Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age 9781784415815, 9781784415822

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CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

DEVELOPMENTS IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND RESPONSIBILITY Series Editor: David Crowther Recent Volumes: Volume 6:

Ethics, Governance and Corporate Crime: Challenges and Consequences

Volume 5:

The Governance of Risk

Volume 4:

Education and Corporate Social Responsibility: International Perspectives

Volume 3:

Business Strategy and Sustainability

Volume 2:

Governance in the Business Environment

Volume 1:

NGOs and Social Responsibility

DEVELOPMENTS IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND RESPONSIBILITY VOLUME 7

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE EDITED BY

ANA ADI Quadriga University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

GEORGIANA GRIGORE The Media School, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

DAVID CROWTHER De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

SRRNet Social Responsibility Research Network www.socialresponsibility.biz

United Kingdom North America India Malaysia China

Japan

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2015 Copyright r 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78441-582-2 ISSN: 2043-0523 (Series)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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INTRODUCTION TO CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE Ana Adi, David Crowther and Georgiana Grigore

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SCHRODINGER’S CAT IN FACEBOOK: A LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE David Crowther and Shahla Seifi THE RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP OF CORPORATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen and Øyvind Ihlen DEAR BRANDS OF THE WORLD: CSR AND THE SOCIAL MEDIA Massimiliano Di Bitetto, Salvatore Pettineo and Paolo D’Anselmi CLASSIFYING SOCIAL CAUSES DERIVED FROM THE COMMUNICATION OF CSR INITIATIVES ONLINE: A THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL APPROACH Mihai Ioan Rosca, Andrei Claudiu Sara˘u and  Vontea Andreea-Angela  HOW ACTIVISTS SHAPE CSR: INSIGHTS FROM INTERNET CONTAGION AND CONTINGENCY THEORIES W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay

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CSR AND NEW BATTLE LINES IN ONLINE PR WAR: A CASE STUDY OF THE ENERGY SECTOR AND ITS DISCONTENTS David McQueen

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TWO-MINUTE DRILL: VIDEO GAMES AND SOCIAL MEDIA TO ADVANCE CSR W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay

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COMMUNICATING CSR ON SOCIAL MEDIA: THE CASE OF PFIZER’S SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS IN EUROPE Ana Adi and Georgiana Grigore

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USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CSR COMMUNICATION AND ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS Imran Ali, Ana Isabel Jime´nez-Zarco and Marta Bicho

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A SYNOPTIC RESEARCH OVERVIEW OF CSR AMONGST ROMANIAN MANAGERS Dumitru Bort¸un

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CSR AND SOCIAL MEDIA: COULD ONLINE REPOSITORIES BECOME REGULATORY TOOLS FOR CSR RELATED ACTIVITIES’ REPORTING? Camelia Crisan and Alexandra Zbuchea  DIGITAL REFLECTIONS OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND THEIR CSR COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES Georgiana Grigore, Ana Adi and Anastasios Theofilou

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CSR ONLINE AND IN REAL TERMS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CONTROVERSIAL SECTORS IN HUNGARY Gyo¨rgy Pataki, Richa´rd Sza´nto´ and Re´ka Matolay

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

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INDEX

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Ana Adi

Department of Corporate Communications, Quadriga University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

Imran Ali

COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Lahore Campus, Lahore, Pakistan

Marta Bicho

ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, Lisbon, Portugal

Dumitru Bort¸un

National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

W. Timothy Coombs

Nicholson School of Communication, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Camelia Crisan 

College of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

David Crowther

De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Paolo D’Anselmi

Department of Enterprise Engineering, University Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

Massimiliano Di Bitetto

CNR-Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy

Georgiana Grigore

The Media School, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark vii

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Sherry J. Holladay

Nicholson School of Communication, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Øyvind Ihlen

Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Ana Isabel Jime´nezZarco

Economic and Business Studies, Open University of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

Re´ka Matolay

Department of Decision Sciences, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

David McQueen

The Media School, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

Gyo¨rgy Pataki

Department of Environmental Economics and Technology, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

Salvatore Pettineo

AGCOM Italian Communications Authority, Rome, Italy

Mihai Ioan Rosca 

Faculty of Marketing, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Andrei Claudiu Sara˘u

Faculty of Marketing, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Shahla Seifi

Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran, Tehran, Iran

Richa´rd Sza´nto´

Department of Decision Sciences, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

Anastasios Theofilou

The Media School, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

Andreea-Angela Vontea Faculty of Marketing, Bucharest  University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania Alexandra Zbuchea

College of Management, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

INTRODUCTION TO CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE Largely a post-WWII phenomenon, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown over the past half century in importance, significance and scholarship. The idea that businesses have some responsibilities to society which span beyond making profits for their shareholders has been around for centuries (Carroll & Shabana, 2010, p. 85) however until the late 1970s CSR has been ‘derided as a joke, an oxymoron and a contradiction in terms by the investment and business community’ (Paul Lee, 2008, p. 53). It is only after the 1990s that CSR’s perception by the business community, non-governmental organisations, consumers and governments has changed transforming it into an important concept in the management, marketing and communication literature (Carroll & Shabana, 2010; Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). In fact, it became so important that international organisations such as the United Nations or the World Bank endorse the practice, have issued their own guidelines for CSR and have fully and permanently staffed divisions solely focused on the research and promotion of the practice (Paul Lee, 2008). Similarly, at the beginning of the new millennium more than 90% of the Fortune 500 companies declared that they have embraced CSR and were therefore reporting on such activities in their annual reports. Human resource decisions, layoff programmes, plant closures, environmental performance and social issues are among the events and actions when CSR was studied (McWilliams, Siegel, & Wright, 2006). This makes even more evident the shift that has been made in the past 20 years into what was written about CSR (Paul Lee, 2008) a move away from the financial benefits derived from such activities towards reputational impact, stakeholder relationships and communication with a wide range of audiences being noted (Fombrun, 2005; Ihlen, Bartlett, & May, 2011; Kurucz, Colbert, & Wheeler, 2008). This has brought multiple theoretical ix

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frameworks to interpret and measure CSR impact and its effectiveness, including agency theory looking into self-serving behaviours of managers, stakeholder theory emphasising on the moral and ethical dimensions of the business transactions and the trust and cooperation that facilitate such behaviours, resource-based views of the firm which indicate that CSR activities can lead to sustained competitive advantages or leadership theory which implies that CEOs can affect how the businesses they run engage with CSR (McWilliams et al., 2006). Consequently, the definition of CSR too has seen numerous versions, many of them sharing the main dimensions of impacts on business: social (reflecting the relationship between businesses and society), environmental (focusing on the impact and/or contribution of businesses on the natural environment), economic (referring to the socio-economic or financial aspects of a business including the description of CSR in terms of a business operation), stakeholder and voluntariness (reflecting and voluntarily abiding to ethical principles which span beyond the legal obligations) (Dahlsrud, 2008). The definitions of CSR vary, of course, depending on who promotes them and on the context and the maturity of the market to which the definition sponsor belongs. Analysing CSR practices in different countries and especially in emerging and developing economies is essential in identifying whether CSR is similarly understood and practiced around the world. This book will bring some of those national perspectives into view. Arguably, this richness of theoretical background and perspectives should also be reflected into a rich methodological and empirical approach. However, as McWilliams et al. (2006) point out, most of the empirical papers about CSR use either regression analysis or event study/case study narrowing and limiting research to ‘do firms do well by doing good?’ (p. 11). This shows a need for a wider and more extensive methodological approach to studying CSR, which should better reflect the theoretical frameworks to which the studies are included. This book includes multiple examples of innovative methodologies of collecting and interpreting CSR research data.

THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK The practice and research of CSR however depends on the business, socioeconomic and cultural contexts in which businesses operate. This outlook

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is continuously changing. While at the beginning of the millennium globalisation was bringing new stakeholder groups and new national legislations to shape and alter business expectations, currently it is digital and social media that are having that impact. There is no doubt that social media has become a major player in the media and communications arena. According to recent statistics, more than a third of the world’s population has access to the Internet (Internetworldstats.com). Out of all the connected users, more than 72 per cent of them are active on social media (Bullas, 2014). Facebook is captivating almost a half of the world’s Internet users and dominates the charts in terms of social media engagement. A newer entrant on the social media scene, Pinterest, has recorded a phenomenal growth of 88 per cent compared to 2012 and is one of the strongest Internet traffic drivers. Tumblr and Twitter continue their growth as well, each recording rates of 74 per cent and 40 per cent respectively compared to 2012 (Bullas, 2013). These platforms have shifted the focus on the users and the social nature of peer communications. Moreover, their continuously growing popularity has led organisations and corporations to adopt the new media, in the most common of cases of use including support of marketing communications activities, knowledge transfer, market research, reputation management and customer services/interaction (Stelzner, 2012, Orderofbusiness.net). Adoption of digital and social media platforms however does not necessarily mean a strategic or consistent implementation. This varies depending on both the industry sector and nature of the business as well as on the function digital media plays in the organisation’s overall strategy (Arthur, 2011). Besides showing a need for a more strategic approach to digital media, this also raises questions about how and whether the new medium influences CSR, its practice, its reporting and the way in which these are communicated to various stakeholders.

CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP In recent years several books have been published focusing on corporate social responsibility. They explore mostly the conceptual and practical perceptions towards and understanding of CSR including CSR communication, corporate governance, the relationship and dialogue with stakeholders and society at large, and the long-term benefits for an organisation.

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While examining the current business environment and pulling together insights from a variety of disciplines including organisational communication and issues management, The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility (Ihlen et al., 2011) published by WileyBlackwell advocates for CSR communication to be examined ‘in its own right’ (p. 5). The Handbook of Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility edited by Ihlen et al. (2011) focuses on CSR communication towards stakeholders and so does Werther and Chandler’s book (2011) Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment. Corporate social responsibility is also discussed tangentially in books focusing either on public relations or social media. This is the case of The Social Media Manifesto (Hallam, 2012) published by Palgrave MacMillan, Social Media Metric Secrets (Lovett, 2011) published by John Wiley & Sons and Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional (Breakenridge, 2012) published by FT Press. While all these books have either corporate social responsibility at their core or examine it in relationship with other communication aspects, none currently covers in a consistent and focused manner the impact of socially responsible activities and strategies implementation in the online environment. Moreover, the research carried out recently about CSR and digital media focuses mainly on the use of websites for CSR communication (Basil & Erlandson, 2008; Bravo, Matute, & Pina, 2011; Chaudhri & Wang, 2007; Ingenhoff & Koelling, 2009). This book therefore proposes a re-examination of CSR practices from a digital perspective. In doing so the book will revisit some of the theoretical discussions about CSR while inquiring whether and how CSR can be applied online. In doing so, the book will (1) revisit key conceptual insights about corporate social responsibility and digital and social media, (2) examine through a variety of case studies the application of CSR initiatives through digital media and (3) explore best practices for online CSR. In the chapter Schrodinger’s Cat in Facebook: A Lacanian Perspective, David Crowther and Shahla Seifi argue that social media has become a new mirror through which people and organisations express themselves to themselves. Using a Lacanian perspective, the two authors take a closer look at Facebook which, they suggest, is used to simulate the existence of its users. In the chapter The Rhetorical Citizenship of Corporations in the Digital Age Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen and Øyvind Ihlen take their analysis to

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Denmark and Norway. Using rhetorical citizenship as a theoretical framework, the two authors indicate that corporations also have communicative responsibilities towards society which include an expectation to engage the publics. While the vernacular discourse on corporations’ Facebook pages might not always resemble typical political deliberation, they argue that the act of being present and responsive in social media is a form of rhetorical citizenship. A new approach to CSR is made in the chapter Dear Brands of the World: CSR and the Social Media where Massimiliano Di Bitetto, Salvatore Pettineo and Paolo D’Anselmi use the socio-technological theory on media of de Kerckhove and Pierre Le´vy and argue that social media can be used as a medium through which the CSR practices and activities undertaken by governments and their administrations can be monitored. Starting from their assumption that governments are holding their peoples hostage and that this is more recently responded through civic and activist actions, they suggest that governments and governmental organisations should be subjected by corporations and the general public to the same level scrutiny about their responsible practices as corporations do. In the chapter Classifying Social Causes Derived from the Communication of CSR Initiatives Online: A Theoretical and Practical Approach Mihai Ioan Rosca, Andrei Claudiu Sara˘u and Andreea-Angela  of causes Forbes Global 2000 companies supVontea, focus on the types  port and how this is communicated online. W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay shift focus from the users to the activist groups and their use of social media to shape ‘responsible behaviour’ in the chapter How Activists Shape CSR: Insights from Internet Contagion and Contingency Theories. Using contingency theory and Internet contagion theory to inform their study, this chapter proposes the use of an Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges to establish stakeholder salience and to leverage organisations into change. They use the Zara-Greenpeace Detox example to show how social media help to promote stakeholder salience by creating the opportunity to build power, legitimacy, and urgency through highly visible, public communication. In the chapter CSR and New Battle Lines in Online PR War: A Case Study of the Energy Sector and its Discontents, David McQueen continues the discussion about the blurring lines between CSR and PR online. By looking at the PR wars in the British and American energy sectors, he discusses the uneven outcomes obtained by activist and corporate groups. In the chapter Two-Minute Drill: Video Games and Social Media to Advance CSR W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay also write about

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the use video games and social media to advance CSR. They use Kraft’s ‘Two Minute Drill’ Facebook game as a pretext for their wider reflection about the uses of advertising through social media to support CSR. Ana Adi and Georgiana Grigore’s chapter Communicating CSR on Social Media: The Case of Pfizer’s Social Media Communications in Europe shifts focus to multinational organisations taking a closer look at Pfizer’s social media communications in Europe and compare those with the company’s global communication strategy and communication as seen through its website. In doing so, they perform a social media audit of the social media platforms Pfizer uses and employ web-based analysis and visualisation tools such as Foller.me and Wordle to analyse their data. The chapter Using Social Media for CSR Communication and Engaging Stakeholders provides a consumer view of CSR. Using the case of Pakistan, Imran Ali, Ana Isabel Jime´nez-Zarco and Marta Bicho write about what the Pakistani consumers perceive to be the role of social media for communication. The study recommends the use of social media to strengthen the relationship with various stakeholders and engaging them to achieve organisational outcomes. They argue that corporations should encourage stakeholders’ views on CSR communication and carefully address their suspicions in order to engage them. Dumitru Bor¸tun writes in the chapter A Synoptic Research Overview of CSR amongst Romanian Managers about CSR practices in Romania and reports on a quantitative study capturing the managers’ representation and attitudes on corporate social responsibility (CSR). One of the findings of the study indicates that in Romanian CSR matters are dealt with by marketing, communication and PR departments which makes CSR an element of the promotional/reputation management toolkit rather than a standalone discipline and practice. The chapter CSR and Social Media: Could Online Repositories Become Regulatory Tools for CSR Related Activities’ Reporting? continues with another Romanian perspective. Here, Camelia Crisan and Alexandra  Zbuchea discuss whether online repositories could become regulatory tools for the reporting of CSR related activities. Their results indicate that social networks play a major role in spreading the trend for reporting CSR related activities but for this to have a long-term impact it should be maintained by companies at a much higher rate. The chapter Digital Reflections of Pharmaceutical Companies and Their CSR Communication Strategies looks again at the pharmaceutical industry. This time, Georgiana Grigore, Ana Adi and Anastasios Theofilou, discuss and illustrate how three companies in the pharmaceutical industry (GSK,

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Pfizer and Sanofi) use corporate websites to articulate social responsibly messages in order to communicate with salient stakeholders. Drawing from a semantic analysis of around 190 pages of text gathered in August 2013 from online websites, by looking at mission, vision, values and how these are integrated into corporate strategies, this study unpacks how pharmaceutical companies use their websites to articulate social responsibility messages. In particular, it shows that whilst the mission of these pharmaceutical companies gravitates around people, patients, health and care, their values and corporate objectives are mainly economic oriented. Finally, the chapter CSR Online and in Real Terms: A Critical Analysis of Controversial Sectors in Hungary examines the dissonances and contradictions within online communication and between communication and real activities undertaken in particular by big Hungarian companies with high revenues and but also in receipt of high fines. Gyo¨rgy Pataki, Richa´rd Sza´nto´ and Re´ka Matolay indicate that a positive correlation between culpability and the intensity of online CSR communication was not found, and therefore it is not confirmed that disclosure of socially responsible activities and principles on the web is proof of corporate greenwashing. Ana Adi David Crowther Georgiana Grigore Editors

REFERENCES Arthur, L. (2011). Are corporations giving up on social media? Retrieved from http://www. forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2011/11/01/are-corporations-giving-up-on-social-media/. Accessed on October 10, 2013. Basil, D. Z., & Erlandson, J. (2008). Corporate social responsibility website representations: A longitudinal study of internal and external self-presentations. Journal of Marketing Communications, 14(2), 125 137. Bravo, R., Matute, J., & Pina, J. M. (2011). Corporate social responsibility as a vehicle to reveal the corporate identity: A study focused on the websites of Spanish financial entities. Journal of Business Ethics, 107, 129 146. Breakenridge, D. K. (2012). Social media and public relations: Eight new practices for the PR professional. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press. Bullas, J. (2013). 12 awesome social media facts and statistics for 2013. Retrieved from http:// www.jeffbullas.com/2013/09/20/12-awesome-social-media-facts-and-statistics-for-2013/ #hywywm24Sz55JFGe.99. Accessed on October 10, 2013.

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Bullas, J. (2014). 22 social media facts and statistics you should know in 2014. Retrieved from http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/01/17/20-social-media-facts-and-statistics-you-shouldknow-in-2014/#ejIu8FiK4kGyMQiZ.99. Accessed on June, 2014. Carroll, A. B., & Shabana, K. M. (2010). The business case for corporate social responsibility: A review of concepts, research and practice. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12, 85 105. Chaudhri, V., & Wang, J. (2007). Communicating corporate social responsibility on the Internet: A case study of the top 100 information technology companies in India. Management Communications Quarterly, 21, 232 247. Dahlsrud, A. (2008). How corporate social responsibility is defined: An analysis of 37 definitions. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 15, 1 13. Du, S., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Sen, S. (2010). Maximizing business returns to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): The role of CSR communication. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12, 9 19. Fombrun, C. J. (2005). Building corporate reputation through CSR initiatives: Evolving standards. Corporate Reputation Review, 8(1), 7 11. Hallam, J. (2012). The social media Manifesto. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ihlen, Ø., Bartlett, J., & May, S. (2011). The handbook of communication and corporate social responsibility. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Ingenhoff, D., & Koelling, A. M. (2009). The potential of web sites as a relationship building tool for charitable fundraising NPOs. Public Relations Review, 35, 66 73. Internetworldstats.com (2014). Internet Usage Statistics. The Internet Big Picture. World Internet Users and Population Stats. Retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats. com/stats.htm. Accessed on June, 2014. Kurucz, E., Colbert, B. A., & Wheeler, D. (2008). The business case for corporate social responsibility. In A. Crane, A. Mc.Williams, D. Matten, J. Moon, & D. Seigel (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of corporate social responsibility (pp. 83 112). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lovett, J. (2011). Social media metrics secrets. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley. McWilliams, A., Siegel, D. S., & Wright, P. M. (2006). Guest editors’ introduction: Corporate social responsibility: Strategic implications. Journal of Management Studies, 43(1), 1 18. Paul Lee, M.-D. (2008). A review of the theories of corporate social responsibility: Its evolutionary path and the road ahead. International Journal of Management Reviews, 10(1), 53 73. Stelzner, M. A. (2012). Marketing industry report. How marketers are using social media to grow their business. Social Media Examiner. Werther, W. B., & Chandler, D. (2011). Strategic corporate social responsibility: Stakeholders in a global environment (2nd ed.). London: SAGE.

SCHRODINGER’S CAT IN FACEBOOK: A LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE David Crowther and Shahla Seifi ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology 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. Findings 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. Implications According to Jacques Lacan, the world is a mirror on which we express ourselves to ourselves. We use the Lacanian perspective Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 1 16 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007015

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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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Facebook has become a phenomenon used by many millions1 all over the world. It has become ubiquitous and defined the term ‘social networking’ imitated by many smaller systems doing similar things but specialising in particular groups. 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. Supposedly Facebook as an organisation is valued in excess of $100 billion. Most of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising. Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites. According to BusinessWeek.com, banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole, although specific comparisons can reveal a much larger disparity. So it is clear that Facebook is a business which is run as a business. For its users though it claims that Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet. (www.facebook.com)

And People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them. (www.facebook.com)

It is indisputable therefore that social networking is a modern phenomenon and that Facebook is the most significant networking site. It is pertinent therefore to investigate its use and the effects of this use. We do this

Schrodinger’s Cat in Facebook: A Lacanian Perspective

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through psychoanalysis and rely heavily on the theory of Jacques Lacan in order to do so.

MODERN SOCIETY AND CONSUMERISM Many would say that society has changed and that the focus is now upon signs and symbols. Global corporations began to spread advertising messages of a vague/persuasive nature, as opposed to factual/informative on the TV and radio. This precipitated a communications revolution for the dissemination of ideas, information and entertainment, accompanied by a saturation of symbols and signifiers (McLuhan, 1964). Man’s so-called irrational urges were channelled towards the fantasy world of consumption and Veblen’s2 (1899) concept of conspicuous consumption again has become significant. To quote one Facebook user: Facebook is a good place. Here is where the problems get likes or are shared but are never solved. Welcome to facebook here the girls do modelling, boys are all athletes, nobody knows about photoshops, everybody has failed in love, and more importantly there are plenty of poets and writers. Welcome to facebook but don’t forget to take your tinted glasses with you. Here everybody claims to be a highbrow.

Indeed Baudrillard considers that society is no longer centred around production in a Fordist or Marxist sense, but that consumption is a far more important axial dimension around which society is organised. The foundation of his argument is that capitalism should be seen as a system that is now largely conducted through the production and circulation of signs which, as a consequence, are of greater importance than the production and use-values of the commodities themselves. The emphasis placed on consumption clearly requires a consideration as to whether Baudrillard is actually articulating anything new as clearly there are countless historical examples of differences in sign values (e.g. automobiles). Baudrillard’s position holds that consumption is now preeminent over all other indicators of status (1994, p. 10): Within consumer society the notion of status, as the criterion which defines social being, tends increasingly to simplify and to coincide with the notion of social standing. Yet social standing is also measured in relation to power, authority and responsibility. Undoubtedly objects have always constituted a system of recognition, and often in addition to other systems (gestural, ritual, ceremonial, language, birth status, code of moral values, etc). What is specific to our society is that other systems of recognition are progressively withdrawing, primarily to the advantage of the code of social standing.

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So it can be seen that Facebook is part of the drive towards conspicuousness and there are many advantages to this. As an Internet-based network it is possible to present oneself to a much wider audience than immediate neighbours. Indeed most of us who use Facebook have friends and relations who are not just based in different cities but also in different countries and continents. For those in other continents then the asynchronousness of Facebook has a positive advantage. So many people wake up in the morning and first look at what postings have been made by friends operating in different time zones.

INTRODUCING PSYCHOANALYSIS Most people know that psychoanalytic theory was created initially by Freud but has been widely adapted by others. In a general sense such theory can be considered to be a theory of human emotional behaviour. Freud was concerned with the role of childhood experiences in the development of a person and argued that early childhood experience, particularly during the first year of life were critical to the formation of personality. These experiences resulted in unconscious motivations which governed the way in which we all behave for the rest of life. In particular these early experiences led to feelings of guilt and insecurity brought about by our desire to please our parents but failing to do so. Thus according to Freud the rest of our life is devoted to assuaging these feeling of guilt and insecurity. A suitable basis for arriving at a deeper understanding of the drivers of individual behaviour is based upon a psychoanalytic interpretation. Psychoanalytic theory was created initially by Freud but has been widely adapted by others. In a general sense such theory can be considered to be a theory of human emotional behaviour. An investigation of some of the major perspectives is necessary in order to understand the implications for behaviour within Facebook. In his psychoanalytic theory Freud (1984)3 argues that the real motivation for any act undertaken by a person may be disguised and not apparent even to the person who performs that act. Thus for Freud the underlying basis for identity, and therefore for an explanation of individual behaviour, was based in the unconscious. He argued that an individual’s identity was based upon past experience which was largely unconscious and that behaviour was largely dependant on an attempt to resolve the conflicts and motivations inherent in the unconscious (Freud, 1975). Furthermore he

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stated (1976, 1977) that most aspects of identity are laid down in early childhood and that it is an attempt to integrate the various facets of childhood experience which leads a person to act in particular ways. Part of this conflict is based upon parental influence, which leads to the development within the child of the concept of the ideal self as the perfect being to strive to become in order to win parental approval. This ideal self is of course unattainable but adult life, and the actions undertaken by adults, is based upon an unconscious motivation to achieve this ideal self and thereby secure respect. This motivation has been expressed by psychoanalysts as the drive towards individuation and explains the continual need for reassurance and the gaining of both self-respect and the respect of others.4 This drive for individuation is manifest in different ways by different individuals and in different ways at different times by the same individual. This has been interpreted by Bettelheim (1976) as part of the search for meaning to life through the reintegration of the conscious and the unconscious (Bettelheim, 1984). It has been described (Fromm, 1974) as a battle between the opposing instincts of life and death or between the idealist and materialist strivings of the individual (Fromm, 1980). For some people this can be reflected in a drive towards conformity as a means of escaping from the isolation of the self. This is described by Fromm (1957, pp. 16 17) in the following terms: … a union in which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the herd. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feelings or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, to the pattern of the group, I am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.

One of the inevitable consequences of the insecurities surrounding a person’s estimation of his/her own worth is that others in comparable positions are deemed to be more worthy than is oneself. One way to increase one’s idea of self-worth is to surround oneself with the material trappings of success house, car, holidays, designer good, etc. These have been referred to by Veblen (1899) as the trappings of conspicuous consumption. Unfortunately such conspicuous consumption can be visible by those within physical proximity. Facebook is virtual and wide reaching so such trappings are visible to all one’s friends through the postings made. In simple arithmetical terms a greater number of Fb friends equals greater popularity and more visibility to the trappings of success. One of the inevitable consequences of the insecurities surrounding a person’s estimation of his/her own worth is that others in comparable positions are deemed to be more worthy than is oneself. Consequently it can be

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argued that each of us deems others to be more worthy of respect than ourself. Thus we all are therefore seeking to compare ourselves more favourably with others, who are always deemed more worthy. One way to attract this respect is to surround oneself with the material trappings of success. As far as the manager in the organisation is concerned this can be interpreted as such things as salaries and bonuses, share options, cars, chauffeurs and company planes. Another way to achieve this favourable comparison however is to earn the respect of others by carefully selecting desirable goods and services to purchase. These may be particular brands or particular types of goods and services. Thus Facebook can be used to demonstrate these trappings of success through the pictures which are posted. Thus 27% of all postings5 made show pictures of the self enjoying something or are making statements to this effect.

