Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age: Volume 7

Facebook has become a phenomenon – used by millions all over the world. Supposedly its purpose is to enable us to keep in touch with our friends, although for some there is a competitive element in collecting as many friends as possible. It is however difficult to believe that anyone has 900 genuine friends! So it is time to question the purpose of Facebook and the socially responsible purpose that it may or may not be fulfilling.

A consideration of what is written by many people in their Facebook accounts shows that entries are often like personal musings. So we say things for ourselves – to express our feeling in mottos and references to songs, etc.

It seems that we are like Schrodingers cat and that we do not exist unless we are observed. So we put ourselves on Facebook to simulate existence. Thus, Facebook seems to have become a Baudrillardian simulacrum – more real than the real.

According to Jacques Lacan, the world is a mirror on which we express ourselves to ourselves. We use the Lacanian perspective to argue that social media has become the new mirror – easier and less threatening as we do not need interaction, only approval through the like function. This is arguably less challenging – to have a virtual life instead of a real one.

This is problematic, according to Lacanian theory but is a comment on modern society and the problem being caused. The relationship to social responsibility is explained in this chapter.

The prime goal of this chapter is to discuss what the notion of rhetorical citizenship as a normative aspiration might entail for corporations.

The chapter draws on a pilot study of the Facebook pages of two banks. A rhetorical criticism of these pages was conducted.

We suggest that while corporations are assuredly entities very different from the individual citizens who hold civil, social, and political rights – which do not directly apply to corporations – rhetorical citizenship is nevertheless a suggestive and constructive metaphor for corporations to communicate by.

Rhetorical citizenship for corporations must, we argue, be(come) rooted in organizational reality, and should involve a continued critical questioning as to what might constitute citizenly communication for corporations under any given circumstances. The chapter is, however, built on limited data from a pilot study and needs to be complemented.

We suggest from our pilot study that the active engagement of corporations in social media may currently be seen as one form of rhetorical citizenship that the public expects corporations to enact. Thus, we argue, corporations in general might as well attempt to do their best to act as rhetorical citizens.

The chapter highlights how communication is a set of practices in which social responsibility must be enacted. We find that this is not a prevalent perspective in the existing literature on CSR and communication.

Public sector absorbs a sizeable part of each country’s GDP. Therefore, public organisations are not performing very well at the economic level of responsibility. Consequently, we argue that in order to build better and more responsible public organisations we need to improve their economic responsibility. This chapter presents a prospective action of social media for business to intervene in public administration reform. We envision a possible course of action that may introduce CSR in the public sector thanks to social media collective action.

The framework of this study will make a reference to the theory of socio-technological media de Kerckhove and Pierre Lévy, and on a survey of the literature of citizen activism through social media to answer the question: new media, new message?

It is a new perspective action of social media for business-government relations. We identify a possible theory that leverages the ‘koinè’ of multinational brands to address government effectiveness. The names of multinational companies are the same all over the world, like the ‘Koine’ Greek, and are now a common element in all languages of the world. Citizens and consumers pay a great deal of attention to brands. Multinationals spend millions of dollars every year in public relations (PR) and marketing precisely in order to manage their reputations and images and respond to the requests that consumers have of big corporations. The greatest threat to the reputation of a company or a multinational brand comes, in fact, via the Internet, which has become the most powerful weapon in the hands of interest groups. The object of this research is to explore whether stakeholders can join forces with corporations and use global media to monitor governments in the same way.

The citizens of governments and the customers of global corporations – in different countries in the world – seem to be isolated islands: all endure their own battle without the possibility of drawing attention from other parts of the world through social media.

The citizens can exercise pressure on the governments and public administrations the same way as what happens against the brands. It behoves us to ensure responsible behaviour from all. We propose an extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations.

