Researching CSR and Communication: Challenges

and Opportunities

Andrew Crane Schulich School of Business

York University, Canada

CSR Communication Conference, Amsterdam, Oct 2011

A conversation waiting to happen…

CSR Communications

Social reporting

Social reporting

Communications

A conversation waiting to happen…

CSR

Practitioners

So what’s so important about CSR

communication…?

What happened to CSR?

  16 of the Global 100 “Most Sustainable Corporations” (2011) are financial services firms (Corporate Knights/ Sustainalytics/Bloomberg)

  Finance companies are saying a lot about CSR … but almost nothing about protest, capitalism, lobbying, bail-outs, executive pay, tax, etc

“Our commitment to Responsible Finance is embedded throughout the company. We put the strength of our business, products and people to work to help

improve communities and the environment around the world." Pamela Flaherty, Director of Corporate Citizenship, Citigroup

“The HSBC Climate Partnership is a five year, US$100m commitment to work with four leading climate NGOs and engage HSBC employees in understanding and

taking action on carbon emissions." www.hsbc.com

Trust in business in flux

Source: Edelman 2011 Trust Barometer

Sou

rce:

Glo

besc

an C

SR

Mon

itor

Do we need: More CSR?

Better communicated CSR? Or just different CSR

communication?

CSR program Communication Audience

Some different ways of thinking about CSR communication

CSR communication is about how you inform, persuade, and celebrate your CSR programs

Some different ways of thinking about CSR communication

CSR communication is about how you inform, persuade, and celebrate your CSR programs … and how you gather

and integrate feedback into those programs

CSR program Communication Audience

Some different ways of thinking about CSR communication

CSR communication is about how communication facilitates the co-creation of CSR programs

Communication Audience CSR program

Audience Audience

Some different ways of thinking about CSR communication

CSR communication is about how communication facilitates the co-creation of CSR programs

Communication Audience CSR program

Audience Audience

Some different ways of thinking about CSR communication

CSR communication is about how communication is embedded into CSR programs

CSR program

Communication Audience

So what about research?

4i’s of CSR communication research

CSR integration CSR interpretation

CSR identity CSR image External

Internal

Reflecting Reality

Constituting Reality

4i’s research opportunities and

challenges

CSR integration

  Opportunity 1: companies are struggling with understanding how to get CSR buy-in throughout the organization

Research indicates that employees are often ill-informed and poorly involved in their company’s

CSR initiatives

“Using Corporate Social Responsibility to Win the War for Talent” C.B. Bhattacharya, Sankar Sen and Daniel Korschun

Sloan Management Review January 1, 2008

CSR interpretation

  Opportunity 2: CSR is a rich context (or text) to explore theories around CCO (communicative constitution of organization, see Cooren et al 2011):   CSR is brought into being by communication

  E.g. sensemaking-sensegiving; rhetorical strategies; narrative; moralization-amoralization, etc.

“Consequently, [CSR] knowledge, rules, processes, persons, markets, and even organizations themselves are the ongoing products of meaning-making practices

that are always political in the sense that they could have been produced otherwise”

CSR identity

  Opportunity 3: No one really knows well how to successfully communicate with external stakeholders around CSR   Actually we don’t even agree what “success” is

  From broadcasting CSR identity to accountability – designing more democratic forms of stakeholder inclusion, engagement, and reporting

“A deliberative concept of CSR changes the modus of responsibility… The corporation, within the network of civil society communication,

does not replace the idea of stakeholder management but enhances it and frames it in an ongoing process of observing and participating

in public discourses.” Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo: 2007, 'Toward a political conception of corporate

responsibility: business and society seen from a Habermasian perspective', Academy of Management Review, 32(4), 1096-1120.

CSR Truth

CSR Truth

CSR Truth

CSR Truth

CSR Truth

CSR Truth

CSR Truth CSR

Truth CSR

Truth

CSR image

  Opportunity 4: CSR is an “essentially contested” concept  Discursive contestation is ongoing

  CSR communication implicitly defines the division of labor for responsibility among actors

“There is not a pre-existing market of responsible consumers out there waiting to be served, but rather

it must be brought into existence through the assumptions and technologies of market segmentation”

Robert Caruana and Andrew Crane, “Constructing Consumer

Responsibility: Exploring the Role of Corporate Communications” Organization Studies 2008; 29: 1495-1519

Communicating boundaries

“what we do”

what consumers are responsible

for…

what government is responsible

for…

what you are responsible for

what we are responsible for

Theory

Practice

Conclusion

  Conversation waiting to happen

  Why CSR communication is important

  How we think about CSR communication

  4i’s of CSR communication research – opportunities and challenges

For more CSR communication…

craneandmatten.blogspot.com

@ethicscrane