ALFRED ADLER: INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY It is difficult to consider the work of Adler without setting it in the context of his dispute with Freud concerning the driving force behind a person’s sense of self. While he agreed with Freud that early childhood was significant in personality development in addition to the influences of heredity and the environment, Adler argued that each person is endowed with an individual creative power which combines with innate potentialities and environmental influences to help an individual overcome the obstacles in the path of life and self-development. His Individual Psychology theory is built around the fact that although a person is born with this free creative power, the interaction of this power with hereditary and environmental influences leads an individual to choose a lifestyle. As a consequence the creative power becomes the main determinant of individual personality and through interaction with the other influences no longer remains free. His psychology is built upon the following principles: • Teleology in which he argues that the final goal provides sufficient explanatory reasons for everything a person thinks, feels or does. He therefore rejects causality and determinism. • The aggressive drive which Adler believed to be the main force for selfassertion in a person. The inferiority complex, which is the major concept from Adler’s work, has entered common parlance and found a place in current culture. According to

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Adler this is based upon a deficiency in a physical organ or sense which leads to the deficit in this area being compensated for by compensatory action to overcome this deficiency. Thus a great orator such as Demosthenes had a stutter, Beethoven had hearing problems and many artists had optical disorders which they sought to overcome. He refined this concept to argue that each person is driven to overcome feelings of inferiority, stating that ‘to be human means to be inferior’ (1932) and that every child bases his/her development on attempting to overcome feelings of inferiority. This attempt to overcome inferiority therefore led to a striving for superiority over nature and one’s fellow man and this explains the conflicts within and between different societies. Each person however strives towards superiority in a different way and this he termed style of life which provides an explanation of individual differences. This too affects our buying behaviour as we strive to overcome our sense of inferiority and one way to do this is to buy goods and services which make us feel good. In 1935 Adler developed his own typology of personality types, based upon the two guiding principles of the degree of activity in overcoming inferiority and the social interest manifest by a person. His four personality types he named: dominant, getting, avoiding and socially useful. Adler cannot be considered to be a systematic thinker as he continually changed his ideas throughout his life, moving from his concept of creative power to the aggressive drive to the inferiority complex as the driving force towards the development of personality. Nevertheless an International Association of Individual Psychology was formed in 1954 after his death and continues in existence today. Although only his concept of the inferiority complex is generally known, Adler provided some brilliant insights in his analysis of human nature and his influence upon modern psychoanalysis is probably as great as that of Freud, although less openly acknowledged. Of particular significance to our consideration of consumer behaviour is the notion of the inferiority complex which all of us suffer from and seek to overcome. Purchasing particular goods and services, to demonstrate our belonging to groups which we hold in esteem or to identify with individuals who we hold in esteem, is one way to achieve this. Thus our style of life is, according to Adler, concerned with the desire to overcome our innate self of inferiority.

JACQUES LACAN: THE WORLD AS MIRROR Since the development of psychoanalysis by Freud, critiques of this theory have been prevalent in the discourses of social theory and of Marxism.

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Indeed the intertwining of Marxist and Freudian theory as a means of understanding organisational behaviour and the distribution of power within society is a recurrent theme within many discourses. Thus for example Marcuse (1956) argues that rather than the foundations of civilisation being built upon the subjugation of human instincts in the assuagement of guilt it is instead built upon the way in which power is distributed and the consequent suppression of labour. Similarly Habermas (1971, p. 219) argues that Freudian psychoanalysis is based upon the voluntary self-deception of individuals as part of their anxiety reducing mechanisms, stating: The ongoing text of our everyday language games (speech and actions) is disturbed by apparently contingent mistakes: by omissions and distortions that can be discounted as accidents and ignored, as long as they fall within the conventional limits of tolerance.

Habermas (1971) continues this analysis by applying this criticism not just to individuals but also to organisations and argues that institutions are involved in this deception, of themselves and others, when he states: Freud comprehends institutions as a power that has exchanged acute external force for the permanent internal compulsion of distorted and self limiting communications. Correspondingly he understands cultural tradition as the collective unconscious, censured in varying measure and turned outwards, where motives that have been split off from communication are driven incessantly about and are directed by the excluded symbols into channels of substitute gratification. (p. 282)

Equally Baudrillard (1993, 1999) is critical of psychoanalysis when he states: For it is from psychoanalysis (though not only from it, of course) that this inconceivable hallucination of the individual about his own desire proceeds …. it is psychoanalysis which, at the end of the ‘psychological revolution’ of the nineteenth century, succeeded in this mad substitution of an individual psychic economy, of a libido, of one’s own desire, and the Oedipal reversals of this desire at the event come from elsewhere, for the initiatory, seductive, and fatal incidence of the other as an event without precedent, for the surprise, for the coincidence of the world and the signs that make you not a subject but a preferred object of election and seduction. (1999, pp. 138 139)

Possibly the most significant critique of psychoanalysis has been undertaken by Lacan who developed an alternative interpretation of Freudian theory which has permeated popular culture, while at the same time providing a basis for an understanding of the role of managers as individuals in the development of the semiology of corporate reporting. Lacanian interpretations incorporate both structuralist and post-structuralist arguments to extend the value of Freudian theory. Its limitations from this perspective can be encapsulated in the work of Harris (1979) who stated that the

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Freudian attempts to understand pan-human psychodynamic processes were sufficient to understand and explain the similarities but not the differences in such processes. Lacan argues that the formation of the ego is concerned with a fascination with one’s own image. For him the external world merely represents a mirror upon which the self is displayed and the concern of the individual is to create a reflection in this mirror. This reflection must of course support that person’s desire to see the most flattering reflection, but in such a way that it appears as reality. This is brought about by every person’s inherent insecurity and seeking for the ideal self (Lacan, 1977, 1988a, 1991) and thus every action which a person undertakes is derived from this motivation. It is accepted however that this motivation may not be overt and may not even be recognised by the individual him/herself. Like Freud therefore, Lacan accepts that an individual’s motivation may not be transparent even to him/herself but nevertheless that motivation becomes inseparable from the actions undertaken, and those actions have a motivation which is based upon the seeking of personal individuation. This motivation applies to every individual but some, almost inevitably, have more scope for playing out their individuation drive upon the mirror of the world. The Lacanian view of personal development can be considered to be a reinterpretation of the Oedipal model promulgated by Freud (1977) in which the focus is less upon the biological aspects of development and more upon the cultural aspects. For Lacan the sense of self arises in the child’s misrecognition of itself in the mirror stage of development (Crowther, 2002a, 2002b) and in its subsequent insertion in the symbolic order. This insertion of self into the symbolic order originates with the Oedipal crisis and this leads to the division of the subject in language and the origins of the unconscious. According to Elliott this happens because the child finds itself separated from the imaginary world of the maternal body and must learn to represent itself in a world of symbolic meaning. It is argued that this takes place, at least in part, by the acquisition of language. Lacan uses the work of Saussure (1966) to argue that language is a system of signs which refer, not to objects themselves but rather to the psychic representation created by their interplay. According to Lacan therefore the human subject is inserted into the symbolic order of language, attempting the impossible task of representing itself while being at the same time an effect of the Saussurian signifier. Saussure (1966) identified a sign as dyadic, having two sides the signifier and the signified: the signifier being the material object and the signified being its associated mental concept.

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The inseparability of these two aspects of the sign led to his diagrammatic representation (Fig. 1). Thus Saussure’s understanding of the process of communication is based upon an assumption of the transfer of mental concepts through the signs produced. One significant analysis of Saussure’s work has been undertaken by Lacan (1977) who argued that human beings are entirely enmeshed within the sign and its subjectivity, thereby making the separation of the signifier and the signified impossible. This leads to the division of the subject in language because for Lacan the unconscious is not a realm within the subject but rather an intersubjective space between people. Thus Lacan argues that the unconscious is essentially outside the subject and is produced by the subject’s insertion into the symbolic order. For him the unconscious is structured like language (Lacan, 1988b) and therefore operates in accordance with the relationships which are inherent in language. It therefore is not possible to state that the unconscious belongs to the individual but rather is correct to say that it comes to the individual from outside and is an effect of signification on the subject. Lacan bases upon this argument his understanding of unconscious desire by arguing that because the subject is divided from itself in language it is continually aware of a sense of absence. By this he means an awareness that as a subject (s)he is not fully present and he refers to this as the ‘Thing’ of the ‘lost object’. He considers that this sense of the ‘lost object’ produces in the subject a desire for something which will make good this loss, thereby creating the unconscious desire. For Lacan this unconscious desire is doomed to be unfulfilled because it is a fantasy and there is no position of completeness to which it is possible to return. Thus the subject is forever seeking to recapture an impossible position and it is this which motivates its continual identification with the subject positions which the symbolic order make available to it. Thus, according to Lacan, we are continually motivated to invest in the various subject positions of language, in our attempts to recover from our absence from them and to recover a state of completeness in self-presence.

Signified Signifier

Fig. 1.

The Saussurian Dyadic.

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For Lacan this notion of unconscious desire also explains human sexuality (Rose, 2000) and sexual identity is something which is imposed upon the subject by the presence of absence of the phallus. Sexuality and sexual differentiation is placed in the area of the ‘lost object’ with each sex being seen by the other as that which can satisfy and complete the person and recover the lost object which is the subject of continual fantasy. This is of course impossible but remains a source of continual striving. Zizek (1992) uses the metaphor of Hitchcock’s film Vertigo to explain this by considering the dual person Judy Madeleine and Scottie’s attempts to recapture the ideal person he believes existed. In reality of course there was no such person and when she is finally attained then ‘this gift of her person “is changed into a gift of shit”’ (p. 86) as the fantasy is traversed and the Other and absence of the Other are revealed at the same time. Rose (2000, p. 61) explains this by stating ‘As negative to the man, woman becomes a total object of fantasy (or an object of total fantasy), elevated into the place of the Other and made to stand for truth’. The emphasis upon sexual differentiation in Lacanian theory is based upon the importance given to the Oedipal crisis and the major role ascribed to the phallus by Lacan. For Lacan the phallus is not a biological concept but rather fulfils a symbolic function in the underpinning of culture. An example of this underpinning of culture is in the enforcement of the incest taboo. In the symbolic realm the phallus is that which established communication and representation but in the unconscious the phallus occupies a more prominent position. It represents a point of fixity which overcomes the division of the subject in language and thereby provides a position from which the subject can speak as if author of its own meaning at least it would fulfil this position if it were possible for it to be reached. Sexual differentiation is central to this process because the taking up of a position with respect to the fantasised phallus also implies making an unconscious identification with one side of the sexual divide. The position taken up is not necessarily related to the biological sex of a person and in this respect Lacan deviates significantly from Freud. It is this treatment of sexuality as distinct from biology which brought about an interest in Lacanian theory by feminist theorists. Rose (2000) argues that women’s articulation to the subject positions of gender made available in the symbolic order is constantly challenged by the unconscious. She argues however that Lacan provides a more specific identification of women’s resistance to sexual identity that of jouissance. For Lacan this does not mean the French meaning of orgasm or pleasure but rather that which is unobtainable, in other words the ‘lost object’. Rose

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suggests that woman equates with jouissance because she is that towards which man’s desire is directed. Jouissance therefore provides women with a means to resist a conventional femininity inscribed within the phallic economy and therefore an alternative space from which they can speak as themselves. Lacanian theory has been influential therefore in feminist discourses concerning identity but has not been unchallenged by such people as Irigaray. Nevertheless Lacanian theory is central to feminist studies. Another area in which Lacan’s ideas have been influential is that of cultural studies, and in particularly film studies. One of the most important developments in the subject of language approach to identity was the development of the concept of suture. This concept refers to the way in which the subject, although having no existence outside language, is repeatedly articulated within the positions made available. Thus the subject who is actually absent from language is made to appear, through the process of suture as actually its point of origin. According to Silverman (2000, p. 76) suture is ‘that moment when the subject inserts itself into the symbolic register in the guise of a signifier, and in so doing gains meaning at the expense of being’. Silverman uses the Hitchcock film Psycho to elaborate upon the concept of suture and explain its significance to film studies by showing the relationship between the speaking subject and the viewing subject as mediated by the camera acting as narrator. Although valuable to film theory the concept of suture has wider application to the subject of language approach to identity because of its utility in theorising the way in which a subject is articulated within the subject positions of language and the wider cultural codes. It can be applied not just to the production of the subject in speech acts but also to help understand the constant failure of identity as it continually appears and disappears from language and from the symbolic realm. In this respect therefore suture provides an account of the way in which the individual is articulated within the subject positions made available in language. In doing so it adds to the repertoire of concepts brought into the arena of identity using the subject of language approach, which have been derived from Lacanian theory. Lacan’s work is complex but important in the context of psychoanalysis. It is concerned primarily with the ego and with the fascination with one’s own image. Lacan argues that the external world is merely a mirror to reflect the self. This reflection becomes reality and therefore we are each seeking to see within reality the most flattering reflection and behaving in such a way as to achieve this. In this respect Lacan concurs with the other psychoanalysts we have considered in suggesting that we all suffer from inherent insecurity which drives us to search for ideal self.

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For Lacan therefore the world is a mirror which provides a reflection of ourselves. Our focus therefore is upon presenting ourselves in this mirror to best effect for ourself rather than for others. Thus it becomes important to show that we have many friends even if the friendships are perfunctory. This does not matter as we can see ourselves as being popular. Thus 86% of all posting show us as having a good time or doing something important. So 33% are sharing the information of others, especially celebrities. Presumably this makes us feel that we have some connection to those celebrities. Interestingly 5% of posting are pictures of food to show we are interesting people even with regard to the food we eat. What is clear however is that the postings are for ourselves rather than for others, as we increase our selfesteem and importance in the mirror of the world. Less than 10% of postings can realistically be considered to be information for others rather than the self. Possibly more worrying however is that many people do not seem to be fully aware that the social media are public spaces. 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. as a consequences very often we feel able to express any opinion. In doing this we have seemingly failed to realise that Facebook is a public space just like speech, and therefore subject to the same sanctions. So some people post things that they would not be willing to say in person and some can be considered to be libellous. This is fine when we are speaking for ourselves but becomes a problem because we are at the same time speaking to many others. Welcome to Facebook. First we were supposed to just have fun, have a social environment, find friends, and spend our spare times with them. But we had little capacity … here is Facebook. Where the families have been broken. Where not everybody has the capacity to deal with this media. From groundless flattery to unjustified conversations. Facebook has become the photo album of some self-fascinated who lack complements. A place for the so-called likes which don’t add to our personality or wisdom. But there are pages which introduce lots of arts and books and the like.

SCHRODINGER’S CAT AND PERFECTION In 1935 Schro¨dinger (1935) described an experiment. In it he described how it would be possible to transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box,

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wherein the cat’s life or death depended on the state of a subatomic particle which is either passed through the box or through an alternative empty box. According to Schro¨dinger, the Copenhagen interpretation6 implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened to observe the cat. Schro¨dinger’s cat has become famous as a symbol of quantum theory and as a paradox about reality. It serves as a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory of superposition and demonstrates the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behaviour of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behaviour of matter on the macroscopic level everything visible to the unaided human eye. It seems that we are like Schrodinger’s 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. Facebook is primarily for individuals but has been equally adopted by businesses who all desire to have Facebook page to present themselves in the best light. Fashion (Carter & Crowther, 2000) determines the need to be present on all social media regardless of real need while diffusion theory (Cooper & Crowther, 2008) explains this ubiquity. Equally the postings are for the self (Crowther, 2012) and demonstrate the ethics, interestingness and social responsibility of the organisation. As Baudrillard (1981) would argue Facebook is a simulacrum there is no original. The concept of Facebook has however attained a life of its own through the resurrection of the myth of its origin and authenticity. It can therefore be considered to have attained hyperreality through becoming more real than reality. As such the appearance of reality has become more important than its actuality. As Baudrillard (1996) states of the replacement of reality with simulacra: This is the story of a crime the murder of reality. And the extermination of an illusion the vital illusion of the world. The real does not disappear into illusion; it is illusion which disappears into integral reality …. Though the crime is never perfect,

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perfection, true to its name is always criminal …. But perfection is always punished: the punishment for perfection is reproduction. (pp. 1 2)

NOTES 1. Actually the number of users is estimated to exceed 1.2 billion. 2. Veblen was both an economist and a social critic, presenting a powerful critique of American capitalism which he regarded as both predatory and parasitic. As the founder of an approach which became known as Institutional Economics he concentrated not upon the factors of production as explanation for societal wealth creation, as was the norm among economists at that time, but rather upon consumption as the driving force behind economic development. He created the phrase conspicuous consumption and argued that the lifestyle of the richest part of society was based upon an overt show of wealth through their consumption and that this led to consumption of wealth being the dominant force in society as the rest of that society sought to emulate this leisured class. 3. All references to Freud’s work are based, not upon the originals works, but rather upon the standard English translations collected as the Penguin Freud Library. 4. Self-respect is of course merely a mirror of the respect of others see Lacan (1988). 5. All data about usage of Facebook is based on research conducted over several days in 2014 using members from 15 different countries. Analysis of such postings is restricted only to those six languages which the authors understand. Unsurprisingly, whatever the location of members, English is the dominant language of communication. 6. In the Copenhagen interpretation, proposed by Bohr and Heisenberg, a system stops being superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place.

REFERENCES Adler, A. (1932). Understanding human nature. London: Allen & Unwin. Baudrillard, J. (1981). For a critique of the political economy of signs. St Louis, MO: Telos. Baudrillard, J. (1993). Symbolic exchange and death (I. H. Grant, Trans.). London: Sage. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Baudrillard, J. (1996). The perfect crime (C. Turner, Trans.). London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (1999). Fatal strategies (P. Beitchman & W. G. J. Niesluchowski, Trans.). London: Pluto Press. Bettelheim, B. (1976). The uses of enchantment. London: Penguin. Bettelheim, B. (1984). Freud and man’s soul. New York, NY: Vintage.

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Carter, C., & Crowther, D. (2000). Organisational consumerism: The appropriation of packaged managerial knowledge. Management Decision, 38(9), 626 637. Cooper, S., & Crowther, D. (2008). The adoption of value-based management in large UK companies: A case for diffusion theory. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 9(3), 148 167. Crowther, D. (2002a). Psychoanalysis and auditing. In S. Clegg (Ed.), Paradoxical new directions in management and organisation theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Crowther, D. (2002b). The psychoanalysis of on-line reporting. In L. Holmes, M. Grieco, & D. Hosking (Eds.), Distributed technology, distributed leadership, distributed identity, distributed discourse: Organising in an information age. Aldershot: Ashgate. Crowther, D. (2012). A social critique of corporate reporting; semiotics and web-based integrated reporting. Farnham: Gower. Freud, S. (1975). The psychopathology of everyday life (A. Tyson, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Pelican. Freud, S. (1976). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious (A. Richards, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Pelican. Freud, S. (1977). On sexuality (A. Richards, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Pelican. Freud, S. (1984). On metapsychology (A. Richards, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Fromm, E. (1957). The art of loving. London: Unwin. Fromm, E. (1974). The anatomy of human destructiveness. London: Penguin. Fromm, E. (1980). Beyond the chains of illusion. London: Abacus. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests (J. J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Harris, M. (1979). Cultural materialism. New York, NY: Random House. Heisenberg, W. (1930). The physical principles of the quantum theory. New York, NY: Courier Dover Publications. Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). London: Tavistock. Lacan, J. (1988a). The seminars of Jacques Lacan book II: The ego in Freud’s theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis 1954 1955 (S. Tomaselli, Trans.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Lacan, J. (1988b). The seminar of Jacques Lacan book III: The psychoses 1955 56 (R. Grigg, Trans.). London: Routledge. Lacan, J. (1991). The seminars of Jacques Lacan book I: Freud’s papers on technique 1953 1954 (J. Forrester, Trans.). New York, NY: W W Norton & Co. Marcuse, H. (1956). Eros and civilisation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York, NY: McGrawHill. Rose, J. (2000). Feminine sexuality. In P. du Gay, J. Evans, & P. Redman (Eds.), Identity: A reader. London: Sage. Saussure, F. de. (1966). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Schro¨dinger, E. (1935). Die gegenwa¨rtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik. Naturwissenschaften, 23, 807 812, 823 828, 844 849. Silverman, K. (2000). Suture: The cinematic model. In P. du Gay, J. Evans, & P. Redman (Eds.), Identity: A reader (pp. 76 86). London: Sage. Veblen, T. (1899). The theory of the leisure classes. New York, NY: New American Library. Zizek, S. (1992). Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan but were afraid to ask Hitchcock. London: Verso.

THE RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP OF CORPORATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen and Øyvind Ihlen ABSTRACT Purpose The prime goal of this chapter is to discuss what the notion of rhetorical citizenship as a normative aspiration might entail for corporations. Methodology/approach The chapter draws on a pilot study of the Facebook pages of two banks. A rhetorical criticism of these pages was conducted. Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 17 37 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007003

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circumstances. The chapter is, however, built on limited data from a pilot study and needs to be complemented. Practical implications 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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Corporate institutions are often recognized for their positive contributions to society, but this subject also causes great concern relating to the ways they handle their external activities. Time and again during their existence, calls have been issued for corporate institutions to match social expectations regarding their behavior, that is, to take up corporate social responsibility (CSR) (see, e.g., Carroll, Lepartito, Post, Werhane, & Goodpaster, 2012; Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2005). Both advocates and critics have also been preoccupied with the political role of corporations; that is, the role corporations should play in societal governance and political debate. As a result, the concept of corporate citizenship (CC) has been launched. CC is used by several large corporations, notably ExxonMobil and General Electric (e.g., ExxonMobil, 2010; General Electric Company, 2010). There is also a relatively large literature surrounding the concept (see, e.g., Andriof & McIntosh, 2001; Crane & Matten, 2010; Scherer & Palazzo, 2008; Windsor, 2001). There are indications that the term has been in use since the 1950s (Waddock, 2012), but according to Crane, Matten, and Moon (2008), a landmark was reached in 2002 when a joint statement was issued at the World Economic Forum on “Global Corporate Citizenship: The Leadership Challenge for CEOs and Boards.” Here, CC was linked to corporations’ relationship with key stakeholders and the way that corporations conduct their business. Additionally, the statement called for corporate leadership on such issues.

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Despite the advances that have been made, CC remains a distinctly fuzzy and contested concept. Nonetheless, three common themes can be found in the literature: status; entitlements and responsibilities; and processes (Crane et al., 2008). We discuss these themes in the next section, before we turn to the notion of rhetorical citizenship. Rhetorical citizenship has been developed from a deliberative perspective that sees citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, which functions constitutively of civic engagement (Kock & Villadsen, 2012b). Participation and debate are crucial to being a citizen, and rhetoric is at the heart of this process. Thus, following on from the idea that society grants corporations a form of citizenry, our research question focuses on what the rhetorical citizenship of corporations would look like. We discuss this as a normative aspiration and, from an analytical perspective, how the notion can be used to evaluate the communicative practices that corporations are expected and induced by publics to engage in, not least in social media. In our discussion we draw on a pilot study of the Facebook profile pages of the largest banks in Norway and Denmark respectively. The chapter is structured as follows. We discuss the transfer of citizenship status to corporations and we devote a section to the presentation and discussion of the notion of rhetorical citizenship, before we debate how corporations might enact rhetorical citizenship. An empirical section focusing on the social media pilot study follows the theoretical discussion about rhetorical citizenship. Finally, we end the essay with a conclusion and suggestions for further research.

THE CORPORATION AS CITIZEN In an often cited article, Matten and Crane (2005) argued that CC has been used in at least three different ways. Scholars have either been adhering to a limited view of CC, an equivalent view, or an extended view of CC. The limited view is anchored in the idea that CC is a discretionary activity, often connected to philanthropy. The focus is on the strategic and economic elements in the form of long-term profit maximizing. Matten and Crane (2005), however, argued that authors applying this perspective do not really pay attention to the political element of citizenship. According to the authors, this means that the limited view of CC adds little to the literature beyond what has been said by, for instance, those using the CSR concept.

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The equivalent view, on the other hand, actually conflates CC and CSR, as the terms are being used synonymously (e.g., Carroll, 1998). Some argue that CC focuses on the consequences of a corporation’s business idea, and how corporations: [Live] up to clear constructive visions and core values consistent with those of the broader societies within which the company operates, respecting the natural environment, and treating well the entire range of stakeholder who risk capital in, have an interest in, or are linked to the firm through primary and secondary impacts. (Waddock & Googins, 2011, p. 25)

This definition is a good example of how CC and CSR is difficult to separate. Following on from Matten and Crane (2005), it is also possible to apply an extended view of CC. Such a view draws on political theories to discuss the political role played by corporations. The concept is used to describe “forms of corporate participation in societal governance … and corporate responsibilities for administering the citizenship rights of individuals” (Crane et al., 2008, p. 31). CC can be about corporations delivering public goods and services where governments cease to do so, and also for areas where the government has not assumed the task, or where it is beyond their reach. Following this extended view, CC ultimately implies that “corporations are compensating or correcting for government failure” (Matten, Crane, & Chapple, 2003, p. 116). On the other hand, problems arise as a result of corporations not setting up for these political tasks, as well as their lack of apparatus, skills, etc. Also, when corporations have taken on responsibilities, but cannot be held accountable like politicians, then CC can become an urgent problem itself (Matten et al., 2003). Many critics have alleged that when CC implies corporations are taking over public responsibilities, this is little more than an extension of neoliberal propaganda. Not only are we warned against granting corporations such a role, but critics also question how such a development is portrayed as being unavoidable (Jones & Haigh, 2007; Oosterhout, 2005). Still, Crane et al. (2008) maintain that CC is a useful lens through which to study the political role of corporations regardless of whether or not it condones developments in which corporations take over public responsibilities. According to them, CC can be used to evaluate (either positively or negatively) the political role and behavior of corporations, as it is concerned with roles and responsibilities among and between members of political communities. As corporations already form a key part of societal governance and the debate about this, CC is a valuable concept.

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As mentioned in the introduction, there are three themes that stand out in the literature on CC.

Status CC can be used to refer to the legal status of a corporation, something that has been discussed in law for many years (see, e.g., Green, 1946). Corporations can be seen as citizens that work and participate in society, and this also highlights that the corporation is a social enterprise. The use of the citizen metaphor has, however, drawn a lot of criticism. First, it can be pointed out that corporations do not vote or sit in juries, and therefore the citizenship status is distinctly different from that of individual citizens. Second, using the citizenship metaphor conjures up images of the “good guy” rubbing shoulders with his neighbor (Crane et al., 2008). This tends to mask the huge differences between citizens and business, for example, in terms of resources. Third, critics charge that CC is really an instrumental and self-interested concept given the restricted economic rationality of corporations. Citizenship for corporations is thus distinctly different from that of individual citizens (Leitch & Motion, 2011; Oosterhout, 2005). As stated by Fleming and Jones (2013): it is simply not in the interests of corporations to be democratically accountable to all stakeholders … corporate citizenship initiatives reveal themselves as public relations campaigns designed primarily to enhance or protect the market value of the firm. (pp. 48 49)

The latter authors advocate a more “realistic political economy” (p. 49) for analyzing corporations and their CC activities. Fourth, a basic democratic idea is that people as citizens should be running the state. If corporations are considered as citizens too, this by implication means the corporations are considered to be above the state. Critics thus argue that CC gives corporations an undeserved position (Bakan, 2004; Leitch & Motion, 2011; Matten et al., 2003).

Entitlements (and Responsibilities) With the status as a citizen come certain rights and responsibilities. CC is in fact sometimes seen as the way that a corporation “sees or

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recaptures it’s rightful place in society, next to other ‘citizens’” (Matten et al., 2003, p. 111). Citizenship involves civil, political, and social rights, to which modern political theory has also added cultural, human, and ecological rights. Additionally, citizenship in the Aristotelian sense not only comprises “the right to vote or hold office, but also as a contribution to personal development and to societal flourishing” (Crane et al., 2008, p. 35). All in all, however, the debate about CC often centers on what might be the appropriate mix between the rights and responsibilities of corporations following citizenship status. In most juridical systems, corporations are, for example, allowed to lobby for changes (or status quo) to public policy, or speak out when they feel their interests are endangered. The question that is left open to debate is whether there are “legitimate grounds for ascribing specific rights to corporations” (Crane & Matten, 2005, p. 684).

