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Spain

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Part of the book series: CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance ((CSEG))

Abstract

Employer branding is a growing phenomenon in Spain that is becoming a necessary competitive weapon. According to rankings such as the Best Workplaces ranking, most of the best firms in Spain have a flexible timetable, a new teleworking model, and offer a private health insurance for their employees, among other benefits. Furthermore, according to Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions classification, uncertainty avoidance would be the dimension that best defines Spain, so having a stable job is something that Spaniards also value. Based on 25 attributes, we distinguish three CSR dimensions—responsibility towards employees, socio-ecological responsibility and governance and ethics—and two non-CSR dimensions—company and workplace. Drawing on a sample of 622 students at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, we analyze how Spanish job seekers assess the aforementioned dimensions. The most valued dimension is responsibility towards employees, being job security and social services the variable that shows the highest relative utility within this dimension. Nevertheless, Spanish students show a relatively low interest in the other two CSR dimensions, i.e. socio-ecological responsibility and Governance and Ethics, especially in the former one. Work atmosphere is by far the attribute that shows the highest relative utility to Spanish participants.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Historically the industrialization and employment levels have been higher in northern regions than  in southern regions.

  2. 2.

    Find some scandals perpetuated by top executives of global top business firms in Snider et al. (2003).

  3. 3.

    The values add up to 100 so that the different countries are comparable.

  4. 4.

    The analysis was conducted employing a T test for independent samples in SPSS software under the assumption of normality. The significance level is smaller than 0.05 (Sig = 0.019), so we reject the null hypothesis. The probability associated to Levene’s statistic is 0.011 (smaller than 0.05), so we reject the null hypothesis of equal variances.

  5. 5.

    We created two groups: students with low working experience (less than 1 year of job experience as professionals) versus students with high working experience (at least 1 year of job experience as professionals). We conducted a T test for independent samples in SPSS software under the assumption of normality. The significance level of the variables career opportunities, the capacity to participate in decisions, and energy and resource efficiency and contribution to reducing emissions are 0.005, 0.01, and 0.016, respectively.

  6. 6.

    We conducted a T test for independent samples in SPSS software under the assumption of normality. The significance level is smaller than 0.05 (Sig = 0.004), so we reject the null hypothesis. The probability associated to Levene’s statistic is 0.006 (smaller than 0.05), so we reject the null hypothesis of equal variances.

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Correspondence to Julen Castillo-Apraiz .

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Castillo-Apraiz, J. (2021). Spain. In: Bustamante, S., Pizzutilo, F., Martinovic, M., Herrero Olarte, S. (eds) Corporate Social Responsibility and Employer Attractiveness. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68861-5_19

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