The stakeholder approach to CSR action and reporting implies that the relevant stakeholders of the organisation be listened to, and this listening be accounted for in the CSR report. These groups are also called the ‘publics’ of the organisation. We contend that the stakeholder approach might be misused and end up in collusion with sections of the publics involved.

The stakeholder approach leads an organisation to try to engage with the wrong counterparts. This is an over-rating of stakeholders.

Therefore, everything that is not taken into account under the headline of the stakeholder approach we call ‘stewardship for the unknown stakeholder’. The theoretical bases of this value reside in the vast literature on non-maximising, non-efficient, non-effective behaviour by firms and by the employees especially.

Thus, the first task in drawing up a CSR or sustainability report is to identify the possible unknown stakeholders; that is, those who do have a stake but don’t know they do; those who have a stake too small to care about but who are numerous.

If we complain about Apple, many in the world will join in; if we complain about the companies that manage the ‘garis’ (as the Portuguese call a garbage collector of Rio de Janeiro) nobody outside Brazil thinks it matters. But in fact, this is not true!

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Each local public administration will have its own problems, but all in the same way contribute to the well-being or mismanagement of a territory and its citizens. All, to some extent, ill-treated the citizens through their ineffectively.

The CSR should be for everyone and a global movement of citizens asking for responsible governments around the world could be the solution for the well-being of the individual peoples. Let the people’s rights emerge vis-à-vis perceived needs and outrage about the ineffectiveness of public administration that too often lose the name of action.

In summary, the proposal is the extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations.

We propose a covenant between consumers/taxpayers in order to extend the CSR to governments and public administration. The citizens can exercise pressure on the governments and public administrations the same way as what happens against the brands. It behoves us to ensure responsible behaviour from all. We propose an extension of the use of social media to monitor behaviour of governments as effectively as they are used to monitor behaviour of the corporations, with the help of the same corporations.

Companies would join consumers for two main reasons: because there are clear signs that their company’s reputation is being harmed by the conflict, and because their market performance dips, coinciding with pressure from stakeholders. Our proposal goes beyond this and proposes the concept of a novel social figure: the unknown stakeholder.

In recent years, the online environment and the Internet, as a communication platform, have acquired an important role regarding the companies’ activity of communicating their social responsibility. The purpose of this study resides in drawing a typological classification based on analysing the manner in which the world’s greatest companies conduct their communication activities as depicted by their CSR reports published online.

A content analysis method was used in order to classify the common CSR activities driven by large global companies depending on their unique approaches in terms of communication.

About 100 organisations extracted from Forbes Global 2000 Leading Companies (as of 2012) were subjected to the current study. Consequently, their latest CSR reports published on the Internet were analysed according to a series of five variables. The most complex one relied on what type of CSR information have the companies focused on within their reporting activities. Thus occurs the dichotomy between structuring their communication endeavours as filtering them relative to the stakeholders’ needs, or trying to emphasise the different categories of initiatives. The resulted classification is founded mainly on the reality observed in a company’s CSR communication activities.

The chapter argues that the classification is not limited to the proposed framework, but it may vary depending on a corporation’s changes in communication or its interest in supporting new CSR tendencies so that they can be enriched. Although CSR activity is represented under various patterns by the investigated companies, all the subsequent reports can be considered as being an integral part of the system.

Even though not all the highlighted strategic directions have an integrated profile in order to be included in the general CSR reporting, they can be taken into account in the near future.

This new approach on classifying the different communication endeavours paves the way for an overall image on the manner in which companies of all types may align their social responsibility activities with the increasing stakeholders’ demands, given the digital media specifics.

This chapter proposes a framework for analyzing how stakeholder-initiated challenges through social media and traditional media can shape the meaning of responsible behavior and pressure organizations to alter irresponsible behavior in order to protect their reputations.

Following a description of the nature of stakeholder challenges, concepts from Internet Contagion Theory and Contingency Theory are used to develop the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges, an analytic tool that can be used to provide insights into how specific digital and traditional public relations tactic can be used by activists. A case study demonstrating application of the framework is presented.