Process of Political Participation Drawing on political theory, it has been argued that three participatory models can be discerned that might be applicable to corporations, and that corporations might fit into these three modes of citizenship if they meet certain criteria tied to processes of governance (Moon, Crane, & Matten, 2005). (a) Civic republicanism This sees citizenship as participation in a community, including obligations toward the public good and toward government. Business could be a partner to civil society actors, and corporations should engage in societal governance, since corporations represent aggregates of human interests. (b) Developmental democracy This concept sees citizenship as a “dense network of interpersonal relations in society for individual and social flourishing” (Moon et al., 2005, p. 447). This calls for “corporate involvement with all stakeholders,” and alignment between profit and contribution to social development. The normative basis can be found in the perspective of how there exists “reciprocal ties between corporations and civil society” (Moon et al., 2005, p. 447).

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(c) Deliberative democracy The final aspect sees citizenship as “free deliberation over public decisions in a community” (Moon et al., 2005, p. 447). Citizens participate directly in problem solving and corporations can enable or open up a development toward a stakeholder democracy. The use of the citizenship metaphor for corporations is conditioned on corporate selfrestraint and the existence of arenas for free and fair deliberation. Again, much of the aforementioned criticism can be repeated concerning corporate participation in political processes. For instance, the idea that corporations can behave in self-restrained ways runs counter to the view that, given how constrained corporate rationality is, economic considerations will always trump other considerations. In sum, we would like to leave the ontological discussion (corporations are citizens), and instead focus on the qualities of CC as a metaphor. The metaphor might well be accused of hiding resource differences, for instance, but it also helps to focus on the social embeddedness of the corporation, and the close reciprocal relations to society, even if these are of a different kind than the relations held by individual citizens. Our willingness to use the metaphor stems not least from our interest in bringing in the conceptual frame of rhetorical citizenship to discuss communicative responsibilities. It underscores how communication is not a conduit for information about CSR, but is in itself a constitutive practice of CSR.

RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP AS A CONCEPTUAL FRAME As a term, rhetorical citizenship underscores that rhetoric is a medium for enacting citizenship. It basically advances the thought that we do things with words to paraphrase Austin (1975) also civic things, and that expressing views and opinions, and attending to those of others are constitutive acts of citizenship, not something that precedes “real” civic action. We speak with our neighbor about the local school plan or watch a TV debate on fighting drugs, and by means of symbols, we thus constitute engagement in the formation of both public opinions and identities. While one might say that a discursively oriented notion of citizenship is commonplace an idea as old as democracy it is only recently that

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scholars have begun using the term “rhetorical citizenship.” It was coined by scholars of rhetoric Villadsen and Kock (2008) in relation to crossdisciplinary discussions of deliberative democracy (see also Kock & Villadsen, 2012b). While a liberal view of citizenship focuses on the freedoms and rights of the individual, Villadsen and Kock aim to reintroduce a republican view of citizenship, with roots going back to ancient Greece and republican Rome. Citizenship in such a republican view is not just freedoms and rights, but also a discursive phenomenon. Democracy is indeed realized through communication. Drawing on rhetorical thinkers such as Isocrates and Kenneth Burke, Villadsen and Kock (2008) stress that we use symbols to induce cooperation, to reach decisions and compromises, and thus build and sustain societies. The practice of rhetoric, they argue, is the foundation of citizens’ participation in the political side of civic life. According to Kock and Villadsen (2013), rhetorical citizenship is not to be understood as a concept, but as “a conceptual frame” for studying how citizenship is enacted discursively. This study of rhetorical citizenship involves both a descriptive and a normative perspective. From a descriptive perspective, it encourages empirical studies of how, by whom, where, why, and under what circumstances contemporary rhetorical citizenship is enacted. Within rhetorical studies, such analyses are likely to relate to questions of rhetorical agency (Gunn & Cloud, 2010; Hoff-Clausen, 2013b), public modalities (Brouwer & Asen, 2010), the emergence of publics and counter-publics (Fraser, 1992; Hauser, 1999), and the forms and norms of deliberation, which are, in practice, often far removed from the ideals of rational argumentation advanced in political science (Kock & Villadsen, 2012a). Rhetoric, it should be noted, is conceived here in an Aristotelian sense as the art of practical discourse on public issues of which we have no given truths, but must make informed judgments. In classical rhetoric, three well-known genres of speech prevailed: the deliberative speeches weighing for and against decisions on what to do in the future; the forensic speeches weighing for and against verdicts on someone’s guilt; and the epideictic speeches negotiating the collective view on what was or was not praiseworthy (e.g., Aristotle, 2007; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969/ 1971). Today, scholars of rhetoric generally subscribe to a pluralistic view of public deliberation and participation. This is reflected in the aforementioned anthology, including the essays “Deliberation as Behaviour in Public” (Tatarchevskiy, 2012), and “Satire as Rhetorical Citizenship”

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(Hansen, 2012), as well as in Public Modalities, where Brouwer and Asen (2010) search for a way of descriptively embracing public expressions that range from presidential speeches to the politics of tattoos. One may thus engage in contemporary rhetorical citizenship in numerous ways and still contribute to what Gerard Hauser (1998, 1999, 2007) calls the vernacular dialogue through which public opinions are formed. From a normative perspective, the notion of rhetorical citizenship encourages theoretical reflection on, and critical assessment of, discursive enactments of citizenship. As a conceptual frame, its purpose is essentially critical rather than instrumental. Rhetorical citizenship is more about contributing to society-building than about ensuring persuasion, and as Kock and Villadsen (2012a, p. 7) put it, the term “rhetorical citizenship” positively values notions of empowerment, inclusivity, and discourse ethics. With the notion of rhetorical citizenship, the key question becomes the degree to which rhetoric furthers constructive civic interaction. Does the rhetoric shut off debate regarding a political issue, for instance? Does the rhetoric exclude some participants while privileging others? Does the rhetoric build or undermine public trust? Adding to a normative perspective on rhetorical citizenship, we might look to Danielle Allen (2006), who draws on Aristotle in saying that “the central virtue of citizenship, then, is a midway point between acquiescence and domination” (p. 121). This ability to act “with propriety” toward strangers is a virtue that Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics (1996), likens to an attitude of friendship: a form of political, or we might say professional, friendship which does not involve the same emotions as a personal friendship, but the same core practices and an essential commitment to equality. Friends routinely negotiate conflicting desires and the attendant disappointments, and this is what citizenship is also about: negotiating conflicting desires with democratic equals. Friends do not do so from an altruistic standpoint (often seen as the opposite of self-interest), but from what Allen calls equitable self-interest: Friends know that if we always act according to our own interests in an unrestrained fashion, our friendships will not last very long. Friendship teaches us when and where to moderate our interests for our own sake. In short, friendship solves the problem of rivalrous self-interest by converting it into equitable self-interest, where each friend moderates her own interests for the sake of preserving the relationship. (2006, p. 126)

The comparison with friendship teaches us how to solve the problem of rivalrous desire, which is “the basic problem of any human collectivity” (Allen, 2006, p. 126). It tells us that citizenship often involves sacrifices of

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our own interests for the sake of more valuable relationships with others. Hence, in Allen’s interpretation, the building and preservation of social capital appears to be at the heart of enacting citizenship (see, e.g., Baron, Field, & Schuller, 2000; Putnam, 2000).

CORPORATIONS AS RHETORICAL CITIZENS? As already indicated, the transfer of citizenship status to corporations is problematic for a number of reasons. Nonetheless, we find it worthwhile exploring rhetorical citizenship as a conceptual frame in which to discuss the corporation’s role and the ways that corporations communicate in society. We suggest that while corporations are assuredly entities very different from the individual citizens who possess civil, social, and political rights that do not directly apply to corporations rhetorical citizenship is nevertheless a suggestive and constructive metaphor for corporations to communicate by. It is well-known that metaphors are implied comparisons “between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common” (Corbett & Connors, 1999, p. 396). They are figures of speech lending “liveliness” to our expression and clearness to our thoughts as we are encouraged to see one thing in a transferred sense of the other (Aristotle, 2007). What is more, metaphors are powerful tools of thought directing our actions. In Metaphors We Think By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980/1981) point our attention to the many conceptual metaphors that pervade our everyday language, carry certain sets of expectations and, often unconsciously, direct our actions. Within the field of management studies, Mats Alvesson and Andre´ Spicer continued this work with their book Metaphors We Lead By (2011) about metaphors in an organizational context. Here they describe the main metaphors through which we understand and conduct leadership. These are specific works reminding us of the pedagogical and constructive potential of metaphors. Metaphors may help us grasp an idea promptly, conceive it in a certain way, and act accordingly. We suggest that “rhetorical citizenship” is a constructive metaphor for corporations to communicate by. A corporation is not literally a citizen, but a corporation does, like a citizen, form part of a political and social collective that depends on the corporation, and on which the corporation depends. As a metaphor, citizenship highlights this close interdependence,

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and the responsibilities and rights we may conceive as following from it, as discussed in the previous section. Adding rhetorical to the metaphor of citizenship emphasizes that corporations’ responsibilities and rights also apply to the way they communicate. At the most basic level, it is a metaphor with a normative content that encourages the corporation to carry out its rhetorical activities with consideration for the public good. It emphasizes that a corporation is not an island, and that whenever a corporation communicates, it contributes, for better or worse, to the development of a larger collective: a national as well as an international society. Symbolic action is not only instrumental, but constitutive (e.g., Charland, 1987). By engaging in communication, we subject individuals and groups (as well as organizations and other collective agents) to certain positions, and take part in a discursive renegotiation of their identities. As such, we take part in forming our shared social reality. Corporations are powerful rhetorical agents in society, and hold a significant social responsibility as to what, when, where, with whom, and how they do or do not communicate. Drawing on rhetorical citizenship as a conceptual frame, the key to assuming this responsibility lies in considering corporate symbolic actions in terms of the empowerment, inclusivity, and discourse ethics they promote, in relation to what is in the public interest. Traditionally, the practice of public relations focuses on cultivating the image and reputation the symbolic capital of corporations. Corporations that aspire to enact rhetorical citizenship should, however, also be highly aware of the bearing their corporate rhetoric has on public trust and social capital in society (see, e.g., Hoff-Clausen, 2013b; Ihlen, 2005, 2009). Institutional trust, including public trust in business, is an important dimension of social capital, and essential to a well-functioning democracy (Svendsen & Svendsen, 2006). Trust is formed not least by analogies of social experiences with specific members of certain groups or categories (e.g., Govier, 1997; Putnam, 2000), and hence every corporation contributes to the formation of public trust in business (Bentele & Nothhaft, 2011). The Edelman Trust Barometer shows how trust in business is declining, and furthermore, that the ways of building trust in business are changing. What this survey suggests is that it will no longer be consistent financial returns, innovative products, and regard for senior leadership that primarily will drive trust in business in the future. Rather, the primary factors will be “listening to customer feedback and putting customers ahead of profits” (Edelman Trust Barometer, 2012, n.p.). Rhetorical citizen is a constructive metaphor in this respect.

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In discussing rhetorical citizenship, Kock and Villadsen (2013) quote Thomas Farrell (1999) for emphasizing that the practice of rhetoric is also about being an audience, that is, listening. Farrell stresses that rhetoric … is the entire process of forming, expressing, and judging public thought in real life [and includes] the condition of being a rhetorical audience. This is a condition in which we are called to exert our own critical capacities to a maximum extent. We have to decide quite literally what sort of public persons we wish to be. (1999, p. 96)

Transferred to the context of this chapter, the question would be: What kind of public corporation does a company want to be? Kock and Villadsen (2013) thus distinguish between the crossing dimensions of having rights/responsibilities and being active/passive-receptive, that is, expressing oneself/attending to others in the practice of rhetoric. Applying this framework to corporations, it could be argued that corporations are entitled to voice their opinions, and that they have a responsibility to use rhetoric responsibly; that corporations have the right to expect to get information and reasons for, for instance, policy issues, but also that corporations have a duty to listen to the arguments from others. While we explore the potential for corporate enactments of rhetorical citizenship, we must keep in mind that one argument against the notion of corporate citizenship is that it is an instrumental perspective (Fleming & Jones, 2013; Matten et al., 2003), and that corporate institutions have an in-built economic rationality. Some critics point to how profit is (and will always be) the overarching motive of corporations, which leads them to seek to externalize costs wherever possible. Corporations have a very limited economicsbased rationality, and it would be naı¨ ve to believe that they could liberate themselves from this, as it is ingrained in the capitalist system the corporations comprise. In a scathingly critical book, Bakan (2004) calls the corporation a pathological institution that follows its own interest regardless of the negative consequences thus created for others; the market needs rules, regulations, and international standards to keep corporations in check. While it has been argued that the business argument will work for the CSR agenda, detractors believe that pressure brought upon corporations by the public, the media, or NGOs is not sufficient. The problem is in fact systemic. At the same time, few parties would argue that corporations should not engage in dialogue with their stakeholders. Instead, critics point to the corporation’s potential for learning and development (Burchell & Cook, 2008; Gergen, Gerne, & Barrett, 2004). In this chapter, we mainly focus on whether the notion of rhetorical citizenship can function positively from a civic perspective.

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ENACTMENTS OF RHETORICAL CITIZENSHIP IN SOCIAL MEDIA In this part of the chapter, we turn to a pilot study of the corporate rhetoric of the largest bank in Norway (DnB) and the largest bank in Denmark (Danske Bank). The pilot study was conducted in the spring of 2013, and focused on the Facebook profile pages of the two banks. Social media should be a good laboratory to investigate the notion of rhetorical citizenship, as it offers a huge potential for dialogue with relevant publics. It could also be said that social media breaks down the traditional media logic to some extent (Schultz, Utz, & Go¨ritz, 2011), and that it allows direct engagement between those concerned with issues of corporate social responsibility. Social media thus has the potential to shift control and influence, and impact conceptions of rhetorical citizenship. A random week was selected (week 15) where it was likely that everyday rhetorical activities would be observed, as opposed to the more atypical activities (for instance, during crisis). The activities were followed and documented with notes and screenshots from day-to-day, and hour-to-hour if needed. The main approach was conceptually oriented rhetorical criticism (Jasinski, 2001), initiating a first exploration of how rhetorical citizenship might be said to be enacted, or not, by the banks on the corporate profile pages. A cursory analysis of the posts started by DnB and Danske Bank indicated that five categories dominated: • Information about a new product/service: “We have improved our app so that your balance and last transactions will pop up immediately when you log in”; • Information about technical problems/solutions: “Our telephone system is now working again”; • Competitions and promotional campaigns: “As a DnB customer you are entitled to a ticket presale to this concert”; • Consumer tips and invitations to seminars led by advisors from the bank on topics like “Women and economy”; • Sponsorship and CSR-activity messages: “Today is the DNB Sports Day, get your local sports club to join.” Without attempting to quantify, we would argue that most of the posts are either related to technical or marketing issues, that is, regular customer services. However, while no specific CSR issues were at stake for Danske

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Bank during the week of the pilot study, the bank did post about current CSR activities such as their support for the environmental campaign Earth Hour and employees’ fundraising for humanitarian aid. On the page of DnB, there were examples of issues closely related to CSR. On March 23, 2013, DnB was convicted by the Norwegian Supreme Court of marketing certain saving products. The court concluded that the bank had not informed its customers about the risks involved in these particular products. On April 3, 2013, a press release was issued, and the Facebook page had its first of several posts about the verdict. It was declared that the bank would “rectify the situation as soon as possible in accordance with the verdict” and start to pay back its customers. The post had 249 “Likes” and over 60 comments by far the most on the page. Information about how customers could file claims was issued in later posts. Interestingly, no attempt was made at defending itself through criticism of the verdict. On both of the banks’ pages, customers can comment on the posts by the bank, but are also free to post their own messages. Again, a cursory analysis indicated that the latter fell into five categories, many of them mirroring the categories of the posts started by the banks: • Technical difficulties with services: “I cannot use your app, I am told that my phone is jailbreaked”; • Criticism of specific services: “the employee in location X was grumpy and unhelpful”; • Question about services: “I have ordered a card, when will I get it?”; • Praise for services: “I love your new app showing the balance”; • Comments on role/CSR: “You are no better than the mafia.” The banks did not attempt to censor negative messages, which remain in the public and sometimes generate more negative messages from other disgruntled customers. The only post that was observed to be deleted was one recommending a rival bank, and occurred in a subcategory of “Comments on role/CSR,” which we may name leave-taking: “Dear Danske Bank. Finally I’ve replaced you by a responsible bank that is not cheating the tax payers.” Some leave-taking posts occurred on the Danske Bank page during the week of study. So, do these activities constitute civic engagement? May we speak of corporate enactments of rhetorical citizenship taking place here? Looking at the rhetorical activities as tentatively categorized here, it may seem for the most part that what is enacted is plain marketing and customer service, not rhetorical citizenship. However, this is not how we conceive it. We argue that by being actively present on a Facebook profile page posting,

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receiving comments, and replying these banks are enacting a form of rhetorical citizenship. Through active presence, they make themselves visible, accessible, and involved in a public sphere where public opinions are being formed through vernacular discourse (Hauser, 1999, 2007). We consider the corporate Facebook pages public, as most can be accessed and seen by all, including nonusers of the social network site. The banks assume a communicative right to address various networked publics on issues relevant to them. More importantly, the banks exercise a responsibility to listen to the views and arguments of others, customers and noncustomers alike. Relating to Matten et al.’s (2003) extended view of corporate citizenship, we might say that the banks help facilitate the enactment of individual citizens’ political rights. The banks grant rhetorical opportunities to individuals to publicly approach the corporation with comments, questions, and opinions, and they prove willing to engage in a public exchange of views that takes place on a platform which is not of their own design. Furthermore, they let individual users debate with other users on the corporate page. While many help-desk questions are being posed, we do consistently see rhetoric of public relevance, not least what we consider epideictic utterances. The users praise or blame the bank, laud or criticize their services and their role in society, and this epideictic rhetoric is important in the negotiation of our common values, which in turn are the basis of political decisions (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969/1971). Epideictic utterances negotiate what we might rightfully expect of corporations, both as customers who focus on private interests, and as citizens who worry about public interests. Thus, we argue, the profile pages of the banks, as we see them managed in our pilot study, are a positive contribution to constructive civic interaction, and a form a rhetorical citizenship being enacted. However, it is certainly not our intention to glorify the banks for having an active Facebook page. Indeed, one might say that their presence on Facebook is not a question of choice, but of necessity. It is expected by the public: partly because of the development in social media, partly because of increased public expectations that corporations listen to their customers and make their business transparent. Furthermore, when all your competitors are on Facebook, it induces you to look into this option too. The type of corporation that we researched financial institutions was also heavily impacted by the credit crunch. So, no matter what the most important driving factor may be, active public engagement on Facebook, for instance, has become hard to pass by. Corporations are being called upon to fulfill the role of the rhetorical citizen.

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Furthermore, we are not blind to the possibility that corporations’ active presence on Facebook may have a detrimental effect on society. There are obvious issues concerning digital divides, Facebook’s dominant position, the corporatization of the Internet, and unethical strategic “friendliness,” among other things, for critics to keep an eye on. Concerning the latter, one of the banks studied, Danske Bank, has previously invited the public to engage in dialogue on the bank and the financial crisis, but without really allowing the participants to debate after all. Following this, it has been argued that acts of public listening will often demand some citizenly “sacrifice of control” on the part of corporations; a sacrifice not all organizations will be willing or able to make (Hoff-Clausen, 2013b). Rhetorical citizenship for corporations or as we might also call it, communicative CSR must entail organizational responsiveness to public praise and blame, not just “lending an ear” to it. There is a great deal of difference between the two, and only the former will contribute to the building of trust and social capital in the long run. Only the former enacts the equitable, not rivalrous, self-interest that we, drawing on Allen (2006), conceive to be at the heart of citizenship. We should thus question how deep discursive enactments of corporate citizenship run: Is the openness to the public, for instance, only apparent in organizational reality, or is it actually rooted there? On both pages studied in the pilot study, it is also evident that the banks have cultivated a particular “tone of voice” in posts and replies, one that is seemingly meant to be colloquial and nonaggressive. The upbeat replies are signed with first names only, and littered with smileys and greetings (“have a great day!”). In a slogan, it is the cheerful corporation that steps forward here. The cheerfulness of the banks’ posts can be read as a strategy to cope with criticism, while at the same time being an adherence to a norm of discourse in social media derived from private settings; one that encourages personal, informal, and “authentic” expressions (Hoff-Clausen, 2013a; Marwick & Boyd, 2011). The banking industry has long struggled with a reputation as being arrogant and greedy, as some of the inflammatory posts on the Facebook page illustrate: DnB practices usury. Artificially high interest rates on mortgage are meant to finance losses after criminal acts, fat cat paychecks for management, unnecessary luxury buildings, and fancy art. It is not improved by rudeness and arrogance.

Similar posts are found on the page of Danske Bank. In contrast to the reputed arrogance of banks, the posts from the banks advance an open, cheerful, and more welcoming attitude. Criticism is met with positive

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comments, regret is expressed, and apologies are issued frequently. This pattern is consistent with findings from other studies as well (Høstbjør, 2012). We do question whether this appeal to a more “private friend-like,” noninstitutional ethos is in fact a viable and ethical strategy for a corporation. For instance, what happens when the informal, upbeat, cheerful persona cultivated by the first-name only junior staff that services the Facebook page experiences crises? How does it affect discussions of public importance that congenial personae “just like you” are placed in front of businesses essentially led by boards of directors? What does it do to the public trust in business? The mentioned verdict is a case in point that calls for management to step forward. 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.

CONCLUSION 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. It underscores that CSR is not just something to be communicated, but that 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 (e.g., Ihlen, Bartlett, & May, 2011). Communication in itself should be turned into an area for CSR. Furthermore, we suggest from our pilot study that the active engagement of corporations on Facebook 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 banks in our study are visible, accessible, and engaged on Facebook, a public space where vernacular meaning-formation takes place. The banks thus facilitate the rhetorical citizenship of Facebook users, who are provided access and an opportunity to communicate with the bank in public. The rhetoric relevant to society is to a large extent epidictic, as the

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users can laud or criticize the services of the banks and their role in society. Not least due to the networked audiences, the exchanges between businesses and people on Facebook are submitted to constant public scrutiny, and thus in a sense, the corporations engaging in dialogue here are constantly forced to ask themselves: What kind of public corporations do they want to be? However, we should be aware of how deep such discursive enactments of citizenship run, and whether the rhetorical activities are rooted in organizational reality or serve as mere external displays of concern for the public good. In the long run, the latter will only hurt our social capital, as well as the symbolic capital of the corporation.

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DEAR BRANDS OF THE WORLD: CSR AND THE SOCIAL MEDIA Massimiliano Di Bitetto, Salvatore Pettineo and Paolo D’Anselmi ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach The framework of this study will make a reference to the theory of socio-technological media de Kerckhove and Pierre Le´vy, 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 ‘koine`’ of multinational brands to address government effectiveness. The names of multinational companies are the same all over the world, like the ‘Koine’

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 39 61 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007004

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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. Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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.

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Practical implications 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-a`-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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Social media are relevant to mainstream CSR as they represent the voice of the various stakeholders with regards to corporations, the ‘global brands’.

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Consumers exercise leverage over corporations, which are thus subject to international competition. Governments, public administration and monopolies, however, are not subject to international competition and are irresponsible towards the public, which is unable to use social media to leverage these local institutions. Citizens endure their own battles without getting attention from other parts of the world through the social media: if I complain about Ikea, many in the world will join in; if I complain about the Ulan Bator Transport Authority, nobody outside Mongolia thinks it matters. How can we leverage the global media to monitor governments? In brief, we propose a covenant between consumers and corporations against the irresponsibility of governments. Social media could contribute to cultural changes and generate awareness among all stakeholder citizens that governments are worse than corporations. Our theoretical points are the following: 1. The effectiveness of collective action through the social media is tied to general CSR culture, that is corporations are bad. That is why social media maintain CSR control over the brands of the world. 2. Currently, CSR does not focus on governments. 3. Governments should be accountable just as corporations are; however, they are socially responsible only on paper. 4. Governments can be monitored through social media and branded corporations, which represent a global koine´, a common language. This is why we want to enlist the corporations in getting governments under control. 5. Our title ‘dear global brands’ implies a dialogue with corporations: ‘We consumers, citizens and workers subject to competition grant that you corporations are better than the governments and can help us get the governments under control’. 6. The mechanism by which brands can be involved is similar to what is already done through ethical investment when investors do not buy stocks in arms makers because governments oppress their peoples with those arms. Investors ‘punish’ the corporations instead of the governments. This theoretical work will be based on the socio-technological theory on media of de Kerckhove (2011) and Pierre Le´vy (1994), and on a literature survey of citizen activism through the social media to answer the question: new media, new message?

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The Object of Our Research: Social Media Stakeholdership Vis-a`-Vis Public Administration 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. We propose a covenant between consumers/taxpayers in order to extend the CSR to governments and public administration.

Why It Is Important: Governments Are More Irresponsible than Corporations The past few years have witnessed the simultaneous development of the anti-globalisation movement, shareholder activism and corporate governance reform. This trend has cultivated a climate of defiance toward businesses, which has only been exemplified by recent accounting scandals. Perhaps in response to this growing suspicion, some leading companies have openly profiled themselves as socially responsible. For instance, British Petroleum underlined its commitment to the natural environment by changing its name to Beyond Petroleum. BP is manufacturing better and advanced products enabling the material transition to a lower carbon future (Branding Advertising Public Relations History: Green BP). Similarly, Nike advertises its commitment to adopting ‘responsible business practices that contribute to profitable and sustainable growth’ and CocaCola has moved to expense stock options for top management as part of its commitment to responsible governance (Maignan & Ferrell, 2004). Nike Inc. is part of an alliance called Climate Savers. Initiated by WWF in 1999, the Climate Savers programme now counts 30 member companies, including Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Nike, Hewlett Packard, The Collins Companies, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, Sagawa, Sony, Tetra Pak, Lafarge, Catalyst, Novo Nordisk and Nokia Siemens Networks (PR Newswire, 2013).

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This is because consumer demand for more responsibility on the part of corporations has become more insistent thanks to the availability of the Internet. The Web has allowed activists to reach millions of people free of charge and explore the problems from the bottom up. Through the Internet, and especially the social media, information is diffused and interest groups are created aiming at responsible consumption. Research conducted by CONE Communications of 10,000 consumers in 10 countries worldwide revealed that online CSR is experiencing renewed attention. CONE Communications is a public relations and marketing agency in the United States. It is the national leader in corporate social responsibility and cause marketing, and has over three decades of experience in brand communications. Echo. This CSR Study, a follow-up to the 2011 global survey of consumer attitudes, perceptions and behaviours around CSR, was conducted by CONE Communications and Echo Research. 93% of those interviewed declared that they are happier to patronise a company that is socially responsible, and 87% take into consideration the way a company behaves before acquiring its products. Nine out of ten people indicated readiness to boycott socially irresponsible companies, in particular where it concerns the environment and human rights. Additionally, 62% of those interviewed use social media for information concerning the politics of corporate social responsibility of those companies whose products they buy. Information concerning the level of responsibility of a company, boycotts or incentives to buy a certain brand is all found online (CONE releases the 2013).

