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Journal article

Corporate Social Responsibility Communication : A Multi-method Approach on Stakeholder Expectations and Managers’ Intentions

    2011
Published in:
  • Journal of Corporate Citizenship. - Greenleaf. - 2011, no. 42, p. 73-91
Social engagement
Sustainability
Responsibility communication
Corporate social responsibility
Corporate citizenship
Industry comparison
Multi-method approach
Content analysis
Survey
Qualitative interviews
English Organisations need to legitimise their behaviour in order to be accepted and supported by society. This study analyses the different perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a multi-method approach. First, a content analysis of the companies’ annual and CSR reports and qualitative interviews with the communications executives analyses the social engagement that is communicated and the companies’ motives for their activities. Second, the expectations of potential stakeholders regarding the social engagement of companies are analysed via a quantitative survey. Results show that the reporting of philanthropic activities dominates the annual reports. However, as interviews show, these altruistic motives were mostly associated with expectations on economic benefits, where differentiation from competitors is mentioned as the main motive for the CSR engagement. With respect to topics, the CSR activities of the companies correspond in general to the stakeholders’ expectations. Nonetheless, hardly any of the stakeholders are able to bring an explicit CSR activity of a company to mind. This might be because this is ‘pull-information’ for which they actively have to look, but companies might also be failing to effectively communicate their CSR engagement.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Department
Département des sciences de la communication et des médias
Language
  • English
Classification
Information, communication and media sciences
Other electronic version

Publisher's version

License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 278113
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/305197
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