The case study describes how the lens provided by the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges illustrates how Greenpeace’s detox campaign built power, legitimacy, and urgency to draw attention to environmental and human problems associated with the use of hazardous chemicals in a manufacturer’s supply chain.

The chapter offers one case study of Greenpeace’s detox campaign against Zara to demonstrate the utility of the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges. Additional case studies are needed to further demonstrate how factors in the framework can account for the success and failure of activist challenges. Moreover, measurement of factors included in the framework, rather than conceptual analysis alone, could demonstrate the relative importance of the factors, as well as various constellations of factors, in accounting for organizational decision making about responses to the challenges.

Concepts derived from Internet Contagion Theory and Contingency Theory provide a vocabulary and conceptual framework for describing and analyzing stakeholder-initiated challenges as well as assessing the potential threats posed by stakeholder challenges to an organization’s reputation.

This chapter proposes a new analytical tool, the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges, which can contribute to the analysis and evaluation of stakeholder efforts to influence corporate behavior.

The focus of the chapter is on disputes around corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the fossil fuel industry and how media and social networking technologies are deployed in a virtual war between oil corporations and dissident, activist and protest groups.

Communications by BP, Shell, and their opponents in this virtual war are compared, especially in relation to the creative use of the internet, digital technologies, and social media. Through a case study approach, the chapter shows how communications often center on contested notions of CSR and claims by the oil giants about their environmental impact, which opponents dismiss as “greenwashing.” The various techniques deployed by both sides in this wide-ranging “PR war” are explored and contrasted in detail.

The findings for each case study reveal the diverse, complex, and changing nature of the relationship between the oil industry and its critics. The chapter concludes by arguing that if CSR is seen as “greenwashing” by the public, it is only likely to fuel widespread skepticism of the oil and gas sector and of corporate claims about the environment more generally.

The research offers a snapshot of online and social media campaigns and PR strategies and tactics within the oil and gas industry rather than empirically grounded set of findings that can be easily applied to other fields.

Practical implications include attention to inflated or understated claims and the use of citizen testimony and humor to puncture CSR “rhetoric.” There is consideration of use of digital technologies by activists and attention to the way public debates and consultations are conducted. The need for a more respectful engagement with local communities by all parties engaging in public relations is underlined.

The chapter applies the concept of “asymmetrical warfare” from conflict studies within the media and communications tradition to provide a fresh revaluation of the term “PR war,” It offers a rare focus on online efforts by activist to subvert CSR-related branding, marketing, and communications. Discussion of the use of parody alongside factual and emotional arguments to challenge corporate hegemony also provides revealing insights.

Corporate managers must find a way to communicate their CSR activities to stakeholders without creating a boomerang effect where the CSR messages create resentment of instead of support for the corporation. One alternative is to use social media channels because they are low cost and can use a soft sell approach, thereby reducing the likelihood of a boomerang effect. However, using social media messaging about CSR challenges managers to attract followers to those social media channels. This chapter explores the use of gamification, the use of gaming features in the CSR messaging, to present CSR messages. The case study of Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used to illustrate how gamification can be used to promote social media-based CSR messaging.

A case study method is used to illuminate how Kraft used gamification to increase the audience for its anti-hunger CSR efforts. Kraft used the “Two-Minute Drill” game to attract people to their effort to fight hunger.

The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” seemed to overcome the CSR promotional communication concerns of tone and cost. The dominant message and theme is feeding the hungry. The tone on the Facebook page and the game itself is subtle in relation to the Kraft brand because Kraft appears in the background through its logo, name, and the names of prominent Kraft products. The stakeholders are treated as the drivers of the CSR effort because the individuals playing the game are what create the donations from Kraft. Donations could even be personalized. None of the comments posted to the Kraft Fight Hunger Facebook page questioned the expense of the project. Overall the comments were very favorable suggesting there was no boomerang effect from the game.