What Others Have Said of It and Their Relevance to What We Have to Say: Many Monitor Corporations, Hardly Anybody Monitors Public Administration This enthusiasm for corporate social responsibility has accompanied the growth of online activism. There are many factors that make the Internet attractive for campaigning: its speed of transmission, its capability to reach an enormous number of users both globally and locally, low publishing costs and 24 hour access. The Internet is an important alternative source of information to official and mainstream media, and a powerful means of connection outside of mainstream institutions. It is truly a mass medium, enabling individuals worldwide to share information and converse. Online activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media (especially Twitter and Facebook, YouTube, e-mail and

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podcasts) for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience. A very active form of online activism concerns multinationals (Economist, 2013). The pressure that can be exerted on multinationals through the web is not restricted to organised groups of citizens. Any single consumer can make use of the inter-connectedness afforded by the Internet. In fact, the following are three historical cases, which effectively demonstrate how big corporations are constantly being monitored by the users of the web. The first deals with the bicycle locks produced by the famous company, Kryptonite. A customer discovered that these could be easily opened with a simple ballpoint pen and diffused this technique on his blog. This information was quickly shared by readers and it spread rapidly in discussion forums frequented by bicyclists and motorcyclists. Kryptonite immediately denied this information by publishing a communique´ on its site in order to forestall damage to its image but the blogger then published a video demonstrating how to open the locks. Faced with this video proof, Kryptonite had to abandon its defensive stance and act responsibly by admitting the existence of a factory defect in some models and offering to exchange a good lock for the defective one free of charge. The second case has to do with a defect that was discovered in the batteries of the first iPods. Here, too, a particular marketing niche was shaken by information passed by various inter-connected blogs. Several thousands of consumers who had bought the iPod organised themselves and filed a class action suit against Apple for defective batteries that ran down too quickly. This episode is significant because the initiative started from the bottom, from a few individual iPod owners who shared the existence of the defect on their blogs and, thanks to the capacity of the web, were able to contact and exchange information with ever greater numbers of people who owned iPods with very little autonomy thus culminating in the understanding that it was not a question of a few isolated cases. The numbers ended up being so high that it became clear that the defect concerned all iPods and in the end, 12,000 Apple customers succeeded in communicating with each other and obtaining a reimbursement from the company. The last case has to do with certain CDs produced by Sony. In order to prohibit illegal copies, Sony installed software that, unfortunately, acted like a virus when the CD was inserted in a computer, putting the computer itself at risk. It was an American engineer who discovered this problem and published the technical details in his blog. As in the two preceding cases,

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the information rapidly spread from blog to blog and Sony was forced to recall the defective CDs. The following are two more examples of what we call ‘Viral Class Action’. The term ‘viral’ or ‘virtual’ class action is often used in reference to John True et al. (Superior Court of the State of California) in which Honda settled a class action lawsuit that provided Civic hybrid drivers the option to get either a discount off the purchase of a new Honda or a cash payout if they could prove that they complained about the mileage problem to Honda (Superior Court of the State of California). One class member, who thought that the class settlement was unfair, opted out of the settlement and went ‘viral’. She filed a small claims court action and turned to social media to encourage others to do the same. She set up a Web site, opened a Twitter account, and posted a video on YouTube to share information about what is now called a ‘small-claims flash mob’ case, establishing a new precedent for righting the wrongs toward the public and opening the floodgates for small claims lawsuits. Another example of a ‘viral’ class action can be seen in a recent wave of small claims court cases filed against AT&T. After one individual successfully sued AT&T in small claims court over the speed throttling of his unlimited data plan, many more followed. This surge of small claims against AT&T was driven not by a disgruntled class member as it was in the Honda case but by an Internet startup that posted a blog entry claiming to have created a successful step-by-step blueprint for any qualifying individual to sue the company for alleged data throttling (American Bar Association, 2012).

Possible Effects of Our Hypotheses: Generating Global Demand for Accountability from Public Administration Ethical consumerism has evolved over the last 40 years from an almost exclusive focus on environmental issues to a concept that more broadly incorporates matters of conscience. During this same period we have witnessed a growing debate about the importance of ethical consumerism and, particularly, the impact large-scale strategies have on consumer awareness and spending. This phenomenon has intensified in recent years thanks to the advent of the Web. Political consumerism comes in different forms. Citizens boycott to express political sentiment, and they boycott or use labelling schemes to support corporations that represent values environmentalism, fair trade and sustainable development, for example that they

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support. Especially young people, though not only, are activists on the Internet, participating in Internet campaigns and using it to voice their individual opinions regarding the consumer society and transnational corporations (Devinney, Auger, Eckhardt, & Birtchnell, 2006; Guardian, 2013). Big corporations are always under scrutiny and must act responsibly in order not to become the target of these initiatives. Consumers are more willing to buy from companies with a reputation for environmental and social responsibility. More businesses have understood this and are, in fact, putting into practice the effective use of labels, packaging claims and other means to inform consumers about the environmental credentials of their products and services. PepsiCo was the first company in the world to put carbon labels on their packaging. It did so to signal to consumers not only that the company had measured the carbon footprint of one of its best-selling products, but also that it was committed to reducing the embedded carbon of that product within two years. It did this in collaboration with the UK Carbon Trust (Business for Social Responsibility, 2008). It is these same consumers, geographically dispersed and unacquainted, that put their skills and knowledge together to explore all sides of an issue, publishing on the Internet and linking their sites, correcting each other’s errors and sharing analyses and solutions to problems in an extremely rapid cycle of information, which can become a planetary conversation. All this is so efficient as to succeed in calling into question the reputation of a multinational. It is not just the blogs but all social media that create a mechanism to influence and control large corporations sufficiently to force them to engage in responsible behaviour. Our use of the term social media includes social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn), blogs (Wordpress, Blogspot), wiki (Wikipedia), microblogs (Twitter) and sites with user-generated content (YouTube).

This Chapter This chapter consists of three parts. In the first part we have introduced the issue. The key words are ‘citizenship’ and ‘online activism’. We have demonstrated that there is a strong focus on global brands by citizens/consumers around the world. We will analyse how this demand for accountability is not extended to governments, the public administration. We analyse the reasons why citizens/consumers feel they do not have to aim

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their actions at controlling governments (which, at the global level, are implemented through the internet and social media). The key words are: ‘monitoring and control’ and ‘irresponsibility of governments’. Finally, we will try to formulate a proposal on the basis of which an alliance can be created between the global brands and consumers/citizens who pay taxes. We will show, in fact, that governments are more irresponsible than corporations. Social responsibility is not exclusive to the private sector but must become important also in the public sector around the world. To do this, an alliance is necessary between citizens and Brands. The key words are: ‘unknown stakeholder’ and ‘demand of accountability’.

MATERIALS AND METHOD Literature Review The effects of firms collaborating with social movements to influence the practices of other companies, industries or countries have received little attention from researchers. The theme of web citizen activism has been addressed across multiple locations and in different ways, from different angles. There are economic, political, sociological and anthropological analyses. Almost all the topics that relate to this concept, however, consider the issue from a macro perspective. For example, the study of the change in climate communication has become an important research field. As stakeholders such as scientists, politicians, corporations or NGOs increasingly turn to the Internet and social media to provide information and mobilise support, a growing number of people use these media and online communication on climate change, and climate politics has become a relevant topic. We will see later in this chapter that multinational corporations are constantly in the crossfire of the discussions that take place on social media. What is lacking are references to literature about the ability to influence the Web on the micro level, the administrative sphere. Indeed, no studies have focused on the micro level as to the efficiency of local public transport, urban decor or public lighting. This can be seen in many areas where specific scientific literature exists on the impact that social media could have on the level of the administration of public affairs at the local level. From this point of view, therefore, the present study is configured as one of the few exceptions.

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Citizen web activism and the limited literature on this subject do not consider citizen stakeholdership towards national and local government (American Grizzlies United).

Extending Monitoring of Stakeholders to Public Administration Below are some considerations that support the contention that our chapter provides the missing piece of the whole jigsaw puzzle. All companies are efficient in the same way; are all bureaucracies inefficient in their own way? The attention that citizens and consumers pay to multinationals is missing towards governments. There are two reasons for this. On the one hand, governments are generally perceived as inherently ‘good’, their task that of serving citizens in a responsible manner (to the point that very few talk about the social responsibility of governments). On the other hand, governments are perceived as specific and unique while multinationals are global and general. If there are cases against a government they are macro in nature against corruption, for instance, or action to lower unemployment rates but not against long lines at service windows or holes in residential streets. Consider, for example, the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. Let’s consider in a more specific manner how responsibility is for everybody, that all organisations should be accountable for their social responsibility. International companies are easy to talk about: everybody knows them, everybody thinks they know them, a great deal is said about them. Monopolies are more difficult to deal with: the names are no longer familiar; they are often local companies; everybody tends to think they have their own predicament which is different from that of others. Nobody is interested in Lilco (the Long Island Lighting Company, in New York), and speaking of Electricite´ de France (EDF) might be regarded as an exquisitely European matter, even though Lilco and EDF are very similar to any large power company from around the world. The non-profit sphere can be somewhat similar to international corporations as there are world-class non-profit organisations but, when we come to public administration or government bureaucracies, when we come to politics and political systems, everybody is on his own. It is the war of all against all notwithstanding the well-known and primary impact of government on development. Thus, millions of employees live in the ultimate autarky; that is, doing everything unsupervised no benchmarking, no comparison, no cross-country learning. Marginal attempts are made in the technical fields,

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like information technology, where once again international corporations, driven by the need to sell their products, play the significant role of inseminating diverse government and public bodies with the same ideas. Public administration appears to be tied too much to the history of a given country and its legal system. How many times have we heard the theme: ‘They have Roman Law and we have Common Law so we cannot compare’, or vice versa? Public administration is bound by language. To many people, it is heresy to have their official government documents translated into English, as they do in Sweden and the Netherlands. Comparative public administration is the realm of lawyers and constitutionalists with their bird’s eye view approach. American poet Gertrude Stein wrote ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’, meaning things are what they are and we can’t fiddle with them for our own little purposes but all of this ignores the simple fact that, paraphrasing Stein, a jail is a jail is a jail: many government services are identical all over the world. Reality is the same everywhere and human beings are the same. Universal rights are recognised but, in spite of this universality in ‘demand’, no universality to ensure those rights is pursued. Thus, it is not difficult to understand and adhere to the libertarian concept that the peoples of different countries are held hostage by their governments. Suffice it here to report one more professional point of view on the deficiencies of bureaucracies. ‘Bureaucratic practices rely heavily on symbols and language of the moral boundaries between insiders and outsiders, a ready means of expressing prejudice and justifying neglect. Thus, societies with proud traditions of generous hospitality may paradoxically produce at the official level some of the most calculated indifference one can find anywhere’, (Herzfeld, 1992). Nonetheless, all this having been said, we are going to embark now on a short trip across our theory of CSR in government.

IDENTIFYING A THEORY We identify a possible theory that leverages the ‘koine`’ of multinational brands to address government effectiveness. Koine` is the Ancient Greek dialect that was the lingua franca of the empire of Alexander the Great and was widely used throughout the Mediterranean area in Roman times. It is a common language among

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speakers of different languages. 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. There is little collective web action towards local government and local monopolies whereas we observe a substantial body of evidence of collective web action towards global and multinational corporations and brands. Our curiosity, then, is whetted: would it be possible to spur collective web action towards government and monopolies? We notice that collective action towards governments does take place in cases of major social and political upheavals such as the ‘Arab Spring’ and the Syrian crisis. With this chapter we mean to address collective action towards government and monopolies at an administrative and ‘sub-criminal’ level, at a quality-of-service level, like what is done in the institutional campaigns of Me´decins Sans Frontie`res (Doctors Without Borders) towards Novartis and the Indian Glivec for patent lawsuits; Monsanto and genetically modified seeds; the actions against Nike after which, in 1996, an article appeared in ‘Life’ accusing the company of using child labour in producing balls in Pakistan. Accordingly, it is desirable to introduce the concept of ‘unknown stakeholders’ (Di Bitetto, Gilardoni, & D’Anselmi, 2013). When CSR is interpreted as ‘accounting for work’, it is for all organisations, not only for private businesses, and it is also to be exerted in the core business of the organisation itself. The crucial task, then, becomes avoiding irresponsibility non-responsible behaviour rather than putting forth specific good behaviour. Then there is a need for a process framework to account for work. Stewardship of the unknown stakeholder is a value that is part of this process framework. Caring for the unknown stakeholder is one of the ways to detect irresponsibility in the behaviour of an organisation. The unknown stakeholder is he who does not share a voice, who doesn’t even know he has a stake in the activities of the organisation being analysed. It may be a newborn baby who will breathe what will be left of the air seventy years from now. It may be the reasonable solution to a problem that is proposed by wise people and that local voters turn down, spurred by emotions and demagogy. Stewardship of the unknown stakeholder implies, first, identifying the competitive context surrounding the organisation that we are observing. Within this framework, comparisons of performance must be made with competitors and, in the case of government organisations or monopolies, international benchmarks must be provided. Possible government subsidies must be accounted for under this heading.

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When we identify economic phenomena in the internal functioning of a company or an institution, particularly intangibles and externalities, then we are listening to the unknown stakeholder. He is at the heart of all research, the silent critic inside us. We start this illustration of the unknown stakeholder guiding value by explaining where the centrality of stakeholders comes from. We want to start this treatment of the unknown stakeholder with a reference to the theory of stakeholders that has so permeated CSR indeed, has given birth to it. The stakeholder approach appears to be prevalent and is the preferred way to go about implementing CSR and reporting of it by the public relations industry, which is the leading supplier, retained by corporations to run CSR programmes and write CSR reports. The stakeholder approach to CSR action and reporting implies that the relevant stakeholders of the organisation should be listened to, and this listening should be accounted for in the CSR report. So, we read section headings in the reports that list the generic names for the groups of stakeholders: stockholders, employees, customers, suppliers and the rest. 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. It is not enough to run a two-hour focus group with opinion leaders to understand the issues and to certify that the CSR behaviour of the organisation is satisfactory. For instance, it may not be enough to get the go-ahead of the in-house trade unions to demonstrate that the organisation has fair employment practices: there might be collusion between management and employees on high-salary practices or inefficient labour organisation all things that are against the best interests of consumers and the general public. The stakeholder approach leads an organisation to try to engage with the wrong counterparts; for instance, interviewing young people as representatives of future generations, as a major power utility did. Headquarters representatives of stakeholder organisations are very prestigious to interview, but they may not be very interested or knowledgeable about the specific interviewing organisation. They may have to interface dozens of such organisations and not have anything specific to say. 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.

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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, whose protection would be the government’s task; those the weak who do not have a press office. The unknown stakeholder can be taken into account in behaviour and in reporting of organisations with the help of a taxonomy of organisational sectors that reveals possible content of CSR according to the economic sector the reporting organisation belongs in. Three years after its infamous 2005 survey on CSR, The Economist updated its position on the subject with a second survey on 19 January 2008. The good news is that, while the first survey was scathing in its judgment, this time space was given to John Ruggie (2008), from the Harvard Kennedy School: ‘The theological question whether CSR exists or not is irrelevant today. The real question is not whether, but how CSR is done’. Of relevance to how CSR is done is a counterargument from none other than Milton Friedman, in 1970: ‘A company’s social responsibility is to make a profit’. Friedman’s indictment appears terrible, especially when applied within the context of countries that fall miserably short when their governments are charged with monitoring their own companies and bureaus. Milton Friedman had in mind an ideal form of capitalism when he said that What is necessary, then, is to specify under what conditions profits are made and what kind of capitalism are we talking about. Accounting for the unknown stakeholder is one way to identify potential irresponsibilities on the part of the organisation. As a first step to identifying the unknown stakeholder, the competitive arena of the business should be provided. We thus derive a taxonomy of the general content of the CSR report by sector of the economy. Government and monopolies should provide indicators of activity; businesses subject to competition should conduct research and disclosure on their activities. Table 1 summarises our proposal.

Quantitative Support of Our Hypotheses The link between the individual economic unit and its socio-economic environment is established in our proposed reasoning through the Porter (1990) and Porter and Kramer (2006) model of competitive advantage, whereby the individual economic unit is at the centre of a diamond whose

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Table 1. Social Actors

Social Actors and Type of Control.

Stake and Motives

Brands and Corporations

Type of Control

Activists

Outrage against Nike, Novartis, violation of human Monsanto, rights and Honda, Apple, consumer rights Sony, etc.

DIRECT: global consumers sanction directly the brands/ corporations that are violating human rights or producing inefficient products (e.g. boycotting) thought the koine` of the brands and social media

Ethical investors

Outrage against vice and war

Producers of arms, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, etc.

INDIRECT: global investors sanction the producers of critical goods in order to indirectly sanction the users of those goods (e.g. governments: arms, alcoholics: alcohol)

Unknown stakeholder

Outrage against government ineffectiveness

Suppliers of governments: IBM, Alstom, Airbus, etc.

INDIRECT: irresponsible governments and public administrations make ineffective use of products and services provided by the branded corporations; taxpayers and present unknown stakeholders can exercise pressure on the branded corporations in order to make governments and public administrations accountable for their work

four points represent other, different types of economic and social units that affect the performance of the unit at the centre. These four types represent: 1. Context for firm strategy and rivalry: the roles and incentives that govern competition. 2. Local demand conditions: the nature and level of sophistication of local customer needs. 3. Related and supporting industries: the local availability of supporting industries.

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4. Factor (input) conditions: pressure of high-quality, specialized inputs available to firms. Examples of such ancillary units include: appropriate supply of manpower through the educational system; appropriate logistics for delivery of outputs and an appropriate judicial system. When the unit at the centre of the diamond is immersed in an environment where the economic units surrounding it are effective and efficient (appropriate), then the unit at the centre enjoys a competitive advantage vis-a`-vis other units in its own industry that do not enjoy such an effective economic and social environment. When the unit at the centre enjoys a competitive advantage, then we say the micro-conditions for economic and employment growth are satisfied. We have established the micro macro link we were looking for. The logic here is the following: the basic economic model of interaction between economic units in society is that of Michael Porter’s competitive advantage. Porter’s model includes all economic units private businesses as well as public institutions and everyone is required to generate their added value. Private businesses do not succeed in a vacuum, they succeed in an environment of working and functional public institutions (and, we would add, strong political, democratic and civil society institutions); otherwise private business languishes, government budgets run up large debts and people are unhappy. The condition for the economic success of a business at the micro level and of economic and employment growth at the macro level is that all other businesses and institutions operating around the business at the micro level are effective and efficient. Since government is among these institutions, we call this virtue accountability rather than effectiveness. So for the economic unit to be successful, its environment needs to be accountable. Note that the competitiveness of one unit presupposes collaboration from the units surrounding it, which is why we can also use the term ‘collaborative advantage’. Effectiveness is driven by competition/collaboration. Literature argues that accountability, that is efficiency and effectiveness, of all units ancillary to the competitiveness of the unit at the centre of the diamond is a function of those same ancillary units being immersed in an environment that is as competitive as the environment where the first unit resides. Efficiency and effectiveness are a positive function of competition, as is accountability. In a complex modern society, reporting for work or receiving a salary is no guarantee of the effectiveness of the work performed, according to theorists of bureaucratic behaviour (Niskanen, 1968, 2001),

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of X-efficiency (Leibenstein, 1978) and of administrative behaviour (Simon, 1997). Such effectiveness is measured both at the micro level of the individual organisation and at the macro level of the social consequences of work not done or badly done, once again linking micro to macro performance. Considered in relation to each economic unit of society, be it public or private, the systemic concept of the collaborative/competitive advantage translates into the concept of the effectiveness and accountability of work. All work. As stated by Herman ‘Dutch’ Leonard, ‘all organisations should be accountable for their social responsibility and this new social accountability can best be constructed for different kinds of organisations introducing the concept of ‘competition’ both within and across industries and sectors. The best way forward is to use the knife of competition to hone the social performance of all organisations’ (D’Anselmi, 2011). This is in order to find a micro-logic that is compatible with macroeconomic success. Our micro macro theory, therefore, is that growth and employment can only be achieved through the accountability of work in all sectors of the economy public, private; monopolistic and subject to competition; for profit, non-profit. Only work that is subject to competition, measure, evaluation, and benchmarking is socially productive and efficient. Only competition and collaboration with the stakeholders (customers, users, suppliers and citizens) leads to quality in products and services. The Porter diamond gives us a very rich picture of social dialogue and identifies a number of stakeholders so that the whole workforce is embraced. We can partition the workforce according to whether or not it is subject to competition, in order to establish who is contributing to economic growth and employment. Using this criterion, we identify four different sectors: • • • •

government; monopolies; large corporations; MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises).

These four sectors include entire industries and all the workers in them, with no distinction as regards hierarchy or capital ownership. We then proceed to investigate the level of collaboration that these four different sectors are contributing to the economy as a way of quantifying the results of social dialogue and its fairness. Running the arithmetic of the stakes, as theory predicts, reveals that the monopolistic sectors are earning a rent at the expense of the sectors that are subject to competition. Far from

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collaborating in the economy, entire sectors of workers are earning rents at the expense of other workers. Competition provides a certificate of accountability. It does not provide society with a guarantee that the firm or the organisation will behave correctly, but it does guarantee that having the opportunity to adopt competing goods and services society can do without a company that behaves badly. Competition does not rule out the need for awareness, management and reporting of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The brands are accountable because they are scrutinised by citizens and consumers through social media. Salaries of workers of public administration are more relevant than the profits of corporations. Work and productivity is more relevant than the labour capital dialectic. There are a number of aspects to the ‘evasion of work’: • over-compensation of employees; • over-compensation of production factors; excessive cost of procurement, as proven, for instance; • inefficiency; • non-production/loss of GDP. In the wake of the economic crisis of 2008, not a single job was lost on the left-hand side of the competitive divide. (More proof of the lack of accountability of those who are not subject to competition. Only in Greece, in 2011 and 2012, after much ado, were jobs lost in the government sector.) Such ‘immobility’ also translates into overcompensation in the sectors that are not subject to competition. The competitive divide identifies new and contemporary kinds of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. In a medium-sized economy (23 million workers), an estimated 100 billion per year of overcompensation in the non-competitive sectors is at stake. This is the lower limit of the damage generated by evasion of work and it is the ‘prize’ of the silent class struggle between the competitive and the non-competitive sectors of the economy. The following figure illustrates the methodology used to estimate this value: workers not subject to competition earn 35% of the total salaries in the country, while they make up only 25% of the workforce: the extra 10% of over-compensation they earn amounts to 100 billion. This is no small prise and it appears worth fighting for (Fig. 1). Non-competitive and non-monitored sectors represent 35% of income and 25% of people over a total income of 1,100 billion (400 billion versus 700 billion), whereas an egalitarian/competitive model would generate a

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Number of workers ratio

Non competitive 25%

Non competitive 35% Competitive 65%

Fig. 1.

Competitive 75%

Salaries versus Number of Workers Ratio.

Table 2.

GDP 2030 Predicted Changes.

GDP 2030, Changes at Constant Prices vis-a`-vis 2008 As % of GDP In billion euro Per capita (in euro) Lower administrative burden on business Better infrastructure Better human capital Competition

+4.0 +2.0 +13.0 +11.0

+62.9 +31.4 +204.4 +172.9

+1,055 +527 +3,428 +2,901

Total

+30.0

+471.7

+7,911

distribution of 300 billion versus 800 billion. This 100 billion difference (obtained by subtracting 300 billion from 400 billion) is the extra revenue of non-competitive jobs. This is what Niskanen calls the extra cost of production factors in non-competitive environments. For those who are subject to competition, it appears more fruitful to fight over-remunerated labour than to fight capital. Capital can fly away. Labour can’t. The idea here is not so much for those who are subject to competition to appropriate the extra revenue of those who are not, but to promote the delivery of full productivity to society by those who are not subject to competition. Thus, the calculation is a minimum estimate of the social value that is redeemable when competition or better, accountability is established within society. The previous calculations were incomebased, but impact-based calculations lead to much larger numbers. It has been estimated that one-third of gross domestic product is lost through lack of infrastructure, lack of purpose in government, mediocre education, and lack of competition and monitoring in services.

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Table 2 shows that Italian GDP could grow by as much as 30% by the year 2030. Competition and monitoring can be introduced into different public institutions. (An empirical demonstration of this argument is contained in a 2002 report by one of Europe’s European National Antitrust Commissions. Those exporting sectors that are more dependent on sectors that are the most problematic from the competition point of view show lower growth rates than the less dependent sectors. Evasion of work ties down those who work and export or efficiently serve the domestic market.)

CONCLUSION In conclusion, consumers and citizens have a lot of leverage over multinational (or global) corporations. They have leverage especially over those corporations that make products. Products are inherently more subject to evaluation than services, they are easier to evaluate over time and space. Thus the multinational (or global) corporations are more subject to international competition. Such public leverage over international corporations is exercised also through the global social media, which help coalesce diffused interests into one strong voice. The same public leverage through the social media does not appear to be exercised vis-a`-vis governments and monopolies that are inherently local. Government here means public administration; we are talking about that 25% of the workforce that is sheltered from competition and the 50% of the economy that is managed through government programmes: for example your local police precinct, your local health care unit, your local transportation company, utilities and so forth. It is the governments, public administrations and monopolies that are behaving irresponsibly. The citizens of governments and the customers of monopolies 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. How can we leverage global social media to develop the same kind of monitoring over governments and monopolies that has developed over multinational corporations? Is there a way? We cannot make consumers and citizens do all the work by themselves. In order for us to develop such monitoring, we should involve multinational corporations the brands of the world in the local arena. Consumers and citizens could leverage their power over the world brands to get them involved in domestic matters, for example by asking the world brands that produce buses to monitor the

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quality of the local transportation authorities and municipalities. The basic scheme would be to involve the brand or global corporation that is closer to, adjacent with or supplying the domestic problem. This would attract attention from users of that brand worldwide and, therefore, attract worldwide attention to a domestic problem that is experienced globally, albeit fragmented in the guise of individual domestic problems. Global corporations are also very welcome to take issue with the public authorities that are paid to take care of competition matters, to take care of running the courts and enforcing law and property rights. 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 (see section ‘Identifying a Theory’). The unknown stakeholder can exercise pressure on the branded corporations in order to make governments and public administrations accountable for their work. This is a proposal for a covenant between consumers and global corporations against the irresponsibility of governments. Dear Brands of the World, help us obtain accountability from the governments and public administrations. It behoves us and you to ensure responsible behaviour from all.

REFERENCES American Bar Association. (November 20, 2012). Class actions 101: A new “Viral” class, action? Retrieved from http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/classactions/ articles/fall2012-1112-class-actions-101-new-viral-class-action.html American Grizzlies United. Introduction to citizen activism, American Grizzlies United (AGU). Retrieved from http://americangrizzlies.com/pdf/introduction-to-citizen-activism.pdf. Accessed on August 19, 2013. Branding Advertising Public Relations History: Green BP. Retrieved from http://prezi.com/ dmxfbzm9zsug/green-bp Business for Social Responsibility. (April 2008). Eco-Promising. Retrieved from http://www. bsr.org/reports/BSR_Eco-Promising_April_2008.pdf CONE releases the 2013. CONE communications/echo global CSR study. Retrieved from http://www.conecomm.com/2013-global-csr-study-release D’Anselmi, P. (2011). Values and stakeholders in an era of social responsibility. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. de Kerckhove, D. (2011). Digital knowledge, with Annalisa Buffardi. Naples: Liguori Editore.

