The contemporary landscape demands robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies amid changing competitive and institutional environments. This paper explores the intricacies of CSR integration within organizations, focusing on employees’ perceptions of corporate hypocrisy, where discrepancies between stated CSR values and actual practices emerge. Using a case study of a leading multinational consulting firm, we investigate how employees navigate and mitigate the cognitive dissonance induced by such hypocrisy. Our findings reveal three dissonance reduction strategies - blinding, outsourcing, and imagining -, wherein employees reconcile CSR inconsistencies without altering their attitudes. Our study contributes to the micro-CSR literature, highlighting the subtle, everyday manifestations of corporate hypocrisy and its impact on employee engagement. This research underscores the importance of understanding the underlying cognitive processes of employee responses to CSR inconsistencies, offering insights into the micro-level dynamics of CSR engagement and the broader implications for theory and practice.