The study offers only one case study of gamification in CSR communication. More cases are necessary to draw stronger conclusions about the utility of gamification for CSR communication presented via social media. Moreover, more direct measures are needed to assess how stakeholders feel about CSR messages using gamifications and if the strategy can consistently prevent a boomerang effect.

The implications from the case study are that gamification can be an effective way to attract stakeholders to social media-based CSR messages and to generate positive reactions to the CSR messaging.

This chapter is one of the first detailed explorations of gamification as a means to avoid the dangers of the CSR promotional communication dilemma (stakeholders wanting CSR information but reacting negatively to the promotion of CSR activities).

Social media usage is becoming ubiquitous across the world and communicators, either corporate, independent or activist are increasingly adopting the new medium. This chapter focuses on the uses of social media for marketing communications, in particular for public relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by Pfizer’s European offices. In doing so it evaluates the relationship between public relations and CSR as well as reviews some of the uses of social media for healthcare communications and CSR.

Using a deductive approach and a methodology that combines qualitative content analysis aimed at identifying communication themes and social media audits on brand integration and communication coherence, this chapter aims to identify how Pfizer’s European offices use social media to communicate online.

To establish the corporate line and branding general guidelines for Pfizer, we have recorded from the company’s official website (www.pfizer.com) its corporate overview and corporate responsibility information, embedded into the ‘About us’ section of the website. From the home page, social media links were then sought. To ensure all links were recorded the researchers used two gateways, one using the social media links on the website and one through each country’s website and their social media links on their home page. The Pfizer official accounts were excluded from this analysis, the interest being on the country uses of social media and not Pfizer’s official general channels.

General traffic and engagement data automatically reported by each social media platforms such as number of tweets, followers, fans, and number of views were recorded manually. For more insight into Twitter activity FollerMe was then used to capture and record each account’s most recent activity as it enabled the discovery of each account’s creation date and the most frequently used words and hashtags in its tweets. It also helped assess the levels of performance of each country on Twitter by looking at the reported ratios of replies, mentions, tweets with links, hashtags or media to the last 100 tweets sent from the each account. For Facebook and YouTube data, only the publicly reported data was recorded. The text in the Twitter bios and about sections was also recorded and compared with the company’s corporate and CSR descriptions included on the main website.

Out of the 20 countries that do have a Pfizer country office, only 10 of them have a social media presence. Turkey and Spain have four social media channels each and Belgium has three. All the other countries are present on only one social media platform. They show an overall integration and coordination of messages with themes mirrored from one platform to another. The channels also show an overall compliance and consistency with the brand, most of them displaying bespoke backgrounds, bios and links to the country website.

When it comes to social media integration, the accounts are poorly integrated and interlinked. Moreover, although social media provides a platform for dialogue, two out of the three platforms analysed have very little user interaction. This high concern for message control can be indicative of a variety of elements: a lack of certainty/security in handling social media, a risk-averse attitude towards social media, a lack of training of staff about how to handle social media or perhaps a lack of resources.

The platforms used have all different functions and address different target audiences. YouTube proves to excel as a public information/CSR medium for the general public, the most popular content fitting into those categories. Twitter is a corporate communications environment by excellence, a true mouth-piece of the organization. Finally, Facebook is Pfizer’s user engagement environment but within Pfizer’s own comfort and rules, the presence of a policy document making the boundaries of communication very clear.

Although looking only at one company and its social media communication practices and although it uses only publicly reported data, this chapter raises a variety of questions about the use of social media by big, multinational corporations, the resources they allocate and the amount to which they perceive these channels as anything more than just another company mouth-piece. It also raises questions about how companies choose to portray themselves on social media in comparison to joining conversations, commenting on current trends and celebrating their partners and employees. Perhaps future research could explore these aspects in more depth.