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Devinney, Auger, Eckhardt, & Birtchnell. (2006). The other CSR: Consumer social responsibility. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/286306/The_Other_CSR_Consumer_ Social_Responsibility Di Bitetto, M., Gilardoni, G. M., & D’Anselmi, P. (2013). SMEs as the unknown stakeholder: Entrepreneurship in the political arena. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Economist (The). (January 5, 2013). Everything is connected. Can internet activism turn into a real political movement? Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ 21569041-can-internet-activism-turn-real-political-movement-everything-connected Guardian (The). (August 13, 2013). Can consumer boycotts change the world? Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/consumer-boycott-change-world Herzfeld, M. (1992). The social production of indifference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Leibenstein, H. (1978). General X-efficiency theory and economic development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Le´vy, P. (1994). L’Intelligence collective. Pour une anthropologie du cyberespace. Paris: La De´couverte. Maignan, I., & Ferrell, O. C. (2004). Corporate social responsibility and marketing: An integrative framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 32(1), 3 19. Niskanen, W. A. (1968). Non-market decision making The peculiar economics of bureaucracy. American Economic Review, 58(2), 293 305. Niskanen, W. A. (2001). Bureaucracy: A final perspective. In W. A. Shughart & L. Razzolini (Eds.), The Elgar companion of public choice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Porter, M. E. (1990). The competitive advantage of nations. New York, NY: Free Press. Porter, M. E., & Kramer, R. (2006). Strategy and society: The link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility. Harvard Business Review, 84(12), 78 92. PR Newswire. (January 29, 2013). Yingli green energy joins WWF’s climate savers program. Retrieved from http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/yingli-green-energy-joinswwfs-climate-savers-program-188790941.html Ruggie, J. (2008). In the Stream, Survey on CSR, The Economist, January 19. Simon, H. (1997). The administrative behavior. New York, NY: Free Press. Superior Court of the State of California. John True et al. v. American Honda Motor Co., Inc., No. 5:07-cv-287-VAP-OP (C.D. Cal.). Retrieved from http://www.clgca.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/03/Notice-of-Entry-of-Final-Approval-Order.FINAL_.3.16.12-w. Exs_.pdf

WEBLIOGRAPHY Erik, S. (February 9, 2010). Huffington Post, “The Coming Wave of Social Media Class Actions”. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erik-s-syverson/the-comingwave-of-social_b_703918.html Guardian (The). (March 8, 2012). #FAIL: authenticity is the key to avoiding social media screw-ups. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/authenticitysocial-media-sustainability-communications?INTCMP=SRCH P2P Foundation, Contribution to the critique of the political economy of the Internet. Retrieved from http://p2pfoundation.net/Contribution_to_the_Critique_of_ the_Political_Economy_of_the_Internet

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CLASSIFYING SOCIAL CAUSES DERIVED FROM THE COMMUNICATION OF CSR INITIATIVES ONLINE: A THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL APPROACH Mihai Ioan Rosca, Andrei Claudiu Sara˘u and  Andreea-Angela Vontea  ABSTRACT Purpose 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.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 63 83 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007006

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Methodology/approach 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. Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications 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. Originality/value 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.

CSR IN THE CURRENT ECONOMICAL ENVIRONMENT In the last few decades, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown and became from a narrow notion and often marginalised a multilateral and complex concept (Cochran, 2007). While all the attention and interest for the social and ecological impact of corporations is not a new subject,

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lately it can be observed a raised interest due to the global problems such as global warming, poverty, human rights violation and HIV/AIDS (Kolk & van Tulder, 2010). The continuous pressure on major companies due to globalisation and higher interest in the balance of power between corporations and the society over the years, have transformed CSR in a legal, economic, political, ethical and social discussion point of view (Zaharia & Grundey, 2011). 2007 was the starting point of a rough period concerning business. Financial crisis led to an economical collapse worldwide. Taking into consideration the current economic growth, the lack of trust in business and profit oriented corporations, CSR becomes a subject of interest for business. That is why organisations, both in theory and in practice, should apply ethic principles. Corporations should assume the responsibility of avoiding short-term profits obtained on the expense of others. Moreover, as stated by Lin-Hi (2010), they have no obligation in engaging in altruistic activities, but they do have the responsibility of not harming society. Consumers’ consumption patterns in developed countries and, in a greater measure, in developing countries have changed significantly due to the fact that they started to perceive the negative effects of corporations on different aspects of life (Sheikh & Beise-Zee, 2011). The defining elements of an organisation mission are centred on activities that sustain relevant societal problems for external stakeholders. Organisational values support minimising social costs, including employee safety and therefore have a greater importance for internal stakeholders (Sones, Grantham, & Vieira, 2009). Visser (2011) states that the essence of the CSR 2.0 lies in bringing a positive contribution in society, and not just referring to it, but a concrete way of doing business. The majority of the current CSR theories are oriented over four main aspects: (i) achieving objectives which lead to obtaining long-term profit, (ii) making use of the business power in a responsible manner, (iii) integrating social needs and (iv) contributing to a better society by doing what is ethically correct (Garriga & Mele´, 2004). CSR integrates all those voluntary initiatives to help companies placing their images in internal and external stakeholders’ reports, thus communicating a new identity (Bravo, Matute, & Pina, 2012). From an overall perspective, Basil and Erlandson (2008) concluded that the definitions referring to the CSR concept found in literature include consistently the notion that CSR involves benefits to society in ways that do not involve direct benefits related to the company’s financial position or meets the needs of a variety of organisational stakeholders. The importance

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attached to the CSR concept by corporate entities seems to be growing. Consequently, this fact is underlined by the changes with evaluative role and reporting endeavour undertaken by companies. Sasse and Trahan (2007) concluded that companies are increasingly determined to take action relative to the social sector, whether such an initiative is approached as being subsequent to the social responsibility, promoting philanthropy, or acting as a responsible citizen. By reviewing the literature, the authors state that there are two specific cases which are at the same time interrelated, also determining companies to engage in CSR activities. Within the first scenario, we have a ‘win’ situation winning by creating a competitive advantage; with regard to the other one, it is necessary to improve the community environment for business conduct purposes. In recent decades, CSR has been developed progressively from ideology to reality, and the management literature has contributed significantly to defining and characterizing the phenomenon. However, the development and implementation of CSR has remained largely unexplored (Maon, Lindgreen, & Swaen, 2010). At the same time, as stated by Zaharia, Stancu, Stoian, and Diaconu (2010), companies’ commercial activities have a direct impact on society. In this respect, the need for economic growth along with the different requirements of sustainable development led to the conception of strategies meant to harmonise both the economic reasons and the social and environmental preoccupations.

USING THE INTERNET IN CSR, AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATION OR REFERENCE FROM FORBES GLOBAL 2000 The Internet started to be used as a multimedia communication channel from the 1990s. Unlike traditional media, the Internet enables a company to disclose detailed and current information. Thus, information permanently remains available on the Web, allowing Internet users to choose subjects of interest they wish to access at any given time or intervals. Corporate websites provide a formal perspective on the company’s CSR activities by reference to all its stakeholders (Wanderley, Lucian, Farache, & de Sousa Filho, 2008). Furthermore, the unprecedented growth of the Internet has provided new ways for organisations to communicate with their stakeholders. Increasingly more organisations have adopted the social

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responsibility programme, or at least have been more open about their actions in this area (Walker, Kent, & Vincent, 2010). As Chaudri and Wang (2007) state, the Internet provides a strategic platform for dialogue and interaction between a company and its stakeholders, offering the latest-generated relevant content. By proactively communicating with stakeholders and involving them in strategy planning and practices of CSR, companies can form long-term relationships and effectively manage and respond to the growing influence of stakeholders. What occurs in an annual report, a sustainable report or a corporate homepage in terms of CSR activities is becoming an important platform for communication and a condition for creating an ample support for credence values, thus creating the base of a powerful brand (Mark-Herbert & von Schantz, 2007). In terms of CSR and its relationship with corporate identity, the deliberate use of the Internet will improve the manner in which companies interact with stakeholders and recognise societal concerns in ways that strengthen company-society relationship, therefore communicating CSR programmes. The acceptance of organisational responsibility towards society continues with an increasingly more elaborate understanding of the influence and persuasive capabilities of online reporting environment. Therefore, a desired corporate identity will continue to be a motivation for the online CSR reporting (Rolland & O’Keefe Bazzoni, 2009). When interacting with their stakeholders, companies need to refer to a consistent and accessible communication strategy. Accordingly, for responding to such demands being characterised by a wide-ranging increase in expectation and monitoring, they make use of numerous multimedia platforms. By acting in this manner, organisations report within the online environment both their business activities and community-oriented programmes on a regular basis and under the framework of different narratives and reports. Currently, for a large number of companies, the corporate website serves as a booming information centre; an ideal channel through which organisational messages can be outlined (Hinson, 2011). In a research aiming to analyse the measures and approach with reference to how responsible business has penetrated Romanian business segment based on corporate website analyses of the most valuable 100 companies, Ba˘leanu, Chelcea, and Stancu (2011) concluded that the mere presence of CSR corporate communication in the online environment does not represent a guarantee on the level of real social implication, being integrated in its visual strategy.

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GENERAL ASPECTS ABOUT CSR In today’s globalised and increasingly competitive conditions, companies are trying more and more to integrate societal needs within their core activities and respond to stakeholder’s requests (Ciuchete, Grigore, Hornoiu, & Pa˘duretu, 2012). The idea according to which organisations have responsibilities towards society beyond generating profit for their stakeholders is an idea that has existed for centuries. However, this phenomenon has manifested impressively only after the Second World War and has not grown in importance until the 1960s. CSR roots spread before the Second World War (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). In the context of scandals involving corporations anywhere in the world, corporations are facing an increasing pressure from stakeholders to do ‘what is right’. Showing a proactive preoccupation in terms of human rights when hiring, along with proofing an environmentally friendly behavior are two basic expectations from a corporate entity’s current or potential employees. Investors have begun to consider civic programmes as a factor to be referred to in their investment decisions. People who are seeking employment, are turning to organisations that demonstrate a welldeveloped social portfolio (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009). More than ever, organisations allocate substantial resources for social initiatives starting with the community and the environment to responsible business practices. It is imperative that organisations must tailor their CSR activities considering the specific needs of different groups of stakeholders (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). A unique feature on CSR communication is the fact that it has great potential audience from the legislator, business press, investors and non-governmental organisations to local communities, customers and employees (Dawkins, 2004 cited in Du et al., 2010). Consumers’ expectations towards an organisation that makes a larger contribution in society have grown. Market research, along with academic research, suggests that consumers expect increasingly more organisations to aim not only to obtain economic benefits, but also to contribute to the welfare and sustainability of the society by being socially responsible (Dolnicar & Pomering, 2007). Most likely, consumer expectations about CSR have increased over the past five to ten years the number of organisations with CSR programmes increased, more companies communicate their efforts and consumer groups condone organisations that do not act correctly by boycotting them.

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Likewise, there is evidence that companies with poor CSR meet their negative consequences when negative events become public (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore, & Hill, 2006). Other studies concluded that people with decisional function involve organisations in social activities for the following reasons: personal satisfaction, to meet stakeholder expectations, to remain competitive and to avoid future problems. Quite surprisingly, certain defining reasons such as avoiding regulations and improving the capabilities of solving various social issues were identified as being located at the bottom of the list (Brønn & Vidaver-Cohen, 2009). CSR initiatives can also help strengthen a company’s competitive advantage by strengthening its relationships with its clients (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). Arguments about legitimacy and reputation prove that CSR activities can help a firm to enhance its legitimacy and reputation by demonstrating that it can meet the competing needs of its stakeholders and, at the same time, it can operate profitably. Thus, a firm will be perceived as a member of the community in which it operates, and the transactions undertaken by it will be sanctioned. Arguments in favour of obtaining competitive advantage claim that, by adopting certain CSR activities, a corporate entity may be able to build strong relationships with its stakeholders and to obtain support in the form of lower levels of employee turnover, access to a more specialized work force, but also customer loyalty. Therefore, the company will be able to differentiate itself from its competitors (Carroll & Shabana, 2010). As long as an organisation’s risk management and CSR can merge elements such as stakeholder interests and social issues, it must be taken into consideration that decision-making process at organisational level is profitoriented in a different manner than the external constraints or those ones of the government which often slow down the mechanism and evolution of CSR. Hence, any convergence depends on the possibility of adopting CSR elements which serve the function of obtaining profit by corporate entities (Boatright, 2011). The results of the study conducted by Lee (2011) show that while the partnerships can be considered in the contexts of social issues and benefits, individual organisations often form partnerships primarily due to their mutual instrumental interests. Pragmatic versions of the partnership outline concerns regarding individual interests rather than mutual ones. Company managers are often responsible for making decisions that help organisations to achieve goals and profit of the represented entity. However,

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management decisions surrounding corporate philanthropy are somewhat different from those of general business. In a specific sense, the result related to the activities of corporate philanthropy and money donations for supporting social causes, sponsorships and employee involvement in the local community do not tend to be purchased directly by consumer, as it happens in the case of products. Most of these consumers are not the beneficiaries of charitable activities themselves. Consumers simply have a better opinion about companies that are active in this area because they value an entity that invests its financial and non-financial resources to improve society (Lee, Lancendorfer, & Reck, 2012). In general, research in the field of CSR tends to focus on external pressures and results that lead to a neglect of CSR as a dynamic and ongoing process that is centred on employee engagement as a defining stakeholder relative to its co-creation and implementation (Bolton, Kim, & O’Gorman, 2011). The study conducted by Jahdi and Acikdilli (2009) intended to examine the roles played by different marketing communication vehicles with regard to communicating, publicising and highlighting the organisational CSR policies addressed to the various stakeholders groups. Moreover, it was also taken into consideration the assessment process related to the impact of such communications on an organisations’ reputation and brand image. With regard to the subsequent results of the above-mentioned study, it was demonstrated that marketing communication tools can play a defining role in terms of transferring the company’s CSR messages and of communicating a responsible image from a social viewpoint. Consequently, the same authors concluded that any tool related to marketing communication is able to convey a company’s CSR messages and, thus, to contribute to its corporate image and brand equity. Nevertheless, certain communication vehicles can be more influential and effective than others as public relations, advertising or sponsorship (immutable associated to cause-related marketing). In their turn, Callado Mun˜oz and Utrero-Gonza´lez (2011) analyse the relationship between the financial performance and CSR from two different perspectives. In the first one’s framework, they develop a strategic competition model which integrates the consumers’ perceptions towards the company’s social performance. It is revealed by the fact that, in the presence of a positive evaluation of the social responsibility practices by the consumers, a company which conducts itself by such a responsible behaviour is likely to achieve a better strategic position on the market, along with an increased margin, demand and profit.

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In addition, the same authors state that not each dimension of the CSR concept has relevance for consumers on the one hand, there are activities which can exert a certain impact over their wellbeing (e.g., culture); on the other hand, there are activities which can be looked from an overall perspective (e.g., environment). Given that consumers value CSR activities, corporate entities may enhance both their competitive position on the market, but also their profits resulted from operating according to a socially responsible behaviour. Thus, the endeavour of conceiving and implementing CSR practices can provide companies with a competitive advantage relative to their counterparts. The different studies conducted in the field of CSR tended to relate mainly to the external stakeholders and the subsequent results. In this regard, they were outlining a limited amount of information concerning the internal effects. Such a matter could help in explaining the impact of corporate marketing strategies exerted on internal stakeholders, as are the employees. From a particular viewpoint, the employees which perceived their employer as being more socially responsible, were less likely to take into account leaving the company and more inclined to engage themselves in activities involving an organisational citizenship behaviour. The study conducted by Hansen, Dunford, Boss, Boss, and Angermeier (2011) clearly demonstrates that the linkage between the CSR performance and the financial one, can be functional at least partially and, probably, the most proximate, on the basis of enhancing the employee’s trust in the given organisation. In terms of their implication on the companies’ managerial aspects, it is clearly demonstrated that the CSR activity can constitute an efficient strategy, as not just a stand-alone tool for fostering the relationships with the external stakeholders such as consumers, but also as a tool capable of greatly improving the employees’ perception towards the company within which they work.

FORMS OF CSR AS TRANSPOSED INTO DIFFERENT TYPES OF INITIATIVES The socio-economical actors are increasingly requesting organisations to demonstrate their economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic character. An increasing number of organisations develop and implement social and environmental programmes, conceive ethical codes, involve themselves in partnerships with NGOs, collaborate on CSR networks and try to position

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the values and ethics in the centre of their organisational culture (Maon et al., 2010). Corporations have been warned for a long time to involve themselves in resolving and identifying viable solutions for the current pressing social needs. With regard to corporate giving, the subsequent motivation is not always an altruistic one. According to Nevin-Gattle (1996), it can be a reaction to the changes produced in the social climate that occur in each period of history. Companies’ social responsibility actions are becoming more and more important relative to the modern business environment, fact revealed by the majority of the leading companies’ conduct of including a certain statement concerning their own CSR policy into the issued annual reports. Indeed, the permanently changing societal expectances, the more and more intrusive media reporting and the pressure groups as being more influential than ever, all determined organisations to approach their extended social responsibilities with a greater concern, not only on the basis of the altruistic motivations, but also due to the need of considering the potential impact of their policies on the relationships with stakeholders (Bowd, Bowd, & Harris, 2006). Society’s expectations regarding the social obligations of a company are permanently changing themselves, being mainly influenced by the different approaches from the economic theory and the socio-economic, political and cultural events which influence the business environment, but also by a subsequent change of the social mentality which puts a certain pressure on the national or multinational companies. As a reaction to these factors, the corporate entities around the world adapt their social responsiveness, as well as their mode of approaching different social responsibilities (Iamandi, 2007). Investments in CSR are considered to create value not only for the company’s stakeholders, but for itself too. A possible manner by which this value for the corporate entity can be created consists of corporate responsibility marketing (van de Ven, 2008). The last decades’ experience indicates that the main reason for which companies involve themselves in social initiatives resides in an expanded range of bottom-line benefits which could be associated with a responsible practice, by its nature. In other words, from a general perspective, the reason consisting of obtaining profits is the one which ultimately determines companies to engage in CSR initiatives (Iamandi, 2007). There is a notable difference between praising the philanthropic activities and informing stakeholders on a regular basis. In this respect, van de Ven (2008) brings into discussion the strategic approach of this problem

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analysed by Kotler and Lee (2005) according to whom, in terms of a company’s good intentions it is recommended to be outlined by other entities. Consequently, the more a company can benefit from its social initiatives, the more it will be determined to integrate CSR into a strategic level of making decisions. Strategic integration increases the social responsibility initiatives’ effectiveness relative to promoting worthy causes. Likewise, a company can restrict its communication endeavour with regard to the CSR policies and practices to the social and environmental reporting, namely to its website. This approach of a company’s involvement in terms of CSR is rather lacking of benefits, since it does not involve the use of the marketing communication tools such as public relations, advertising, sponsorship and promotions. The CSR concept refers to approaching initiatives in the society’s benefit on the basis of a certain part of the profits obtained by the companies given that they use society’s resources. In their turn, the priorities associated to these initiatives of the companies modify themselves according to the needs and requests of the society within which the latter ones operate, and the most frequently supported social aims are grouped under headings as health, security, education, employment, environment, social and economic development, and activities conceived to satisfy other basic needs (Yelkikalan & Ko¨se, 2012). While there exists the expectation according to which large-scale CSR initiatives will tend to produce the adequate exposure in order to lead to positive evaluations, this result is one which cannot be guaranteed. Thus, the evaluations made by stakeholders on the companies’ CSR initiatives are related to, often completely different from, the absolute level of the CSR activity handled by the company (Bhattacharya, Korschun, & Sen, 2009). The fact that corporate entities are becoming more and more strategic regarding to the giving behaviour, is revealed by the manner in which the analyse, support and manage a pre-determined number of giving programmes. In such a case, each programme is conducted by its own motivational factor, along with its own strategic purpose. These aims may vary from building a certain profile, improving staff morale, to obtaining a license to operate. The study conducted by Noble, Cantrell, Kyriazis, and Algie (2008) emphasises that the contextual factors characterizing a certain geographic region or economic and legal system can influence the motives referring to corporate giving. The focal idea of the CSR concept is that according to which the business sector should play a more significant (non-economic) role than the mere goods production and profits achievement (Ma´lovics, Nagypa´l

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Csige´ne´, & Kraus, 2008). Within the framework of the study conducted by Rondinelli and Berry (2000, cited in Ma´lovics et al., 2008), CSR activities are divided into two categories external and internal practices. The external practices consist of, for example, incentives for employees and managers who cooperate on projects of environmental enhancement, philanthropic activities which bring their contribution in supporting different communities, efforts of national and international scale for improving the environmental conditions, and strategic alliances between multinational companies and environmental or public interest groups founded for solving defining environmental issues. The internal practices integrate enhanced regulatory compliance in order to reduce the negative environmental impacts of the corporations in terms of significant emissions in the communities within which they operate; referring to prevention in terms of pollution and clean manufacturing practices which prevent pollution before its occurrence; re-designing the products and the processes in order to obtain environmental impacts more beneficial towards customers; recycling and re-use and resource conservation. The CSR practices within which there are allocated the most of CSR resources take into account, in general, the relative sustainability and ecoefficiency, while the external practices, although refer to the absolute sustainability, continue to have attached an extremely low rate of business resources. Most of them are concentrated only at a local level. Since the CSR practices are motivated mainly by business reasons, companies fail in addressing more important issues such as their impact on communities, the manner in which they conduct their business, along with the way of influencing various consumption patterns. Ma´lovics et al. (2008) conclude that, given the current market circumstances, companies do not seem to be able to identify solutions for strengthening the durable development. Achieving the sustainability aim requires more than CSR and eco-efficiency. It needs the active involvement and the cooperation of the governments, companies and of citizens for setting the sustainable consumption as a society’s common objective, and to obtain an agreement regarding its own conditions. But such an agreement must also involve quantity rather than quality, and each sphere of society has its own obligation of bringing its own contribution. Crittenden, Crittenden, Pinney, and Pitt (2011) state that organisations are responsible for issues like: • not harming the environment; • properly treating employees;

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a responsible supply chain management; reducing the impact on climate changes; improving the educational level of the surrounding communities; responding to public concerns; increasing the global economic stability; helping in reducing the wealth-poor gap; reducing the abuses with regard to human rights; supporting social causes or projects; solving social issues; sustaining the governments’ progressive policies.

Kotler and Lee (2005, p. 3) state that corporate social initiatives are ‘major activities undertaken by a corporation to support social causes and to fulfil commitments to corporate social responsibility’. The social initiatives which can be handled by a corporate entity can be framed according to six options corporate cause promotions, cause-related marketing, corporate social marketing, corporate philanthropy, community volunteering, and socially responsible business practices (Kotler & Lee, 2005, pp. 23 4). During the 1950s a common fact was the one by which companies should not only rely on profits, but also on employees, clients and public, in general. The period between 1960 and 1970 brought into discussion topics as the social consciousness, acknowledging the responsibility, associating to community’s problems the attention for the urban environment, correcting the racial discrimination, reducing the pollution and the philanthropic activities. The study conducted by Carroll and Shabana (2010) resulted in determining the following five more frequent dimensions referring to CSR the stakeholders, the social dimension, the economic dimension, the volunteers and the ecological dimension. Lerbinger’s pyramid offers a useful structure for determining the audiences to which should be addressed the company’s CSR messages, being based on a content analysis of websites, according to its five levels (Sones et al., 2009). Regarding the first level, the organisation operates in order to make profit, without affecting the environment or society. The second level requires minimising the social costs taking into consideration not to harm the environment or society. These social costs are relevant for the company and for what it produces. The social costs are referred to be by the social consequences of obtaining profits. The third level is dedicated to the identification and contribution to solving certain social problems. The fourth one refers to those organisations which develop programmes

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of which purpose consists of enhancing and strengthening the societal community and infrastructure. According to the fifth level, the organisation supports the public policies which are integrated within the citizens’ interest by establishing and adhering to the highest standards. All these levels involve the consideration of both the internal and external stakeholders, including the traditional groups as the employees, customers, shareholders and the parts which do not have a direct transactional linkage with the company, but which share a common interest the societal good (Sones et al., 2009). Peloza and Shang (2011) enrol CSR activities into three major categories, namely philanthropy, business practices or related to product ones. In their turn, these are addressed by singular activities, by certain concentrated activities which include more activities within the same category, or diffuse activities which integrate activities from two or three categories previously mentioned. Numerous companies find that having a socially responsible corporate image is an extremely valuable strategic asset. As stated by Kim, Lee, Lee, and Kim (2010), CSR initiatives can be framed as being internal or external ones, depending on the types of stakeholders to whom it is oriented their handling process. The assessment of CSR activities is rather difficult since there exists relatively many uncertainties about its efficiency. While some specialists regard CSR initiatives as an expression of the corporate strategy, corporate identity, power exerted on the market or dependence of certain stakeholders, the challenge for management becomes more serious in terms of understanding the stakeholders’ real needs and of the manner in which CSR programmes can influence the audiences. Organisations have at their disposal a number of initiatives which, in their turn, are related to a certain number of implementation mechanisms. Consequently, initiatives can be functional (specific human resources, marketing activity, supply chain) and corporate ones (development, environment protection, corporate governance) (Anghel, Grigore, & Rosca, 2011).  While numerous companies can handle CSR in order to do good and not only for gaining visibility or improving their reputation, the question remains are CSR initiatives effective? (Koljatic & Silva, 2010). In general, the range of social issues includes the positive community involvement, environment protection, safe products, ethical marketing, an increased level of employees’ diversity and uncontroversial work practices relative to the international market of a company (Bansal, Maurer, & Slawinski, 2008).

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FORBES GLOBAL 2000 LEADING COMPANIES The methodology used by Forbes in putting together Global 2000 Leading Companies is that they compile this list by screening Interactive Data, Thomson Reuters Fundamentals and Worldscope databases via FactSet Research Systems for publicity traded companies. Next, they screen for the biggest companies in four metrics: sales, profit, assets and market value. All figures are accounted in US Dollars. Depending on the origin country, fiscal declaration from the last 12 months is being used or, the latest fiscal year (DeCarlo, 2013). Four separate lists of the 2000 biggest companies are being created with the metrics: sales 2000, profits 2000, assets 2000 and market value 2000. In order to qualify, a company’s minimum cut-off values should be: sales of $3.89 billion, profits of $232.2 million, assets of $7.85 billion and market value of $4.25 billion. A company needs to qualify for at least one of the lists in order to be eligible for the final Global 2000 ranking. If a company ranks below any metric’s 2000 list cut-off, it receives a zero score for that metric. We sort the companies in descending order by the highest composite score and then apply our Forbes Global 2000 rank (DeCarlo, 2013). From a similar perspective, the study conducted by Morhardt (2009) emphasises the selection not of a single one field, but of the most representative ones integrated among the first 100 such entities. The above mentioned study concludes that there are major differences with regard to sustainability reporting relative to a branch of industry, as well as between the companies operating in the same sector. The subsequent results indicated that there are only a few sectors within which the market leaders are located at a significant distance in comparison to their followers. Within the other sectors it has been indicated that CSR reporting is attached to a progressive decrease. In addition, the results indicate the wide range of reporting manners characterizing each sector and the distribution a uniform one, in general of the reporting process among all the analysed sectors from high performing to weak ones. With regard to the top Fortune Global 500, there was observed a very diverse level of the reporting’s quality and, concomitantly, there does not exist proof designated to confirm the company’s dimension influence on the reporting’s quality. Almost all the entities which perform in reporting, as well as many of those non-performing, were integrated within this group.

