Corporate Social Responsibility as a source of attracting talent: building an Iberian framework of analysis in the Tourism and Hospitality Management Sector

Abstract

In the current context of turbulence, firms that are able to attract and retain the most qualified workers can obtain a source of sustainable competitive advantage from them in the market. In the last years, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is acquiring a great relevance among academics and professionals as a management tool, which could send positive external signals to the prospective employees of companies. Considering this framework, this paper aims to demonstrate the important role of adopting a CSR orientation for companies in the process of attraction talented people. To support these objectives we based on the principles of stakeholders approach and signalling theory. The context of analysis will be framed in two countries with similar cultural and geographic location such as Spain and Portugal to get homogeneous results in order to make a comparison between them. The respondents of the study were students from Tourism and Hospitality Management in Technical Schools and Universities. The results obtained in the first focus of analysis in Portugal indicate a positive relationship among the candidates and their interest to work for companies that apply CSR activities. With this support, we are moving to Spain, concretely to Andalusia to test and contrast this framework in a similar population of students.