the roles of employee organizational trust and job satisfaction as mediating variables in a highly socially pressured industry such as construction.

Purpose: Recent years witnessed an exponential growth of the Portuguese real estate market. This growth has generated the need to implement effective management control tools to allow companies to improve their planning and monitoring of activities. Drawing on the agency and goal-setting theories, this paper explores the impact of companies' participative budgeting processes on employee performance in the real estate industry.Design/methodology/approach: For this purpose, a questionnaire was developed and a sample of 116 employees that participate in the budgeting process of real estate organizations collected, with data analyzed using structural equation modelling.Findings: The results show that participation in the budgeting process has an impact on employees' performance through budget goal commitment, trust and job satisfaction. However, no statistical support was found for the role of budgetary slack in this process.Research limitations/implications: This study was conducted in a single industry and is based on self-reported measures of employees that participate in the budgeting process of their organizations.Practical implications: The findings highlight the need for real estate organizations to involve their staff in the elaboration of budgets, contributing to a higher level of commitment to established goals, job satisfaction, trust and performance. Real estate organizations should provide adequate working conditions, foster their employees' autonomy and recognize their work.Originality/value: The findings encourage real estate companies to extend the participation in the budget process to employees and, ultimately, to mitigate the probability of budget failure.

This research examines the relationship of Export Promotion Programs (EPPs), sponsored by a Portuguese Regional Association for Development on Trade and Industry, with firms’ export performance. To investigate this, two models were applied using panel data analyses that relate export performance to variables such as participation in EPPs, age and size of firms. Data on 198 firms for the sampling period 2010 and 2018 was drawn from a Portuguese Regional Development Association and SABI (Iberian Balance sheet Analysis System) database. The results show that participation in EPPs does have a positive influence on the export performance of firms, especially for those firms with previous export experience, demonstrating the importance of using these programs. Findings also document that firm size relates positively export performance, whereas firms age show a negative effect on export performance, suggesting that larger firms with more resources positively influence exports and an increase in firms’ age may increase their cultural inertia, inability to change strategies, decreasing their export performance, respectively. Finally, the participation in EPPs seems not to influence export performance for firms without previous export experience. The research contributes to the literature providing evidence on the role of EPP on firms’ export performance behavior promoted by regional development associations.

Gender affirmative action (AA) in management remains a controversial topic among scholars, practitioners, and employees. While some individuals may support the use of AA policies as a means of increasing representation of women, others are not supportive at all, further understanding gender AA as an unacceptable violation of merit—even when targeted by it. With the aim of analyzing how scholars have approached the subject, we systematically reviewed 76 published articles (SCOPUS database), covering the extant literature on gender AA and management. Findings indicate a consensus regarding the common antecedents of attitudes towards gender AA with prior experiences with AA and diversity management (DM) (as well as general perceptions of AA). Performance and satisfaction appear as the predominant outcomes. In addition, while investigating the differences among AA, equal employment opportunity (EEO) and diversity management (DM), scholars are mainly focused on the effectiveness of AA as a means of increasing the inclusion of minorities in general. We conclude that despite marginal studies on employees’ attitudes toward gender AA, there is a gap in the literature, particularly an absence of research on the bivalent position of meritocracy (or merit violation) as both an antecedent and outcome of attitudes towards AA, which deserves further scrutiny.