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CLASSIFICATION OF CSR ACTIVITIES Our analysis is trying to find key common CSR elements registered by the world’s greatest public companies. Our starting point was Forbes Global 2000 Leading Companies from where we selected the first 50 companies, followed by an extension of another 50 companies. The ranking contains 2000 companies which are active in 80 fields of activity. ‘Major Banks’ represents only 3.3% of the total, whilst ‘oil & gas operations’ 4.9%. The figures represent the result of the companies’ economic power in these two fields of activity. The primary analysis was made on the first 50 largest companies. Consequently, it revealed defining similarities between these 50 companies. 28% of them were activating in the ‘major banks’ field of activity, while 22% companies were listed by ‘oil & gas operations’ field. Therefore, these two fields brought almost half of the analysed companies. The purpose of the present research wasn’t a representative analysis on global companies, not even those in Global 2000. With regard to the selection of the company to better suit worldwide economic reality, we added 50 more companies, verifying the existence of a proportional number of companies from each field of activity, with the exception of the fields which were represented by one single company, but including fields that even though were represented by one company, were present in the first 100. Therefore, our selection contains 50 top companies, 16 companies ranked between 51 and 100, 23 companies ranked between 101 and 250 and 11 companies ranked between 251 and 500. For these companies, we analysed their CSR reports published on the Internet and we researched the CSR reporting content, both from the form and content viewpoint. We graded these reports from 1 to 5 judging by the degree of ‘user friendly’ content. Therefore, short and to the point reports, with images, graphics, colour coded, were marked with a 5 and technical reports, with complex information, Excel indicators, were marked with 1. We took into consideration aspects like ‘easy reading’ by the clients, wide audience, students etc., not from a researchers point of view interested in a certain aspect. The main purpose of this classification was to visually evaluate these reports. Another aspect analysed was to classify by ranking from 1 to 5 the easiness of getting to the CSR information and how accessible it was. The third variable analysed was if the report took into consideration a reporting standard such as GRI or another type standard.

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The fourth aspect was the manner in which it addressed and to which level of involvement was written. As a result, we were searching for the existence of the CEO statements. The last and most complex studied aspect was on which type of CSR information have the companies focused on within their reporting activities. The starting hypothesis was that companies will either structure their information taking into consideration interested stakeholders, either the type of CSR initiatives supported by the company. As a result, we generally observed reporting that does not respect any of the two systems mentioned above, and that most important CSR activities are brought to the general public by each company. We identified a reporting/a direction which contains as initiatives economic growth and local, regional or global economic development. The second emphasised direction was the level of involvement in resolving some problems through financial means charity or human involvement volunteering. The third direction presented by companies was their involvement in educational activities and supporting human rights for underprivileged groups (women, kids, poor, minorities). Another determined direction was that of ethic and corporate governance presented by the companies. An interesting direction is the attention given to safety and by that we mean safety for the consumer, community, product, employee and environment. The importance on which these activities are taken into consideration by companies make us to believe that CSR safety concepts are of great importance. Certain chapters in CSR reports have showed great importance when referring to stakeholders. Therefore employees, clients, local communities, suppliers could have had a separate category if they were mentioned in a greater number. The last direction with three determined categories is the environment. As a result, we identified a sub-direction that refers to reducing the impact of natural disasters (flooding, earthquakes). Another sub-direction refers to manmade potentially harmful activities, such as oil spills (the aid given after such an event). The third sub-direction is green energy. In this category we included reducing energy consumption, sustaining new ways of producing energy, renewable and energetic efficiency. In the third category we included the concept of green marketing (product, place, promotion and price), concept that also includes environmental footprint. Other directions observed in analysing the reports were

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technology and innovation. Because these directions were mentioned only by a few companies, from the electronics sector, it was not included in the main directions. Even though these directions do not have a tendency to be included in the general CSR reporting, they can be taken into consideration in the future. Our proposed classification is extracted from the communication module on CSR information of the world’s greatest companies. Thus we propose a classification based not on theoretical principles but on the reality observed in a company’s CSR communication activities. Consequently we draw attention to the 11 CSR topics such as: a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k.

Green development; Responsibility towards employees; Safety for the environment, community or employees; Responsibility towards local communities; Ethics and corporate governance; Human rights and care for disadvantaged groups; Care for additional needs of clients; Supporting economic growth and balanced economic development; Volunteering and philanthropy; Energy efficiency; Manmade or natural disaster management.

Among these 11 themes, we may also add compliance requirements and same values to suppliers as those of the companies. This classification does not end here, depending on a corporation’s changes in communication or the interest in supporting new CSR tendencies, it can be enriched. In conclusion, although CSR activity is represented differently within large global companies, all reports can be included in the proposed system. This new classification would solve the problem of classifying CSR activities in the absence of a unified CSR report of activity. As shown above, there are visible differences in approach and communication in various fields of activity or country of origin sector. For example, Chinese companies are slightly behind in the manner in which they report CSR activities.

REFERENCES Anghel, L. D., Grigore, G. F., & Rosca, M. (2011). Cause-related marketing, part of corporate  social responsibility and its influence upon consumers’ attitude. Amfiteatru Economic, 13(29), 72 85.

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HOW ACTIVISTS SHAPE CSR: INSIGHTS FROM INTERNET CONTAGION AND CONTINGENCY THEORIES W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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. Findings The case study describes how the lens provided by the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges illustrates how

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 85 97 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007007

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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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications 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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Engagement has become a central term in CSR (Manetti, 2011). Stakeholder engagement is a means of understanding stakeholder concerns and soliciting their input on key topics. Corporations seek to engage stakeholders to help formulate and to evaluate their CSR efforts. Engagement is critical because corporations need to insure that their CSR efforts are considered socially responsible actions by their key stakeholders. Corporations typically report their formal stakeholder engagement process in their responsibility/sustainability reports (Manetti, 2011). Formal engagement initiated by corporations is one means by which stakeholders help to shape the meaning of responsible behavior. However, only a select few stakeholders are asked to participate in this corporateinitiated engagement.

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Another more aggressive way of shaping the definition of “responsible behavior” is public challenging of corporate behaviors. We can view this as stakeholder-initiated engagement. Any motivated stakeholder can seek to challenge an organization’s behavior and seek to influence the meaning of responsible behavior. The Internet facilitates stakeholder challenges by providing the channels necessary for the challenge to become a public event. The challenge redefines an existing corporate practice or behavior as “irresponsible.” An example would be the reform in the garment industry following concerns over sweatshop conditions in the 1990s. Stakeholders define what constitutes responsible behavior by identifying what behaviors are irresponsible. There seems to be both an increase in the use of and the success of stakeholder challenges (e.g., King, 2008). Success is defined by having the corporation accept the new meaning of responsible behavior and alter the challenged behavior. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the way activist groups utilize social media to shape the meaning of “responsible behavior” through challenges of irresponsible behavior. An analytic framework is constructed by fusing elements of Internet Contagion Theory (ICT) and Contingency Theory (Cancel, Cameron, Sallot, & Mitrook, 1997). We call this new analytic tool the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges. This fusion of the two theories provides insights into how digital and traditional public relations tactics are used to shape the meaning of responsible corporate behavior by increasing the salience of stakeholders and the challenged behavior to an organization. The chapter begins by explaining the dynamics of a stakeholder challenge. The next section examines how Contingency Theory and ICT can help to explain the value of social and traditional media in stakeholder challenges. The emphasis is on social media and visibility. The final section presents an extended case analysis and considers the implications of stakeholder efforts to shape the meaning of responsible behavior.

CHALLENGES OF IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR: DYNAMICS OF STAKEHOLDER-INITIATED ENGAGEMENT Typically, stakeholder engagement is a rather structured and controlled process for a corporation. Stakeholders are selected and some mechanism developed to solicit their ideas about what constitutes responsible behavior

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(Cummings, 2001). Stakeholders who are outside of the official engagement process may believe their perspectives should be heard and become motivated to shape the meaning of responsible behavior. They then challenge corporations to act responsibly by claiming current corporate practices are irresponsible. A successful challenge does refine what constitutes responsible corporate behavior. The 2009 Greenpeace challenge of Nestle´’s palm oil sourcing illustrates the basic challenge process. In 2009, Greenpeace wanted to define Nestle´’s purchasing of palm oil from Sinar Mas as irresponsible. Greenpeace argued that Sinar Mas was destroying orangutan habitat to produce palm oil and asked Nestle´ to change its palm oil sourcing. Hence, Nestle´’s was irresponsible by purchasing from Sinar Mas. Nestle´’s said they had a plan to source palm oil more responsibly by 2015. Greenpeace wanted change now and applied pressure through a YouTube video that parodied a Kit Kat commercial (a Nestle´ product) and attacks on the Nestle´’s Facebook page over the palm oil sourcing policy. Greenpeace was defining the current palm oil practices of Nestle´’s as irresponsible and responsible behavior required a change to sustainable producers. Within a few months, Nestle´ changed its position, ended the contract with Sinar Mas, and developed a program with the Forest Trust to create a sustainable palm oil purchasing program. The key elements of stakeholder-initiated engagement are the challenger, the challenge, and the challenged corporation. The challenger is the stakeholder, typically a nongovernment organization (NGO). The challenge is criticism/attack on the corporate behavior that is being redefined as irresponsible. The challenged corporation is the entity acting in an irresponsible manner. Attributions are a key element of the stakeholder challenges. Lange and Washburn (2012) have identified three factors that influence stakeholder attributions of corporate irresponsibility: (1) perception that the organization’s actions produce an undesirable effect, (2) the corporate is held responsible for the undesirable effect, and (3) the victims of the undesirable effect have no responsibility for the undesirable effect. Social irresponsibility starts with some action that negatively impacts society. People must believe something undesirable is occurring. Next, stakeholders must believe the organization is responsible for the negative impact. Finally, the victims cannot be complicit in the process. In other words, the victims cannot be willingly accomplices in the creation of the problem. The challenge must be viewed as negative and attributable to the challenged organization. We can return to the Nestle´ example to illustrate the three points. First, orangutan habitat destruction is an undesirable effect. People dislike the idea that orangutans are dying needlessly for palm oil production.

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Second, Greenpeace made a clear connection between Nestle´ and the habitat destruction. Nestle´ was not directly destroying the habitat but their irresponsible purchasing behavior was. Corporations are held accountable for actions within their supply chains (Bhattacharya, Korschun, & Sen, 2009). Finally, orangutans were not complicit in the destruction of their habitats. If no one knows about irresponsible behavior does it matter? In a moral sense it should but there is a more pragmatic aspect to stakeholder challenges that creates a need for visibility. The challenger must gain the attention of (1) the challenged organization and (2) other stakeholders. The challenger must know about the challenge or no change will occur. If other stakeholders know about and support the challenge, that provides incentives and pressure for corporate behavior change. The public association between a corporation and irresponsible actions will erode the corporation’s reputation. CSR plays an important part in the creation of corporate reputations (Fombrun, 2005; Schnietz & Epstein, 2005). According to a 2012 study by the Reputation Institute, 42% of a corporation’s reputation is based upon perception of their CSR efforts. Moreover, CSR perceptions are linked to important outcomes such as recommending the company (CSR, 2012; Smith, 2012). It follows that a threat to CSR is a threat to corporate reputation and to the well-being of the corporation. The importance of CSR to corporate reputations means that public revelations of irresponsibility will damage a reputation. The need for visibility leads to a discussion of social media’s role in stakeholder challenges.

VISIBILITY AND STAKEHOLDER-INITIATED ENGAGEMENT Visibility is more than public visibility when we consider the relationship between corporations and stakeholders. Stakeholder salience, how important a stakeholder is to management (Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997), is critical to visibility. If a stakeholder (challenger) lacks salience, corporate managers can easily ignore the challenge. Mitchell et al. (1997) defined stakeholder salience as a function of power, legitimacy, and urgency. We have translated these three concepts into the parlance of the stakeholder challenge. Power is the ability of the stakeholders to threaten a reputation. Legitimacy is the willingness of other stakeholders to accept the challenge as worthy of their support and the recognition of the challenger’s right to advance the challenge. Urgency is the level of commitment the stakeholders

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have for the challenge and the spread of the challenge to other stakeholders (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). Salience is related to the public visibility of a challenge. Social media help to promote stakeholder salience by creating the opportunity to build power, legitimacy, and urgency through highly visible, public communication. It is too simplistic to claim online visibility increases salience. Social media must be used strategically if stakeholders hope to build power, legitimacy, and urgency. ICT provides the basic structure for examining how social media can impact stakeholder-initiated engagement by influencing stakeholder salience. Contingency Theory examines a multitude of internal and external factors that shape how organizations respond to conflicts with stakeholders. The responses vary from accommodative, give stakeholders what they want, to advocacy, arguing against the stakeholder demands (Cameron, Pang, & Jin, 2008). The external factors are applied to the stakeholder challenges. ICT explains how stakeholders utilize online communication resources in attempts to change their power relationship with organizations and how stakeholders can leverage online communication to push organizations into changing policies and/or behaviors (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). Table 1 summarizes the three key variables in stakeholder challenges and their connections to power, legitimacy, and urgency (the threat assessment).

THE CHALLENGING STAKEHOLDERS Challenging stakeholders are the ones initiating the challenge crisis. Power, legitimacy, and urgency are all important to the challenging stakeholders. If challenging stakeholders do not establish their power, organizations are likely to ignore them. Table 1 presents the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges and identifies the Contingency Theory and ICT factors that are relevant for establishing the power of challenging stakeholders. Power is enhanced through the number of supporters, past successful challenges, the hiring of communication consultants, and the number and variety of communication channels utilized. Legitimacy involves the connection between the challenger and the issue. Does it seem appropriate that challenger is representing a particular social or environment issue? (Coombs, 1998). Contingency Theory refers to this as credibility. Urgency is the commitment to the issue, unwillingness to dilute the cause, crossover into traditional media and in-person activities, and skill in structuring the

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Table 1. Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges. Challenge Variables

Core Threat Factors

Contingency Theory

Power

• Number of supporters • Past success • Hired communication consultant • Credibility • Commitment to issue • Willingness to dilute cause

ICT

Constraints

Challengers

Legitimacy Urgency

• Number of communication channels • Structure of communication channels

Challenge Legitimacy

• Quality of messages • Utilization of legitimacy resources

Urgency

• Crossover to traditional and inperson • Communicative skill

Type of challenge • Expose • Organic

Challenged organization Power

• Power relative to challenger power

Constraints • Cost • Strategy • Feasibility • CSR use

communication effort. If a challenger will not yield, the threat could be long term because of the commitment to the cause (Cameron et al., 2008).

THE CHALLENGE The challenge is the actual cause/concern being raised by the challengers. The challenge is the behavior and/or policies that have been identified as irresponsible (Lange & Washburn’s, 2012 idea of an undesirable effect).

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Legitimacy is the core of the challenge. Other stakeholders must accept that the challenge is worthy of their support. Others must believe the behavior and/or policy is irresponsible. As noted in Table 1, challenger legitimacy is a function of message quality and utilization of legitimacy resources. If a message is unprofessional, people are likely to dismiss it without too much analysis. Hence, a quality message is one that is professionally presented. For example, the posts are not poorly written or include misspellings. Legitimacy resources are the various ways to build legitimacy including endorsements from legitimate sources, use of logical evidence (statistical data) to support claims, and the emotions evoked from the concern. Child slave labor can be used as an example. A respected source from the UN could endorse the concern, data about the number of children in slave labor worldwide can establish logical support, and the emotional stories of those in child slave labor will reinforce the importance of the concern give people another reason to care about the concern. The challenge also must establish the link between the organization and the negative outcome. There must be credible, factual evidence to document that the organization has responsibility for the actions and/or policies. The challenge must document that the organization is engaged in the irresponsible actions (Lange & Washburn’s, 2012 notions of organizational responsibility and victim complicity). The challenge also can affect urgency. Crossover to traditional media expands the number of stakeholders exposed to the challenge and increases the potential for reputational damage. In-person activities demonstrate commitment to the cause (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). The challenge crises can actually have three variations: organic, expose´, and villain (Coombs, 2010). Over time, the values and beliefs of stakeholders can change, leading them to expect different behaviors from the corporation. This is a natural process where corporate behavior can lag behind stakeholder expectations as the stakeholders and corporations drift apart in terms of expectations. The expose´ challenge occurs when stakeholders demonstrate that a corporation’s words do not match their actions. Charges of “washing” appear when corporations overstate their commitment to some social or environmental concerns or talk about social and environmental concerns with no corresponding action. Expose´ challenges create the impression of malice because there appears to be a purposeful attempt to confuse stakeholders about the corporation’s social performance and to pretend to meet stakeholder expectations. The villain challenge is simply one act in a larger drama between particular stakeholders and a corporation or industry. The villain challenge

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typically involves a professional activist group trying to force change on a specific company or industry. The villain challenge is one in a series of actions designed to paint the corporation or industry as a villain that must reform its wicked ways. The villain challenges are personal between the stakeholder and corporation/industry (Coombs, 2010). The organic and expose´ crises are the focus of the analysis of CSR-based challenges. Villain crises are rather unique and part of a larger conflict between the challenger and the challenged organization. CSR-based challenge crisis are likely to be either organic or expose´ challenges.

CHALLENGED ORGANIZATION The challenged organization is the target for the challenge. The two critical factors are the relative power of the organization and its prior use of CSR in building its reputation. A corporation that is much more powerful than the challenger stands a better chance of convincing stakeholders to accept its side of the cause (Cameron et al., 2008). If the organization uses CSR to build its reputation, a CSR-based challenge is more urgent because it poses a greater threat to the reputation. An organization that professes to support CSR creates certain expectations. The challenge can indicate a violation of expectations and that can create a crisis (Sohn & Lariscy, 2014). Challenged organizations are bound by at least four constraints: (1) strategy, (2) cost, (3) feasibility, and (4) prior CSR efforts. Management does not want to change practices or policies that deviate from their core strategy. If the challenge requires an organization to shift strategy, management is likely to reject the challenge (Coombs, 2010). Cost is a common driver in risk management. Organizations do not pursue risk reduction that is too costly or risk reduction efforts that lack feasibility. Risk reduction needs to be at the right price and have a strong likelihood of being effective (Coombs, 2012). Similarly, organizations will reject challenges that will be cost prohibitive or problematic, from their perspective, to enact. Finally, CSR efforts create expectations for future actions. Managers must make every effort to be consistent with their CSR claims or risk offending stakeholders by being hypocritical. Organizations that have little invested in CSR do not generate the same type of expectations (Sohn & Lariscy, 2014). Creating expectations for being socially responsible is a constraint for a challenge that is CSR-based.

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DETOX ZARA: CASE STUDY OF A STAKEHOLDER CHALLENGE The Detox campaign is an effort by Greenpeace to convince apparel manufactures to help remove hazardous chemicals (to detox) from their supply chains. The focus is eliminating hazardous chemical from fabric making. Greenpeace began the Detox campaign in July of 2011. First, Greenpeace sent formal requests to major, global apparel makers to end the use of hazardous chemicals in their supply chains. Greenpeace received no commitments for change and launched a public campaign. Multiple corporations have been targets since 2011. Greenpeace selects a specific company for attention and moves to a different company once the targeted one agrees to detox. We have chosen Zara to illustrate how our Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges can be used to analyze and to explain the success or failure of stakeholder-initiated engagement. Greenpeace specifically targeted Zara in November of 2012. Greenpeace (the challenger) built power quickly through the number of followers, past successes, communication channels, and structure of the communication channels. Within a week, over 7 million people were following the Zara detox efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and Weibo. In one week there were 43,800 mentions of Zara and Detox on Twitter. Over 300,000 people signed the Zara Detox page on Greenpeace’s web site. Greenpeace demonstrated a large number of supporters for the Zara detox effort. Greenpeace reported a list of other apparel manufacturers who had agreed to detox including Nike, adidas, Puma, H&M, M&S, C&A, and Li-Ning. The success involved companies from a number of different countries. Greenpeace had a strong record of success for Detox. A variety of communication channels were utilized, including web sites, Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, news conferences, online videos, and in-store protests. Over 700 people were part of in-store protests in 20 countries. This included hanging large Detox banners from five Zara flagship stores in Europe and Asia. Greenpeace utilized a variety of communication channels. The communication channels and tactics were organized around the Detox web site. This hub and spoke design is powerful for messaging (People! Zara commits to go toxic-free, 2012). Greenpeace build credibility through investigations by universities and governments that revealed the extent and types of hazardous chemicals in clothing. Experts were used to build Greenpeace’s credibility on the topic. Urgency was established by Greenpeace’s commitment to the issue and

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unwillingness to dilute their cause. The Detox campaign is now three years old and regularly has the ability to create in-store actions, two signs of commitment. Greenpeace is adamant that the response must be the pledge to detox the entire supply chain, not just parts of the supply chain or certain chemicals. The challenge legitimacy was built through quality messages and legitimacy resources while urgency for the challenge was created through crossover and communication skill. Detox provides an example of an organic challenge. Greenpeace created reasoned arguments for Detox, not simple rants against Zara. Their evidence of Zara’s use of suppliers that utilize hazardous chemicals helped to build legitimacy. Legitimacy was also enhanced through the images and stories of how people were suffering from the chemicals. The threat was real and harmful to people, animals, and the environment. Greenpeace did generate crossover with traditional media coverage of their Zara efforts and in-store actions against Zara (People! Zara commits to go toxic-free, 2012). These were combined with the communicative skill Greenpeace brings to its efforts in order to build a strong sense of urgency. The challenge is organic because Greenpeace is raising a new concern. Society now cares about hazardous chemicals in the supply chain. This means corporations need to keep pace with stakeholder expectations. There were no efforts to frame the challenge as an expose´ of corporations pretending to detox but not eliminating the hazardous chemicals from their supply chains. It is difficult to assess the relative power of Zara (the challenged organization) and Greenpeace. However, the power resources amassed by Greenpeace suggest Zara could not be confident it had a distinct power advantage over Greenpeace. Detox was framed in such a way that it avoids the constraints. Costs are minimal because the safe chemical prices are the same or less than their hazardous counterparts. Changing chemical does not impact corporate strategy. The detox effort itself is feasible because the alternative chemicals are known and available. Finally, detoxing is consistent with CSR activities and creates an opportunity to improve stakeholder views of responsibility. Once the shift in chemical is accomplished, it is fairly easy to maintain this CSR effort. Greenpeace made itself a salient stakeholder by using communication to build power, legitimacy, and urgency. The challenge, the need to detox, was shown to be legitimate and urgent. The organic nature of the threat was less threatening than an expose´. Corporations needed to keep pace with changes in stakeholder expectations instead of defending a purposeful

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misbehavior. Finally, the detox avoided the four constraints that frequently preclude corporations from acting on a challenge. The detox effort was low cost, consistent with corporate strategy, feasible, and would not create future CSR issues. The Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges helps to uncover the various factors that contributed to Greenpeace redefining responsible behavior for Zara.

CONCLUSION Activist stakeholders, typically led by NGOs, seek to shape what constitutes corporate responsibility and irresponsibility. The stakeholders are challenging existing corporate behaviors by defining those behaviors as irresponsible. These definitional challenges have important ramifications for corporate CSR programs. Definitional battles raise the issue of power. There is an assumption that social media has shifted power from corporations to stakeholders. To equate power with the use of social media is both simplistic and misleading. Power is a function of how social media is utilized. In this chapter we have fused ideas from Contingency Theory and ICT to build the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges. This new framework helps us to understand how social and traditional media can be used as part of an effort to develop effective stakeholder challenges. The Zara Detox case illustrated how Greenpeace utilized various elements of the Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges to establish its salience and to leverage Zara into detoxing its supply chain. Creating successful stakeholder challenges is a complex process. The Integrated Framework for Stakeholder Challenges helps stakeholders, managers, and researchers to better understand this aspect of CSR.

REFERENCES Bhattacharya, C. B., Korschun, D., & Sen, S. (2009). Strengthening stakeholder company relationships through mutually beneficial corporate social responsibility initiatives. Journal of Business Ethics, 85(2), 257 272. Cameron, G. T., Pang, A., & Jin, Y. (2008). Contingency theory: Strategic management of conflict in public relations. In T. L. Hansen-Horn & B. D. Neff (Eds.), Public relations: From theory to practice (pp. 134 155). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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CSR AND NEW BATTLE LINES IN ONLINE PR WAR: A CASE STUDY OF THE ENERGY SECTOR AND ITS DISCONTENTS David McQueen ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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 wideranging “PR war” are explored and contrasted in detail.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 99 125 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007008

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Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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 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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION The focus of the chapter is on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the energy sector and how new media technologies are deployed in a virtual war between oil and gas corporations and dissident, activist and protest groups. Innovative PR strategies by energy companies and their opponents including the use of social media and other public communications are explored as part of a wider ‘PR war’ designed to influence public opinion and government policy. The concept of asymmetrical warfare is applied to case studies of the energy giants BP and Royal Dutch/Shell and various groups ranged against them to offer fresh perspectives into the nature of ongoing battles for what political and military leaders have termed the

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‘hearts and minds’ of the general public (President Lyndon Johnson, 1965, cited Bibby, 1996). This PR war often centres on contested notions of CSR and claims by the oil giants about their environmental impact, which opponents dismiss as ‘greenwashing’. The chapter revisits BP’s public relations debacle over the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Shell’s CSR-related communications around oil exploration in the Arctic. These public relations efforts are contrasted with Greenpeace’s ‘brandjacking’ and social networking campaigns to discredit both oil companies. The chapter will also focus on the less well-known public relations war between Shell and protestors over the Corrib gas pipeline and reprocessing plant in County Mayo, Ireland. The chapter touches on the wide scope of protest methods used by campaigning groups and draws on scholarship from a range of academic disciplines as well as non-academic sources from the media, the oil industry and various environmental groups, activists and filmmakers to characterise the nature of this ‘PR war’. Particular attention is given to the use of strategies and techniques by community and environmental groups opposed to BP and Shell including the use of websites, social media and no- and lowbudget documentary. The battle for public opinion is shown to have uneven outcomes with activist groups occasionally inflicting serious, short-term damage to the corporate reputation of both BP and Shell. However, it is clear that these companies are capable of adjusting quickly and of striking back against their opponents to undermine their support amongst the broader public. In the case of Shell, the company has developed some novel online strategies and lobbied local communities effectively in ways that have sometimes divided opponents of oil and gas development. The analysis provided here is rooted in a media and communications tradition and recognises that attempting to assess conflicts from any supposedly ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ position is neither realistic nor philosophically credible and that many of the ‘facts’ outlined have been disputed and contested, as in every war. The research is also alert to the uneven power relations in these conflicts and the possibility that a satisfactory resolution of the outstanding tensions and disagreements between energy industries and their opponents may never be achieved. However, this investigation may shed some light on what remains an under-researched area of public relations research, namely ‘how organisations in controversial industry sectors gain or sneak legitimacy through their CSR policies and initiatives’ (Lindgreen, Maon, Reast, & Yani-De-Soriano, 2012, p. 394) and the ways in which opponents of these industries challenge them through public

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communications (see Burgos, 2013). A term such as ‘negotiated discussion’ (Kent & Taylor, 1998, p. 325) is shown to be inadequate to characterise the so-called ‘dialogue’ between opposing parties in long-standing disputes between the oil industry and activists engaging in sceptical and often hostile communications (see also Raymond, 2003; Rosenau, 2009). The discussion also allows for a sharper notion of ‘asymmetric communications’ (Grunig & Hunt, 1984) and acknowledges the persistence of struggle and conflict in public relations.

