Learning Objectives
• Explain why managers need to pay careful attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication.
• Understand the role of morality for CSR communication.
• Understand the basic challenges of CSR communication, particularly in a digitalised world.
• Understand and apply different CSR communication strategies to meet those challenges.
• Explain phases in the development of CSR communication.
Introduction
Much CSR literature seems to assume that CSR communication is inferior to action and decoupled from influence, obligations and impact. CSR action is about ‘doing’ and CSR communication is ‘just talking’, it is said. This chapter challenges such assumptions. It argues that CSR communication matters strategically and importantly for business as well as for society. In CSR communication, CSR issues are raised, debated and challenged, and it is also in this communication that external and internal stakeholders develop their understandings of a company's contribution to society and hereby set a scene for directing future CSR action. CSR communication can be defined as a company's communication to internal and external stakeholders about its efforts to contribute to social, environmental and economic development of society. However, increasingly stakeholders participate and influence the conversation, and the definition of CSR communication accordingly comes to include how these stakeholders contribute to define a company's social and environmental responsibilities to society. In particular social media has given rise to conversations about companies’ CSR communication without the respective companies being part of the conversation. Thus conventional ideas of CSR communication are challenged and the managerial role for engaging in CSR communication is changing.
The chapter builds on the notion that businesses operate in an environment where CSR is not defined once and for all but is rather a produce of ongoing change, dialogue and contestation, i.e. communication. Companies engage in CSR for a variety of reasons but the way they engage in communication about CSR is absolutely central for how they are perceived by others to contribute to society. CSR is generally seen as a desirable feature of a corporate strategy and as such it has become influential for achieving a high score in many business ranking systems (see Chapter 13), and many companies integrate CSR strategically into their brand communications.
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