Pfizer who declares itself the ‘world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company’ is currently among the most influential companies in the world, occupying currently the 148th position in the Global Fortune 500 list. Due to its position within the industry, Pfizer has been the subject of previous research materials including marketing and health communications; however, no study yet has analysed Pfizer’s uses of social media. By analysing the social media communications of Pfizer in Europe and by pointing to the inconsistencies between country accounts, this chapter raises further questions about social media strategy and its implementation by corporations.

The current study examines the role of social media for designing effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategy for modern business organisation to engage their stakeholders.

A structured survey questionnaire is used to collect data from multiple stakeholders through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. The data is collected from employees, customers and investors of different companies in Pakistan. The data is analysed to examine the perceptions of different stakeholders towards effectiveness of social media for CSR communication.

The results indicate that the majority of respondents think that social media is very important platform to communicate CSR activities. Overall, respondents believe that social media is a trustworthy tool to communicate CSR activities and engage stakeholders. Customers believe that communication of CSR activities through social media influence their buying behaviour positively. We found strong intentions among employees to work for socially responsible corporations who are successful in communicating their CSR initiatives to their employees through social media.

The study collected data from Pakistan only, a larger sample from different countries can provide more interesting results. The study didn’t used sophisticated statistical tests; the future studies can develop a rigorous theoretical model explaining how use of social media as communication strategy can influence the behaviour of diverse stakeholders.

Since social media is becoming an effective communication platform, corporations should pay more focus on using social media. The corporations should encourage stakeholders’ views related to CSR communication on social media and carefully address their suspicions in order to engage them.

There is sparse research in literature that examine the use of social media to engage organisational stakeholders. The current study provides a direction to future researchers to explore this area and explain the use of social media as CSR communication strategy in better way.

The purpose of the research carried out by Data Media ltd. has been to capture the Romanian CSR managers’ representation and attitudes on corporate social responsibility.

The first survey carried out by Data Media ltd. was a quantitative research: an in-depth interview with the managers in charge with the CSR activity in 100 Romanian companies. The theoretical scope of the paper was to enable us to see how spread is the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility and how deep it is embedded in the practices and policies of Romanian companies.

I found out that the majority of CSR managers of the considered companies were treating CSR as a sort of marketing and PR (as a matter of fact, almost 50% of them were members of the Public Relations Romanian Association (ARRP).

The research should be repeated in order to measure the evolution of the phenomena, and to check out if their trend was heading to the strategic stage in Zadek’s scale.

The practical changes as a result of this research should be in the perception of the public interest as a landmark for social responsibility, so as in the future the CSR not to be practiced as philanthropy or marketing.

The impact of this research on society is expected to be in changing the attitude toward CSR in Romania, in making it popular, in order to form a culture of social responsibility, and to contribute to Romania’s sustainable development.

Although there have been studies addressing topics adjacent to CSR matters, such as the top of the best employers, this study was the first that called into question the scientific research of this phenomenon.

The purpose of our chapter is to explore the extent to which online repositories of stories related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), reported by companies, represent a tool which can contribute, combined with the potential pressure of the social networks, to perpetuating and increasing such reporting behaviour.

In order to explore this, we have analysed the CSR stories of companies published on the largest online repository from Romania, that is, the website www.responsabilitatesociala.ro. We explore two research questions: Could a repository site facilitate that more and more companies report their CSR activities? and Will a company that presented one case at some point in time present more cases in the next reporting period? For this purpose we have used as method the content analysis having as counting unit each article published and each company which, at some point, published something. Our analysis covered the articles published within 2006–2012 and thus we have used 1121 articles/case studies.

In terms of findings, we conclude that such online repository leads to an important increase in the number of companies having their CSR activities published, although such increase has not been steady. In our view such reporting started a trend. Some companies, after being published in a certain year may have not reported the following year, but nonetheless, new companies decided to publish about their CSR activities each year. In the case of the second question, we could not determine a particular pattern. The number of companies which published, at least in 6 out of the 7 years we have analysed, has been quite low – 12, and there have been big discrepancies between years and between articles per company.

