It is evident that addressing future grand challenges cannot rely on merely reacting to major social and environmental events but requires constant innovation and concerted efforts from all stakeholders. Against this backdrop, multinational corporations (MNCs) are increasingly adopting employee volunteer programs (EVPs) as part of their CSR initiatives to harness their power to disseminate social impact throughout their operations spread across the globe. In this study, we focus on a specific form of EVP at a Fortune 500 MNC wherein the MNC provides support (in our context, financial support) for employees to initiate and lead their own volunteer projects. This lies in contrast to the traditional top-down EVPs where the mandates of volunteer projects are predetermined by leadership. In investigating the financial support provided for employees’ initiation of volunteer projects, we find that women employees receive less financial support for their efforts. In addition, we find that the local culture – more specifically, the degree to which the culture is amenable to challenging the existing social hierarchies and structures – plays a significant role in mitigating (or exacerbating) this gender disparity. Our findings underscore the unexpected externalities of CSR engagement at an international scale, whereby well-intended MNCs’ initiatives that aim to benefit stakeholders outside the firm can create gender inequality within. We call for future studies to further investigate the unique challenges of CSR engagement through social innovations that MNCs experience.
