CSR for recruiting in emerging markets: examining the underlying mechanisms and interplay with foreign firms’ country of origin

While CSR has been shown to enhance firms’ ability to attract scarce qualified human resources, the underlying mechanisms and contingency factors explaining why and when different aspects of CSR influence job applicants, especially those from emerging markets, remain unclear. Conducting two experimental studies with realistic social media job posts and a sample of graduates from India and Vietnam, using regression-based conditional process analysis, we embrace the inherently complex and multilevel nature of international recruitment. Study 1 (n = 350) shows that the three CSR aspects, namely economic, legal, and ethical CSR, influence job-pursuit intention through different mediation patterns via organizational warmth and competence—the two universal dimensions of social perception. Study 2 (n = 621) adds information on the firm’s country of origin—another source of warmth and competence—and finds that the mediation effects between legal CSR and job-pursuit intention through organizational warmth and competence are not significant for firms with high-warmth and high-competence countries of origin. The results demonstrate how firm-level (firm’s CSR) and country-level (firm’s country of origin) factors combine to shape applicants’ outcomes that cannot be adequately explained by factors at any single level of analysis in isolation, offering compelling theoretical and managerial implications.