The main limitation of our chapter is that we could not correlate the articles published with other variables, such as: reporting on Facebook and on the official webpage or the extent to which CSR managers from companies think that such repositories have exerted any type of good pressure on them to publish and report their activities.

This approach is important for CSR managers and other stakeholders – such repositories can be both a source of inspiration and a good practice model. One can ‘show, view and shop’ CSR activities in one stop online and take the example further. We believe that this is something specific for all countries, where CSR entered the business as a public relations (PR) concept and then evolved.

The value of our chapter consists in exploring such simple and on-hand online repositories and finding issues of interest for further research.

Taking into consideration that the number of reports about pharmaceutical lobbying activities is increasing (Baleta, 2014; Boseley, 2014) and that the cost of drugs has a direct and powerful impact on both public and private healthcare, there is a need to require pharmaceutical companies to report their activity as well as reflect their considerations about the ethical implications of their work. To answer that need, this chapter explores how pharmaceutical companies communicate their corporate social responsibility activities.

This chapter explores how Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi (all in the top 10 of US foundations by total giving) use their websites to articulate their CSR strategies. In order to achieve this goal, an exploratory research that combines semantic analysis of the way the mission, vision and objectives are integrated in their strategy was conducted. To do so the researchers saved the text about each company’s mission and vision from their main websites (the .com) and saved all the data associated to CSR communication and reporting included on each company website in a word document. One hundred and ninety-one pages of text were thus collected in August 2013 (67 pages of text for GlaxoSmithKline, 38 pages for Sanofi and 87 pages for Pfizer). Wordle and VOSViewer were used to gain insight into the emerging themes from the textual data collected and therefore compare the similarities and differences between the three companies.

Our findings show a strong emphasis on business-related activities for Sanofi and GSK reflected through the vocabulary used. Additionally, the two companies also portray corporate social responsibility as a tool for image and reputation building and for achieving wider yet profit-driven organisational goals. CSR messages therefore are intended to create and consolidate corporate identity. Moreover, whilst their mission focuses on patients, health, care, and access to medicine, the values are also oriented towards profit making and economic criteria. Pfizer on the other hand, although sharing some of the mission and values with the other two companies, presents itself as a more inclusive organisation with a collaborative environment and research-focused culture.

While limited in scope and sample, this chapter raises many valuable questions for future research about the pharmaceutical sector’s understanding and definition of CSR and their differences and similarities in their online discourse and vocabulary in comparison with other profit-driven industries. Moreover, it raises questions about the style and nature of corporate communications and whether this should be consistent with that associated with CSR as well as whether it imposes the creation of a company-ego.

This chapter promotes an alternative exploratory method of online discourses through computer-aided techniques.

Online CSR communication of top Hungarian companies has been analysed, aiming at the exploration of the internal and external consistency of corporate communication practices.

Critical discourse analysis was implemented in the research of selected corporate web pages and social media presence of the companies in the sample. Then a comparison of online disclosure and the unethical/illegal activities of selected industries – telecommunication, construction and retail – was made.

No positive correlation between the culpability and the intensity of online CSR communication was detected. Therefore, it is not confirmed that disclosure of socially responsible activities and principles on the web is a mere corporate lip service. However, in certain highly controversial industries companies intensively communicate about their CSR actions on the one hand, and commit different forms of misconduct on the other.

Our methodology certainly has limitations since we registered only a few forms of unethical behaviour. Additionally, our focus was on large Hungarian companies, therefore the opportunity for generalization is limited.

Our findings show remarkable dissonances in CSR communication and point to a rhetoric-reality gap that needs more attention from practitioners as well.

Applications of critical discourse analysis of online CSR communication is relatively rare, only few studies have been conducted so far to explore potential dissonances and contradictions within online communication and between communication and real activities.