BACKGROUND The increased attention to corporate social responsibility of the past quarter century has been driven, to a large extent, by developments in technology and digital communication. In the pre-Internet era, access to publishing and broadcasting channels was restricted and expensive which gave corporations an advantage when communicating with the public. As the barriers to entry to publication have lowered NGOs, charities, unions, human rights campaigners, anti-globalisation activists, political and community groups have been able to take advantage of the opportunities provided by new digital platforms to scrutinise and challenge corporate activity and offer an alternative to business-oriented messages, narratives and explanatory frameworks. As Burns (2007) notes this communications revolution has brought with it a much greater pressure on companies to change their methods of business and to make them more socially and environmentally responsible, especially ‘in less developed countries that may have weak labour laws, lax environmental laws and little respect for human rights’ (p. 40). It has been argued that this change has forced businesses to move beyond a strategy of ‘command and control’ towards a more multi-layered communications approach and, arguably, greater engagement with their critics (John & Thomson, 2003). In some cases this engagement has been a dialogue in which both sides have shared views and found resolutions to disputed issues as happened with Shell’s plan to dump the Brent Spa Platform in the Atlantic in 1995. Shell, which had received permission from the British government for the offshore disposal, found itself at the centre of protests and a boycott of its petrol station that had particular impact on the continent, especially in Holland and Germany. Shell subsequently announced an ‘open consultative process’ to find an alternative, despite British government insistence

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that the dumping option was the only approved plan. Greenpeace welcomed the Shell consultation and the final decision to cut up the Spar and use the sections to build a quay in Norway passed without major objections. As the Managing Director of Shell Expro had claimed, ‘we want to engage not enrage’ (cited John & Thomson, 2003, p. 39). The resulting substitute policy appeased Shell’s opponents and the outcome of the Brent Spa protests is often cited as a case of direct action working leading as it did to the involvement of antagonistic groups working together in the search of a solution (ibid., pp. 38 39). Of course, corporate engagement and dialogue with opposition groups at this level remains relatively rare. For the most part exchanges between the oil industry and its opponents lack the fundamental qualities of ‘dialogue’ (which include some reciprocal exchange) and are more often characterised by lack of agreement and conflict. Furthermore, describing either constructive or more hostile exchanges and interventions by activists, charities, NGOs and environmental groups as ‘public relations’ is problematic. Campaigns to raise awareness or mobilise resistance against corporate or state activity perceived to be against the public interest can take many forms including the use of advertisements, social media, petitions, marches, protests, occupations, blockades, stunts, lobbying and legal actions through the courts. However, many campaigners are likely to flatly reject the use of the term ‘public relations’ (with its well-documented negative associations) to describe any of the work they do. Studies of public relations within the critical and radical academic tradition (see Beder, 2002, 2006; Dinan & Miller, 2007) would lend strong support to such a rejection by narrowly defining PR as ‘corporate propaganda’ or ‘a set of techniques for pursuing corporate interests rather than promoting common interests’ (Miller & Dinan, 2008, pp. 4 5). Resentment at academic efforts to describe the work of organisations opposed to corporate interests as PR is understandable when approaching the debate from this perspective. By contrast, pluralist definitions of public relations provide scope for including a much broader set of groups, activities and communicative approaches that range from hype, persuasion and reputation management to relationship building and more utopian ‘two-way symmetrical’ communications (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). This looser definition permits those working within that paradigm to speak of ‘protest’, ‘dissent’ and ‘activist PR’ and include interventions and activities that extend well beyond corporate-led communications, stakeholder engagement and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. It grants those studying the battle for public opinion over such issues as energy the theoretical space to see PR

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techniques as not exclusively in the service of corporate interests, whilst recognising the resources behind such battles are very unequally distributed. For the purpose of this discussion I will be using the CIPR’s broad definition of public relations as ‘the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour’ (CIPR, 2013, p. 1). This broad definition informs the discussion of the selected case studies which concern the energy corporation BP’s PR fiasco over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and Shell’s oil and gas exploration in the Arctic region and off the coast of County Mayo in the Republic of Ireland. A characteristic feature of what I term the public relations war between these transnational corporations and their opponents is the asymmetrical nature of the conflict. However, it should be noted that the use of the term ‘PR war’, while commonplace in media accounts (see Stewart, 2012) may be regarded as controversial when used in an academic context. Scrimger and Richards (2003) trace the use of the terms ‘public relations war’ or ‘public relations battle’ as found in Canadian press coverage and note that those subjects most frequently portrayed as being a ‘battleground’ include: politics, business and economics, labour disputes, the environment, and citizen and interest group activism (p. 487). They are disapproving of the phrase ‘PR war’, regarding it as an inflammatory ‘journalistic cliche´’ that only serves to minimise the collaborative value of good public relations practice and which may undermine potential mutual understanding and harmony between an organisation and its publics (p. 485). Their study shows that the main contexts in which public relations is associated by the press with ‘exacerbating conflict’ are in initiatives seeking to stake out a position or win popular support and in disagreements between two or more groups or organisations which has caught the attention of the news media. They are troubled that ‘a word such as war, which is often associated with loss of life, can be trivialized in this way’ (p. 487). However, where the relationship between an organisation and particular groups sours dramatically and takes on a highly adversarial, violent and occasionally lethal quality and where livelihoods are at stake as in the cases reviewed here, the term PR war seems perfectly appropriate. It is certainly no more controversial than similar conjunctions such as ‘information war’, ‘propaganda war’ or ‘cyber warfare’ (see Clarke & Knake, 2010; David & McKeldin, 2009). Examples of such PR war would include the many ongoing battles between energy companies and protest groups which stretch from Fukishima in Japan to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Niger Delta in West Africa to the Arctic Circle.

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But why describe these particular battles for public opinion between the fossil fuel industry and its opponents as ‘asymmetric warfare’ and what added value does the concept bring to the enquiry? Tacitus described asymmetric warfare as the ‘barbarian’s way of rebellion’, for the Vietnamese it was the ‘people’s war’, whilst Che Guevara described it as ‘guerrilla warfare’ (Lowther, 2007, p. 53). An asymmetrical war is fought between belligerents whose military power is significantly unequal, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly. Andrew Mack was one of the first to employ and explore the term in a paper written in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War entitled Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars. Mack points to post World War Two conflicts in Indonesia, Algeria, Aden, Morocco, Tunisia and Vietnam where local nationalist forces gained their objectives in armed confrontations with colonial and industrial powers which possessed an overwhelming superiority in conventional military capability. Mack argues that: In every case success for the insurgents arose not from a military victory on the ground though military successes may have been a contributory cause but rather from the progressive attrition of their opponents’ political capability to wage war. In such asymmetric conflicts, insurgents may gain political victory from a situation of military stalemate or even defeat. (Mack, 1975, p. 177)

This is key to understanding how relatively small organisations can pose systemic threats to large corporations. By employing unconventional strategies, smaller, nimble opposition groups can exploit the characteristic weaknesses of their larger, slow-moving opponents. Just as British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have learnt that they are as vulnerable to hit-and-run tactics in an unpopular occupation as their nineteenth and early twentieth century predecessors; transnational energy corporations sometimes underestimate organised and sustained resistance to unpopular and invasive exploration and exploitation of natural resources. The uneven nature of the PR war is also clear when examining the resources available to transnational corporations and their opponents. According to an Institute for Policy Studies report in the year 2000 fiftyone corporations could be found amongst the top one hundred largest economies in the world (cited Groves, 2009). The report claimed that Shell was placed forty-third, above Venezuela, Iran, Pakistan, Singapore and Ireland, whilst Nigeria did not make the list (ibid.). Even the largest environmental pressure group Greenpeace is dwarfed by the economic might of Shell, yet the scope of Greenpeace’s work means that Shell is only one of many organisations in its sights. Groups dedicated to opposing Shell’s

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activities such as the Irish group Shell to Sea are mere midges compared to the transnational oil giant. What is also clear from the literature on oil industry activity around the world is that reporting of accidents affecting developed and western nations is quite different to that of underdeveloped nations. The explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig off the coast of United States on 20 April 2010 and subsequent five million barrels oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was extensively covered both in the United States and international media. A study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (2010) found that the oil spill was by far the dominant story in the mainstream US news media in the 100-day period after the explosion, accounting for 22% of news coverage almost double the next biggest story. Considerable time was spent reporting from the Gulf and humanising the crisis and in many cases they used their websites’ interactive features to illuminate aspects of the story that would have been harder to digest in print or broadcast formats. By contrast, major leaks in Nigeria including a 40,000 barrels leak from the Bonga field off the coast of Nigeria in 2011 (Bloomberg, 2011; Reuters, 2012) have received hardly any international media coverage (Keating, 2012). The Deepwater Horizon spill and subsequent media coverage caused immense damage to BP, a company which had rebranded in 2000 from BP Amoco to the more aspirational and progressive-sounding BP (Beyond Petroleum) at an estimated cost of £136 million (The Telegraph, 2000). The rebrand saw Europe’s second-largest energy company move away from the shield logo that had been used since the 1920s to a green, yellow and white floral sunburst logo (the Helios) and lower case bp initials to signal a new commitment to the environment, solar power and other renewable energy. The relaunch had been met with cynicism at the time by green campaigners with Greenpeace describing it as ‘a triumph of style over substance’. One climate campaigner was quoted by the BBC (2000) as saying: They spent more on the logo this year than they did on renewable energy last year. Given they spend $8bn a year on oil exploration, BP stands less for beyond petroleum and more for burning the planet.

Balmer (2010) described the ethical/CSR positioning adopted by BP since 2000 as an example of ‘Brand Exuberance’, or of institutional rhetoric falling short of reality. If CSR is defined as ‘a company’s commitment to minimising or eliminating any harmful effects and maximising its longrun beneficial impact on society’ (Mohr, Webb, & Harris, 2001, p. 47) then BP clearly failed to live up to this commitment. In other words, BP’s

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rebrand amounted to ‘a corporate marketing position that was at best an aspiration and was, in truth, never really attainable’ (Balmer, Powell, & Greyser, 2011, p. 7). This gap between BP’s marketing and the reality of being responsible for the world’s worst accidental oil spill was exploited by groups such as Greenpeace who were quick to remind the public of BP’s poor safety and environmental record in the United States. This included an explosion and fire at a Texas refinery in 2005 that killed 15 workers and left 170 injured and the leaking of 5,000 barrels of oil from their Prudhoe Bay pipeline in Alaska in 2006. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in 2010 underlined the folly of the oil corporation using a logo highlighting its supposed green credentials when protestors defaced and redesigned the BP Helios logo, making it look like an oil slick or an oil-covered bird. In fact Greenpeace launched an online competition to redesign the logo and were able to provide a wide range of creative images that mocked BP’s ‘environmentally responsible’ image and marketing. This contributed to the widely-held impression in 2010 that BP’s green multi-pettled sunburst logo ‘symbolised environmental disaster and corporate failure’ (Balmer et al., 2011, p. 11). During the long-running crisis BP America’s Facebook page included daily updates on the oil containment and recovery efforts, including details of manpower and equipment used, community work undertaken, amount of gas flared and oil captured (these estimates dominated postings in June) and efforts at damage limitation, such as the headline ‘BP creates $20 billion fund to meet individual, business and government claims, to cover the costs of state and local response and natural resource damages’ (16 June 2010). Negative comments from Facebook users about BP and the spill are almost always countered by other users with the dialogue often descending to hostilities as in the following exchange on 1 September: Richard I agree there is a cover up in the gulf. The use of dispersant many scientists have said is worse then the oil. It seemed that there was a big hype when it first started and now everything has gone quite in the news about the effects of the spill. Erica the moon is made out of cheese char Kim Melissa = Schoolyard bully. Stick to the subject and shove off with your personal attacks and look in the mirror sweetie … who you calling a D A. At least Charlotte reads all the information available instead of sticking with a thick headed argument for the sake of a paycheck. It’s like selling your soul to the Devil when you Cheer for bp. Melissa Charlotte is also employed by sea life, Her boss is a brown pelican, The CEO is a dolphin, I think the mail room guy is a sea turtle. Ian Charlotte is putting her middle-school-level education to good use.

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Melissa Wow Kim school yard bully that all you got? I don’t think I could pick on Charlotte in a school yard since she is a dropout … lol I filled up at a BP station today *gasp* Maxwell lol why is every one being mean to each other? Pete @Charlotte … do you sit around and wait for Bp posts so you can post your negative response … everyone gets it … you are mad at the world now go back to work or get out and help with the cleanup as at last check the spill was stopped and they were about to start cleaning up. The Spill was bad but it has been capped and now BP is moving forward but people like you won’t let go … go find something else to latch onto … I hear they are building a mosque at ground zero but you probably support that

A November 2013 Al Jazeera story entitled ‘Is BP “trolling” its Facebook critics?’ reported that BP hired the PR company Ogilvy & Mather to run the BP America Facebook page during the oil disaster. According to this report the Washington-based non-profit group Government Accountability Project (GAP) ‘has produced boxes of documents and well-researched information that may show that the people harassing BP’s critics online worked for BP or Ogilvy’, a claim that both companies denied. It may be that the Facebook page draws a range of personalities with very different political viewpoints, but despite screening of comments by ten individuals employed by Ogilvy and Mather in different time zones the report indicates that: The page was meant to encourage interaction with BP, but when people posted comments that were critical of how BP was handling the crisis, they were often attacked, bullied, and sometimes directly threatened. (Al Jazeera, 2013)

On BP’s website the company attempted to provide up-to-date and realtime information on the leak, some of which was described as ‘misleading’ and ‘irresponsible’ by academics and other oil experts (MSNBC, 2010). However, a live underwater feed of the leak relayed from 21 May, which continued for several weeks eventually helped government scientists establish that over a million gallons of oil per day were pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. This figure bore no relation to BP’s early estimates and made nonsense of BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles claim on 9 June that the underwater plume was ‘in very minute quantities’ (MSNBC, 2010). Footage of the billowing plume of oil occupied a prominent position on the BP website and was screened alongside television interviews with BP officials who continued to claim that this was a ‘relative trickle’ after an unsuccessful capping attempt had been made.

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BP’s public relations own goals built up to such an extent that the media began to compile lists of them, including howlers by CEO Tony Hayward such as ‘I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest’ (BBC, 18 May 2010) and, most infamously, ‘There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back’ (The Guardian, 2010a). This deeply offended the families of the 11 who had died on the Deep Water Horizon rig as well as the thousands of people whose lives and livelihood would be dramatically affected by the huge oil leak. On 2 June the BP America Facebook page included an apology issued by Tony Hayward: I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment on Sunday when I said that ‘I wanted my life back’. When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident. Those words don’t represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don’t represent the hearts of the people of BP many of whom live and work in the Gulf who are doing everything they can to make things right. My first priority is doing all we can to restore the lives of the people of the Gulf region and their families to restore their lives, not mine.

However, sensitivity to the initial offence was apparently lacking when Tony Hayward was photographed spending a relaxing Saturday on his yacht ‘Bob’ on 19 June taking part in the JP Morgan Asset Management race round the Isle of Wight. Pictures of BP’s CEO enjoying himself silhouetted against elegant sailboats and a golden sunset were described by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in an interview with ABC News as ‘part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes’ (The Guardian, 2010b). Meanwhile the online brandjacking of BP continued elsewhere on social websites such as at @BPGlobalP which satirised BP management’s gaffes and apparently callous attitude with sarcastic tweets such as: ‘Didn’t mean to say “We care about the small people”. Meant to say “We care about the nobodies”. Our bad. #bpcares’ (16 June 2010) and ‘Negative people view the ocean as half empty of oil. We are dedicated to making it half full. Stay positive America! #IwantmyBPtshirt’ (23 May 2010). This type of ironic, reactive communication or cynical ‘dialogue’ with corporations and publics is rarely acknowledged in the academic literature around public relations. However, activist groups, campaigners and informed citizens regularly engage in similar guerrilla acts that ape the oil industry’s language of concern, hijack and repurpose brand logos and CSR marketing imagery and challenge the corporate narrative on environmental guardianship and remediation efforts in the event of accidents. Humour is

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an important weapon in these attacks and while not always effective it remains a difficult tactic for corporations to respond to. While academic research within the field of public relations research has rarely focused on activist efforts to subvert CSR-related branding, marketing and communications such an enquiry complements studies investigating consumer levels of scepticism towards CSR initiatives and how the effectiveness of CSR activities is moderated by perceived corporate motive (Becker-Olsen & Hill, 2006; Maignan & Ferrell, 2003; Theofilou & Jerofejeva, 2010). As Pomering and Dolnicar (2009) note in their study of Australian banks, consumers often have low levels of trust in CSR-related advertising material and so regular exposure to well-funded corporate campaigns (such as BP and Shell’s environmentally friendly messages in recent years) may simply amplify cynicism in a sceptical marketplace. Communications which feign a deep CSR commitment in spite of clear evidence to the contrary also raise serious ethical issues whilst revealing the ‘hollow core values’ of those corporations that do so (Balmer et al., 2011, p. 9). In 2013, thirteen years after rebranding as ‘Beyond Petroleum’, BP was re-launched again as markedly less ‘green’ company divesting of its wind power assets just two years after exiting from solar power, a sector it had been investing in for forty years. In ‘Energy Outlook’, a report assessing the global energy market, BP acknowledged the growing importance of oil and shale gas development which would account for ‘almost a fifth of the increase in global energy supply to 2030’ (CNBC, 2013). The fallout from Deepwater Horizon, including the embarrassing campaign by Greenpeace and others may, ironically, have contributed to a more hard-nosed focus by BP’s on its core business (oil and gas) and a shift away from CSRinspired marketing and strategic planning.

ROYAL-DUTCH/SHELL GROUP The Royal-Dutch/Shell group of companies is an Anglo-Dutch group whose operating subsidiaries are managed worldwide by Shell International. From the late 1990s Shell came to be seen as a company making efforts to revise its previously poor corporate reputation. Shell’s activities in Nigeria and alleged complicity in the execution in 1995 of Nigerian writer and campaigner Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists (see Okonta & Douglas, 2003 for a detailed account) had resulted in worldwide protests and negative media coverage. Following these protests and the dispute around the Brent Spa platform

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Shell invested £20 million on a campaign to rebuild its reputation. In 1998 Shell followed BP and withdrew from the Global Climate Coalition a lobby group put together with the help of PR giant Burson-Marsteller which argued that global warming was not a real threat (Beder, 2002, p. 238). In the same year it published the report ‘Profits and Principles does there have to be a choice?’, a statement of principles produced by the agency Associates in Advertising which outlined Shell’s core values of ‘honesty, integrity and respect for people’. The report was clearly set up to ‘demonstrate Shell’s shift to a two-way symmetrical form of public relations’ (Roper, 2005, p. 80) focusing on the keys of openness and dialogue and winning the approval of the environmental consultancy SustainAbility which had previously been critical of Shell. The report, one of the first to outline the need for a ‘triple bottom line’ was coupled with a global advertising campaign focusing on environmental issues and a new website encouraging stakeholders to ‘Tell Shell’ assuring the public that Shell was listening and responding to criticism. The strategy was successful in rebuilding the company’s reputation amongst key opinion formers and decision makers, although as a critical report by the investigative group Corporate Watch (2006) notes the report made no specific commitments. As with BP, Shell’s corporate communication strategy has often suggested the company is moving away from a long-term dependency on fossil fuels. In a recent online campaign on the Shell Global homepage there are echoes of BP’s ‘Beyond Petroleum’ with the use of a repeated tagline ‘Let’s broaden the world’s energy mix. Let’s go’. The exhortation invokes images of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, tidal and geothermal, but it also conveniently includes controversial new extraction techniques such as hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’, coal tar sands extraction and deep sea oil exploration which have been shown to be energy intensive and polluting. ‘Let’s go’ intimates a collective effort and the images accompanying the strapline (a male worker on a walkie-talkie, a young girl on a mobile phone, an Asian woman working at a computer) indicate this effort crosses geographical, ethnic, gender and age boundaries. These are people bound together by communication technology all facing in the same direction, quietly resolute in their tasks. The young girl at the centre of the composition suggests that Shell is concerned about future generations in this collective and essential project to broaden the world’s energy mix. Corporate social responsibility is a central feature of Shell’s communications. On their Shell Arctic homepage the company defensively foreground its experience in the Arctic with the strapline: ‘Combining advanced technology with shared experience’ and explanatory header: ‘Oil spill

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prevention and response’ in the region. The site contains detailed briefing notes and factsheets as well as links to Shell’s Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other social networking sites. The tone of Shell’s online communications is that of a calmly assured, fact-based public information resource and contrasts with the sense of urgency and emotional appeals of the Greenpeace Arctic campaign which draws on scientific data on melting ice and the threat to polar bears and other wildlife in the region. Shell Global’s Facebook page at the end of October 2013 had over 4.7 million likes compared to less than 1.5 million for Greenpeace. This follows a drive by Shell after the setting up their first Facebook page in May 2011 when they brought in social-media experts as well as Facebook and other partners to raise the (then) low number of supporters to reach an initial target of 1 million fans the same number as then supported Greenpeace (Wall Street Journal, 2012). Shell’s executive vice president for communications Herbert Heitmann responsible for its social media strategy noted that the geographical breakdown of Shell’s fanbase was skewed with 224,000 fans in Malaysia in 2012, but only 1,000 fans in the Netherlands, which was disappointing ‘given that 10,000 people work for Shell here’ (Wall Street Journal, 2012). However, the campaign met its target within two months and Heitmann’s advice to other companies was clear: If you decide to go social don’t try to do it with amateur approaches. Be willing to invest, and above all put the right people in, surround yourself with experienced partners. (Wall Street Journal, 2012)

By contrast, by the end of October 2013, Shell’s Twitter account had less than 200,000 followers with 800,000 for Greenpeace International who had tweeted 14 times more often than Shell, suggesting that Shell had not invested as much in terms of time and resources in Twitter, as they had in Facebook. The battle between Shell and Greenpeace ranges across their websites and social media, especially over the controversial issue of Arctic oil exploration which remains perhaps the major source of tension. As with BP after Deepwater Horizon part of the Greenpeace’s campaign relies on mocking Shell’s CSR image. The Arctic Ready campaign http:// arcticready.com/, developed by Greenpeace and culture jamming activist duo The Yes Men, copies the style and format of Shell’s website, cloning their tagline and logo but sending up the content. This spoof website combined with a fake Twitter account of the same name apes the language of corporate social responsibility and the educational style employed by Shell in their public communications about the company’s drilling operations in

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Alaska. The Twitter account often adopts a callous tone to indicate what it regarded as Shell’s corporate indifference and total lack of social responsibility, such as the following which linked to a critical LA Times article on Shell’s record in the Arctic: Arctic Ready @arcticready26 Sep ‘In limbo?’ MORE LIKE ‘IN RUSSIA!’ Amirite #Gazprom? HAHAHA! http://www. latimes.com/nation/la-na-arctic-drilling-20130926,0,4034450.story …

In fact, much of the Arctic Ready website is empty or re-directs to a temporary site maintenance message suggesting it was put together on a low budget, possibly by the only two full-time activists comprising The Yes Men. However, the few items on the site have placed it at the top of a Google search for Shell + Arctic and the site has been retweeted over 18,000 times. Features include a flash-based parody game of Angry Birds titled ‘Angry Bergs’ in the Just for Kids page and a ‘mercy poll’ where users vote which endangered species deserves extra protection. Alongside Arctic Ready’s phoney running commentary and press releases an online competition invites Greenpeace supporters to submit their own captions for images supposedly provided by Shell via an interactive ‘ad generator’ that lets visitors design their own ironic corporate greenwash campaign. Amongst the published results a snow white arctic fox hops across the tundra above the caption: ‘You can’t run your SUV on cute: Let’s Go!’ The crowd-sourced captions have proved popular as the campaign has been linked to in dozens of high profile articles in the media. Other captions submitted in the competition include ‘Never again. Let’s Go!’ alongside a computer generated image of the Titanic sinking near an iceberg. There is sarcastic observation about Shell’s online activity in the caption ‘If we monitor our oil drills like we do our websites then we’re gonna be fine’ which accompanies a photograph of an oil rig in an arctic wilderness. Finally in an image which sums up this widespread scepticism of Shell’s CSR-related communications in an image of an azure sea, perhaps the Maldives, the accompanying tagline reads: ‘If we show you pretty pictures, it must mean we care about the environment’. This spoofing of Shell’s Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns is part of wider brandjacking efforts by Shell’s opponents focusing on the CSR/greenwashing imagery often employed by oil corporations that uses children and scenes of untamed nature and the wilderness. While some of these campaigns have gained attention the humour is sometimes strained as in a video entitled ‘private arctic launch goes wrong’ (The Yes Lab, 2012) filmed at the Seattle Space Needle and watched by

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over 800,000 people on YouTube by the 30 October 2013. The video purports to show an ill-timed malfunction of a model oilrig that was supposed to pour drinks but ends up leaking uncontrollably over an elderly woman, leading her to shriek amidst awkward silence. Described by one journalist as ‘a new landmark in the history of hoaxes’ the joke was not appreciated by some in the media who criticised Greenpeace for potentially confusing or even deceiving the public (Robens, 2012). In fact, Shell was obliged to release a statement denying the veracity of the video: Journalists, blog readers and YouTube viewers have recently been targeted with scams launched by organisations opposed to energy exploration in Alaska […] The advertising contest is not associated with Shell, and neither is the site it’s on. And Shell did not file legal action in this matter. Our focus is on safely executing our operations. (Forbes, 2012)

William McGeveran, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, told Forbes that companies like Shell would usually avoid legal action knowing that it will only draw attention to deception: ‘Because culture jamming uses that period of uncertainty about reality in order to make its point, it doesn’t do well under traditional trademark rules’, says McGeveran. ‘That said, companies like Shell are usually smart enough to know that legal action will only draw attention to the hoax and cause more long-lasting PR damage’. (Forbes, 2012)

The type of long-lasting PR damage McGeveran refers to may include the website http://royaldutchshellplc.com/ ‘dedicated to exposing Shell’s dark side’. The website was set up by disgruntled ex-employees of Shell Alfred and son John Donovan who accused the company of stealing their ideas and who have dedicated two decades to embarrassing the company. In an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle John Donovan suggests that it was anger at Shell’s ethical double standards that drove him and his father to spend so much energy into setting up the website, fighting Shell in the courts, leaking company secrets and providing an outlet for Shell whistleblowers. We want Shell to honour its own business principles. These [Shell General Business Principles] were launched in 1976 and people are entitled to believe the promises that are made in there that Shell will at all times act with honesty and integrity and openness when they deal with people, with their own employees, with their suppliers and with the general public, but in our experience they do not they are a ruthless, mean oil company. (Deutsche Welle, 2012)

Donovan’s website covers Shell controversies around the world including its record in Nigeria, the United States, Ireland and the Russian Arctic, the scene of a protest in September 2013 that resulted in the arrest of 30

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Greenpeace protestors on charges of piracy. While Shell played no part in the arrests the background to the campaign as laid out by in Greenpeace’s ‘Stop Shell’ campaign highlights Shell’s agreement with the Russian oil company Gazprom to ‘send their filthy rigs and drills into pristine Russian waters, opening up a whole new front in the war for Arctic oil’ (newsletter to supporters by John Sauven, Executive Director Greenpeace, 2013). A short animated video ‘Save the Arctic from Shell and its Russian friends’ published on 27 June 2013 explains that: The Arctic is warming, and as the ice melts the oil companies are moving north. They’re determined to drill for the same fuels that caused the melting in the first place. Leading the push is Shell. They’ve already tried drilling for Arctic oil off the coast of Alaska, but they botched it so badly they were forced to stop drilling there. So now Shell is eyeing up the Russian Arctic instead: an area where corruption is rife and accidents are common. They’ve done a deal with Gazprom a Russian company with a long history of oil spills and cover ups. Gasprom’s equipment is decades out of date and in 2011 one of its rigs even capsized and sank off the coast of Siberia with 53 members of the crew on board. Yet Shell is happy to put the Arctic, a region of breath-taking beauty, at risk by quietly signing a deal with Gazprom. If we don’t stop them a major Arctic oil spill is inevitable. The Arctic is under threat like never before, but with a global movement of people standing up to Shell we can save it. This dodgy deal is risky business for Shell tell the world about it so we can keep Shell out of the Russian Arctic for good. (73,801 views, 1,211 likes, 32 dislikes 24 September 2014)

The simple, block animation effectively summarises a complex chain of events and set of relationships in a didactic, yet accessible format. A variety of forms are employed in video posting by environmental groups. A 36 second video posted by Greenpeace titled ‘Gazprom’s security sidekicks threaten protestors with guns’ (published 19 September 2013; 63,398 views, 312 likes, 96 dislikes on 24 September 2014) shows Greenpeace activists attempting to board a Russian oil rig and being sprayed with a water hose from above. White text on a black background intercut with the action reads: ‘Yesterday Greenpeace activists boarded an oil rig in the Russian Arctic. They’re standing against oil giant Gazprom … and the Russia special forces working on their behalf’. The video shows the dramatic arrival of Russian special forces who ram their dinghy into the protestor’s boat and point pistols at them. The protestors are heard reporting by radio ‘Guns pointed in our faces. Two guns pointed directly in our faces’. And the video freeze-frames on the image of a protestor his arms raised in surrender superimposed by the following text in capitals: STAND WITH THEM. SAVETHEARCTIC.ORG (GreenpeaceVideo, 2013). Interestingly, the majority of comments beneath this video appear to be from hostile Russian viewers (dismissed as ‘trolls’ by Greenpeace

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supporters). A sample of just three publishable comments reveals the depth of this hostility (end of October 2013): • JB: 2 weeks ago When they tried to climb on the platform, the guys up there should have used rifles instead of water. Who do these morons think they are? Reply 17 • MS: 1 day ago Could have killed them and thrown their bodies into arctic, no-one would bother about it. Jews would do the same with palestinian people, BP would do it to anyone trying to reach their platform. Russians are too generous for their villian. Reply • SN 3 days ago Greenpeace goons did the crime, now it’s time for them to do the time. The world won’t put up with piracy off the coast of Somalia, why should we have any different standard in the Arctic? Note to Greenpeace: stay away from other people’s property. Period. No ifs or buts or maybes.

The crossfire of social media commentary around Arctic drilling certainly extends beyond any recognisable definition of the term ‘dialogue’, including extremely angry and menacing exchanges and threats between a variety of stakeholders and citizens only a small percentage of whom are employed by Shell or Greenpeace directly. The strong super-nationalist and fiercely territorial quality of the comments is in line with aggressive strategic manoeuvring of the Russian government in the Arctic region. The two-month detention (at time of writing) of the 30 activists from the ship Arctic Sunrise and the standoff between the Russian authorities, Greenpeace and the Dutch government reveal a highly militarised environment around Russian oil exploration in the Arctic. As Time magazine noted ‘Greenpeace could not have chosen a worse time to set sail for the Russian Arctic’ arriving on the heels of the entire fleet of nuclear powered ships led by Admiral Vladimir Korolyov, commander of the Northern Fleet who had arrived three days earlier to raise the Russian flag over the first permanent military base at the Arctic since the fall of the Soviet Union: Like the military air base they had come to unveil, the flotilla’s mission was to warn away Russia’s rivals in the Arctic, primarily the U.S., Denmark, Finland, Norway and Canada. As it happened, several of the activists on the Greenpeace vessel were citizens of these very countries, while the captain of the ship, Peter Henry Willcox, is an American. So their stunt gave Russia just the opportunity it needed to underscore the message of Admiral Korolyov: Do not tread on the Russian north. (Time Magazine, 2 October 2013)

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CORRIB GAS FIELD In April 2005, Shell sought an injunction in a Dublin court against residents of Erris in County Mayo, Ireland who were obstructing the laying of high-pressure raw gas pipelines across their lands. Shell had been awarded the right to compulsorily purchase property from locals for its pipeline route the first time a private body was awarded this power in the Republic. On 29 June 2005 the court convicted and jailed five people for failing to comply with the order of the High Court restraining them from interfering with Shell’s project. The ‘Rossport 5’ as they came to be known were jailed indefinitely for contempt of court which led to demonstrations all over the country and picketing of Shell petrol stations. The harsh sentence proved a PR headache for Shell with intense media interest in the case and after 94 days the men were released following an application by Shell to the High Court to have the injunction lifted, despite vowing to continue their campaign. As Shell continued with its plans to lay the raw gas pipeline in mid-2005 the Rossport Solidarity Camp set up on the route of the proposed pipeline at the invitation of community members and Shell to Sea (Shell chun Sa´ile) a group established to oppose Shell’s plans for an onshore oil refinery. Activists from around the world have engaged in direct action protests and campaigning around the construction sites which has led to greater ‘state repression and incidents of violence between police, security and protestors’ (Doyle & Lockhart, 2012, pp. 31 32). As Gilmartin (2009) notes the Rossport 5 and the group Shell to Sea gained attention across Ireland and beyond with support groups in Germany and Norway and Ogoni campaigners against Shell in Nigeria making regular visits to the area. The comparison between the situation of the Irish protestors and that of the Ogoni even led to a documentary called Those Who Dance, (directed by Mayyasa al-Malazi and available on YouTube) which intercuts footage from Ireland and Nigeria making this connection explicit (Gilmartin, 2009, p. 277). Nigerian researcher Onuoha’s (2008) monograph When Communities Confront Corporations explored the issues and events that led to the incarceration of the Rossport Five and made further comparisons with events in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Onuoha argues that conflicts between communities and oil corporations such as Shell, though pervasive, do not appear to receive adequate scholarly attention. Doyle and Lockhart (2012) note that the struggles in County Mayo and The Niger Delta are of the least affluent people on the edges of their respective societies, third world or first: ‘In effect, the local experiences of these peripheries

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are strikingly similar both have suffered enormously at the hand of British colonisation which continues to shape much of the politics of these regions’ (p. 29). The PR war between Shell and the small community of protestors has taken a number of turns. Shell to Sea has cast Shell in terms of a colonial occupying force a powerful narrative in an isolated Gaelic-language region synonymous with poverty, suffering and resistance under British rule. For example, on 17 May 2013 the Shell to Sea Facebook page posted an image advertising the Rossport Solidarity Campaign week of action from 21 to 30 June using an adapted image from the cartoon book Asterix. This showed showing the small town of Rossport surrounded by the figures of Roman legionnaires with the camps Shell, Statoil, I-RMS and Vermillion representing the ‘corporate conquest’ of Ireland ‘circa 2005’. The link to Ireland’s history of colonial occupation is made repeatedly in the few studies that have been made of the Erris protests. Risteard [Richie] O´ Domhnaill director of the award-winning feature length documentary The Pipe (2011) on the anti-Shell protests explained in a telephone interview with this author (29 July 2013) how he got involved in 2006 just after the Rossport Five had been released from prison. Risteard, whose uncle is a local farmer, witnessed how 200 police ‘guards’ (as well as private security and navy) were used to break the local blockade and found it surreal to see the levels of aggression (shown in The Pipe) in such a small, peaceful rural community. He explained how the Irish police the ‘Gardaı´ ’ were usually embedded within the community and generally took a more ‘laid back’, consensual approach to policing as expressed in their Gaelic title ‘An Garda Sı´ ocha´na’’ ‘protectors of the peace’. Risteard was shocked by how local people were manhandled and sometimes beaten by police and private security guards often brought in from other counties. He felt the treatment was dehumanising with ‘honest people treated roughly and libellously’, which he said angered a lot of local people. Shell’s initial approach was described as a ‘we know best attitude’ jailing farmers for trying to stop a pipe running across their land and being surprised at the level of opposition they encountered. ‘Shell didn’t understand the affinity of the Irish to their land things become very emotive when you interfere with a farmer’s relationship to their land’. According to Risteard following the PR disaster of 2005, Shell changed tactics and made efforts to isolate the local community from the national debate. Shell were portrayed as good local employees and Shell’s opponents as ecological extremists, British anarchists, IRA and people with mental problems. Perceptions of the local protestors as a fringe group ideologically

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opposed to the state were cultivated in press and broadcast media coverage and in statements by politicians. Risteard describes the good relations between Shell and the press, noting that Tony O’Reilly owner of the Irish Independent, (amongst numerous other titles) also ‘owns an oil company’. ‘Shell also has fantastic connections with local media, politicians. Fianna Fa´il and Fine Gael are tied in at every level. Only Sinn Fe´in is against the pipeline project’. Shell has made concerted public relations efforts in the local community including organised tours of the gas terminal construction site at Bellanaboy Bridge and bi-monthly Corrib gas newsletters and quarterly stakeholder updates to all households in the Erris area. According to Shell, these updates contain news about local initiatives as well as ‘project milestones and progress reports’ helping to ensure that the local community is well informed about the project’s progress: It is because of this constant engagement and our very broad range of relationships that we have with members of the local community that we are confident that the majority of people in the local area support the project. (Shell, 2013)

More significantly, Shell has invested heavily in a variety of community projects, compensating local fishermen and is proactive in providing grants to community organisations and sports groups including the part funding of local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA)’s Belmullet grounds (Shell, 2012). GAA sports including Gaelic football and hurling are associated very firmly with the Irish Republic (and Republicanism) which helps dispel Shell British ‘colonial’ image. Shell employs a dedicated Social Investment Advisor working closely with local community groups to help deliver the Corrib Natural Gas ‘Investment in the Community’ initiatives. According to the Shell website ‘Working with the local community’: The Local Grants Programme offers local groups and voluntary organisations funding of up to h10,000 per annum. Since its launch in 2007 more than 200 local community groups have applied for funding under the programme. (Shell, 2013)

The perception that such PR efforts amount to ‘bribing’ local residents towards accepting the pipeline were reinforced when reports of so-called ‘accommodation services’ became the focus of a dispute between Shell and a small oil services company OSSL which claims it was charged with ‘greasing the palms’ of interested parties in the area. According to a report in The Observer in August 2013 the company, managed by Desmond Kane from Glasgow and Neil Rooney from Belfast, claim that the services it carried out for Shell even ran to providing the police force with alcohol soon

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along with other ‘outlandish favours’

But the ‘accommodation services’ went too far for OSSL. It was tasked to provide ‘a tennis court, cookers, television sets, agricultural equipment, school fees, home improvements, garden centre visits, forestry equipment’, says Rooney for local residents. He says that he and Kane found themselves paying workmen to do one thing, then invoicing Shell for something else, and often administering ‘accommodation services’ themselves. The pattern was the same as the saga reached its reported nadir: the delivery, from Northern Ireland in an unmarked van, of alcohol worth h35,000 (£30,100) to the Garda station at Belmullet, where the policing operation was quartered at Christmas, 2007. Kane quotes a Supt John Gilligan as saying, while he was helping to unload the consignment of booze, ‘it’s lucky these walls are high’, lest the protesters caught a glimpse of what was going on. (The Observer, 11 August, 2013)

The Shell to Sea group have run a caption competition on their Facebook page similar to that launched by Greenpeace against BP and Shell, but in this case for a ‘Garda drink of the week contest’. This has included refashioned whiskey labels such as ‘Belmullet Irish Whiskey’ (named after the local police station where the alcohol was allegedly delivered) with an image of a police officer wielding a baton and another of ‘Templemore Dew’ with the strapline ‘Express Your Dark Side. Violent Character’ with a screengrab from the film The Pipe showing a police officer yelling and lunging towards the camera with a baton raised. Photographs have also been posted of protestors offering police officers bottles of whisky. As with the Greenpeace campaign against Shell and BP Shell to Sea’s campaign employs black humour and benefits from the interactive character of the campaign. The Observer article makes plain the link to Shell’s stated CSR policies and what anti-Shell activists perceive to be the reality of their behaviour in County May, quoting Shell to Sea member and head teacher Maura Harrington: There’s a chasm between Shell’s rhetoric of its stated principles of corporate governance and the reality of Shell tactics on the ground. In the failed state that is Ireland at present, Shell is given free rein to do as it wishes. (The Observer, 2013)

Aside from allegations of collusion and corruption raised here and in the Irish Parliament by Irish TD, Clare Daly there are questions of the impact of Shell’s community investments in an already divided community. For The Pipe director Risteard O´ Domhnaill Shell’s such investments have created something of a dependency culture which has contributed in his view

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to a slow decline in support for the anti-Shell protests in the area and polarised opinion even further. This polarised view is evident in the various video documentaries that have been made around the subject, some of which are available online. Three films The Pipe, Pipe Down and Those Who Dance are broadly sympathetic to the anti-Shell protestors, while The Battle for the Gasfield is highly sceptical and unsympathetic. The issue of which channels broadcast these films and how ‘impartial’ they are has provoked fierce debate. Journalist and filmmaker Risteard O´ Domhnaill claims that Shell were not interested in participating in his film when the learned that ‘they could not control the message’. Despite winning many awards and being screened on British and Australian television the English language film The Pipe was screened on TG4 (Irish language broadcaster) and not on RTE the main channel in the Republic of Ireland. Paul Williams’ documentary The Battle for the Gasfield which was screened on TV3 on June 2009 (also available on YouTube) did have Shell’s cooperation and, amongst other charges levelled at Shell to Sea, accused leading campaigner Maura Harrington of being ‘the pin-up girl of every sect of the republican movement’. With at least four documentaries as well as numerous broadcast news pieces made about the Corrib gas field controversy available online the PR war continues, with neither side striking deadly blows, and community cohesion in the Erris area of County Mayo the only clear casualty in the long-running dispute.

CONCLUSION This chapter has shown shows how the public relations war has had uneven outcomes with a small number of relatively poorly resourced activists sometimes winning the battle for public opinion against huge oil corporations and their well-funded PR campaigns whilst at other times fighting to a position of stalemate, with neither side winning a clear victory. Reputation management efforts by the oil and gas sectors were reviewed, including BP’s public relations failures over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which affected thousands of miles of coastline of the Gulf of Mexico and Greenpeace’s ‘brandjacking’ and social networking campaign. Assuming a broad, pluralist definition of public relations has allowed for some comparative insights that may be more difficult to establish within the radical academic tradition. One finding is that protest

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groups and oil companies are not engaging in real ‘dialogue’ or a genuinely ‘two way’ communications exchange. Rather they are engaged in a kind of guerrilla warfare, usually asymmetrical in nature due to the imbalance in resources between the two parties. Humour, crowd sourcing and attacks on a corporation’s CSR claims are typical of activist groups while both BP and Shell have engaged in various public communications designed to placate and reassure the general public. These have included the provision of online information resources, increasing engagement through social media and ‘community investment’ of various kinds, some of which have raised controversies of their own. The term ‘PR war’ has been shown to provide an apt description for many of these communications and activities which have included the use of video, animation, social media, competitions and other forms of interactive engagement with the public. Whether the rise of activist, critical, and radical PR is changing how the field is represented is a more complex question. In the public’s mind PR is still broadly associated with corporate communications, rather than radical or activist groups. This may relate back to the perception of PR amongst many of the general public as being associated with ‘spin’ and ‘manipulation’, an impression which this chapter has shown to have some justification, especially around environmental concerns (see also Beder, 2002, 2006; Ewen, 1996; Stauber & Rampton, 1995). In relation to CSR it underlines what Balmer et al. (2011, p. 10) have described as a need for corporations to ‘focus on substance rather than on the trappings of the territory’ for well-informed sections of the public to take the practice of corporate social responsibility by large, multinational energy firms seriously. If CSR is seen as greenwashing or ‘merely a public relations exercise’ (John & Thomson, 2003, p. 12) rather than the way a company does business it is only likely to fuel public scepticism of the oil and gas sector and of corporate claims about the environment more generally.

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TWO-MINUTE DRILL: VIDEO GAMES AND SOCIAL MEDIA TO ADVANCE CSR W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 127 142 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007017

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Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications 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. Originality/value 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).

INTRODUCTION Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) can benefit society, there also is a strong need to justify the business case for CSR. A significant portion of the CSR literature is dedicated to isolating how CSR can benefit an organization in order to justify the business case for CSR (Bhattacharya, Sen, & Korschun, 2011; Werther & Chandler, 2011). One challenge associated with developing the business case for CSR is creating awareness of these corporate initiatives. Corporations can derive cost savings from CSR

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initiatives when those efforts contribute to tangible reductions in energy use, water use, expenditures for raw materials, or product differentiation. Also, part of the business benefits from CSR stem from stakeholder awareness and reputational boosts that stem from these CSR efforts. However, efforts to communicate CSR to stakeholders may create the boomerang effect of angering stakeholders. Stakeholders dislike corporations devoting money to CSR promotion and the hard sell nature of the messages (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004). But communication is a prerequisite for awareness. How can corporations communicate about CSR without creating this boomerang effect? This dynamic has been termed the CSR promotional communication dilemma (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). One alternative for CSR communication is to utilize social media. In contrast to paid advertising, social media channels are low cost and can utilize “soft-sell” techniques. The CSR discussion can be more subtle and less direct than paid traditional advertising, thereby overcoming two of the reasons CSR communication can boomerang. But using social media channels presents the new challenge of finding an audience. Social media experts boast, and the brand channels themselves proudly pronounce, how millions of people use these channels to engage with corporations. However, social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, the more commonly used channels, require people to “Like” or “follow” the corporation for them to encounter the corporate CSR messages. Hence, corporations must not only develop but also find a way to attract stakeholders to their CSR social media messages. Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used as a case to illustrate the potential value of games to attract and to engage stakeholders in CSR messaging. People had to “Like” Kraft and visit their “fight hunger” Facebook page to play the Two-Minute Drill game. The game was advertised along the right side of Facebook pages and in other promotion activities such as news releases. When people played, Kraft donated food to their hunger relief program, Kraft’s primary CSR effort. People were motivated to visit Kraft’s Facebook page for hunger relief where they encountered Kraft’s CSR message about fighting hunger and engaged in the CSR effort by playing the game. This chapter begins by exploring the important role of communication in CSR efforts, including the CSR promotional communication dilemma. The focus then shifts to the potential of social media in general, and games specifically, to deliver CSR messages. Kraft’s “TwoMinute Drill” is used as an extended case to illustrate the value of gamification to CSR communication.

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CSR’S INCREASING IMPORTANCE TO CORPORATIONS AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATION CSR can be defined in numerous ways; however, the gist of most definitions refers to an organization’s obligation to have a positive effect on society and to minimize its negative effect on society (e.g., Pride & Ferrell, 2006). CSR is in part a reaction to the view that privileges shareholders’ economic interests over all other stakeholders’ interests. There is still a felt need to justify CSR through the financial benefits it might yield, the business case for CSR (Bhattacharya et al., 2011; Werther & Chandler, 2011). It is overly idealistic to think corporations are only concerned about how CSR benefits stakeholders. There would be no need to consider how CSR can benefit the corporation. Understandably, most corporations seek a benefit from their CSR initiatives; thus the business case for CSR must be established. The business case for CSR should be closely tied to communication efforts designed to enhance corporate reputation and facilitate stakeholder identification with the corporation (Fombrun, 2005). Corporations are challenged to communicate effectively about their CSR initiatives to derive reputational benefits from positive stakeholder support for those initiatives. The next section describes how CSR has become a critical concern for corporations and the challenges that shift in focus presents for corporate communication.

CSR AND CORPORATE REPUTATIONS Over the past decade, corporate reputation has emerged as a central intangible resource for management. Corporate reputation can be defined as the aggregate evaluation stakeholders make about how well an organization is meeting stakeholder expectations based on past behaviors (Fombrun & van Riel, 2004; Reichart, 2003; Wartick, 1992). Corporate reputation has been linked to numerous critical business assets including attracting investors, retaining employees, and increasing sales (Fombrun & van Riel, 2004; van Riel, 2013). Simultaneously, CSR has moved from the fringe to a prominent role in corporate reputation. Initially, corporate reputation measures and research concentrated almost exclusively on the financial aspects of the corporation. CSR has become a second central component in the discussion of corporate reputation (Fombrun, 2005). Reputational measures and

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research now recognize how positive perceptions of CSR programs enhance assessments of corporate reputation. In fact, the Reputation Institute estimates that over 40% of a corporate reputation is derived from CSR (Smith, 2012). As implicated in the definition of reputation proposed above, because stakeholders are the ones offering the evaluation, when stakeholders increasingly value CSR, a corporation’s CSR efforts should be reflected in reputation evaluations.

STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION THROUGH CSR PROGRAMS Bhattacharya and his associates (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004; Sen, Bhattacharya, & Korschun, 2006) describe identification as a central explanatory factor in CSR’s benefit to a corporation. Identification with an organization occurs when stakeholders perceive some element of themselves reflected in the organization’s actions. Stakeholders are more inclined to support a corporation when they identify with that corporation by perceiving shared concerns. Bhattacharya and Sen (2004) explain identification as: “the sense of attachment or connection consumers feel with companies engaging in CSR activities they care about” (p. 15). Through identification processes stakeholders perceive that part of their identity is reflected in the corporation’s identity. Overlap between the social interests of stakeholders and corporations facilitates identification and is expected to lead stakeholders to support the corporation in general as well as its CSR program. For example, customers may be more likely to buy a pair of jeans because the jeans are made from FairTrade cotton and the customer values the ideals of fair trade. Hence, CSR communication with stakeholders generates awareness of shared social concerns and facilitates identification with the corporation. Of course, corporations must understand the identities of their stakeholders. If corporations pursue social interests that their stakeholders do not value or even oppose, CSR will not promote identification regardless of communication efforts. Research has established that awareness is essential awareness to this identification process. Bhattacharya and Sen (2004) report, “consumers’ of a corporation’s CSR activities is a key prerequisite to their positive reactions to such activities” (p. 14). It is logical that efforts to facilitate identification through shared interests in CSR will not be effective if stakeholders are unaware of the CSR efforts. Stakeholders cannot know they share

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identities through CSR if they are unaware of the corporations’ identity and CSR initiatives. CSR can be featured as part of the corporation’s identity who the corporation thinks it is and that identity can be communicated to stakeholders. If stakeholders accept those identity messages and see the socially responsible part of themselves in the corporation, they may be more inclined to favorably perceive the reputation and identify with the corporation.

THE CSR PROMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION DILEMMA The CSR promotional communication dilemma arises because stakeholders actually know very little about corporate CSR efforts yet claim they want to know more about CSR efforts (Pomering & Dolnicar, 2009; Sen et al., 2006). However, stakeholders can “punish” the corporation for talking too much about its CSR. Sen et al. (2006) characterize communicating CSR as a double-edge sword. A paradox develops because stakeholders claim they want information about CSR efforts but react negatively when they perceive corporations exert too much effort in their CSR communication. For instance, research in Denmark indicates people are skeptical about “conspicuous corporate CSR communication” (Morsing, Schultz, & Nielsen, 2008). A boomerang effect occurs as the CSR promotional message offends rather than attracts and educates stakeholders (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004). Ideally, corporate communication must create awareness and identification to reap positive reputational outcomes without creating a boomerang effect.

THE NATURE OF STAKEHOLDERS The CSR promotional communication dilemma prompts consideration of the level of stakeholder interest in CSR. The situational theory of publics from public relations divides people according to their interest in and willingness to do something about an issue. The theory has direct application to stakeholder interest in CSR concerns their interest and willingness to act on CSR concerns/issues. Research using the situational theory of publics consistently shows people divide into four groups over concerns: (1) apathetic public, no concern with the issue, (2) hot-issue public, only

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concerned with issues that are widely known, (3) single-issue public, active on a narrow set of issues, and (4) all-issue public, active on a wide range of issues (Grunig, 1997). These findings have implications for the CSR promotional communication dilemma. Apathetic stakeholders are of little interest to corporations because they do not care about CSR concerns. The single and hot-issue stakeholders are “activists” and should be well informed about CSR efforts because they actively seek information on the topic. It is the hot-issue stakeholders that are of primary interest for the CSR promotional communication dilemma. They have some interest but are not that active in seeking CSR information. Typically, the hot-issue stakeholders are the large segment of stakeholders that claim that CSR is important to them yet seem to know little about corporate CSR efforts. While not as committed to CSR as single or all-issue stakeholders, the hot-issue stakeholders can be positively influenced by CSR promotional messages that are communicated effectively. The hot-issue CSR stakeholders hold CSR as part of their identity, though it is not a core element of that identity. Still, CSR does appeal to their identity needs and provides a rationale for their actions. Hot-issue CSR stakeholders can feel satisfaction with the corporation’s reduction in water consumption and tell their friends how responsible they are by purchasing the product. The communication advice provided above can be used to reach the hot-issue CSR stakeholders and present the message in way that is both low key and low cost and unlikely to create a boomerang effect.

CORE ISSUES IN THE CSR PROMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION DILEMMA Managing the CSR promotional communication requires consideration of the three core issues that underlie the dilemma: (1) source, (2) tone, and (3) cost (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). Source refers to who is perceived to be presenting the CSR message. Corporations may seem self-serving when they appear to boast about their CSR initiatives. Unless corporate communications credibly convey the corporation’s concern with the CSR issue itself, the communications may lack credibility and appear overly focused on anticipated reputational benefits from their CSR activities. One method for enhancing the credibility of communication about CSR initiatives is the use of credible third-party information sources. Stakeholders are likely to perceive third parties to be unbiased advocates of the CSR issue. Third

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parties are more concerned with addressing the CSR issue than enhancing the corporation’s reputation. In addition to attracting the support of third-party organizations, corporations must demonstrate to stakeholders that they are trustworthy information sources. Corporate credibility is enhanced when the corporation is transparent, responsive to stakeholder inquiries, and communicates in a timely fashion. Demonstrating transparency is likely to require disclosing CSR shortcomings as well as successes. Doing so will help build trust with skeptical stakeholders. Treating transparency as a process acknowledges that stakeholder perceptions determine what counts as transparency as well as whether the corporation is a credible information source. Incorporating stakeholder perceptions and evaluations into the conceptualization of transparency can not only enhance transparency but also encourage their active engagement with the organization’s CSR process. Although many corporations dutifully publish an annual CSR report and assume it will be perceived as transparent communication, corporations that seek stakeholder identification and seek to avoid the promotional communication dilemma can actively promote interest and engagement in the overall CSR process. CSR reporting is not limited to annual reporting; reporting can occur more frequently to encourage stakeholder interest. Transparent reporting answers key questions such as: • How do the CSR initiatives reflect the overall strategy of the corporation? • What is the specific focus of each CSR initiative and what prompted the selection of the initiative? • Which stakeholders, if any, were consulted or engaged in the development of the initiatives? • What were the process and outcome objectives of the CSR initiatives? • How was the data in the report collected and analyzed? • Which stakeholders, if any, were consulted or engaged in the data gathering and interpretation processes? • What were the stakeholder reactions to the CSR data? • How can a third-party assurance statement enhance the credibility of reporting? • To what extent did the corporation meet the outcome objectives? How does this information feed back into the continuation of the initiative? These points illustrate how stakeholder participation and organizational transparency are enhanced through access to information. Corporate

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credibility is enhanced when stakeholders believe they can locate information that is of interest to them. The second issue associated with the promotional communication dilemma is message tone, or the idea that the message is appearing too often and too prominently. Although CSR-related information may be integrated into corporate communication tactics, such as product and image advertising, the CSR information should not always be dominant. The CSR messages can bring attention to the issue to attract stakeholder interest rather than focusing on organizational self-promotion and selfcongratulation. The organization’s positive contributions to the social concern should be described without seeming boastful. CSR communication benefits from a tone that is low key and sincere and focuses more on the presentation of facts than the promotion of the corporation’s involvement in CSR. The third issue in the CSR promotional communication dilemma is cost. Cost refers to the amount of money the corporation spends, or is perceived to spend, on the CSR promotional communication tactics. Corporations that are perceived to spend a great deal of money on CSR promotion such as advertising are a turnoff to stakeholders (Alsop, 2004) and may provoke the undesirable boomerang effect. Corporation communication that is perceived to be lower in cost is preferred. Messages should focus more on the CSR effort and the stakeholders who benefit from the effort than the corporation itself. As described previously, negative reactions are triggered when corporation appear to be spending large amounts of money to promote their CSR efforts. The negativity arises from the perceived costs of promotion more than the act of promoting the CSR concern. “Over promotion” of the CSR initiatives may lead stakeholders to believe the corporation spends more on promoting their involvement in CSR than on the CSR effort itself. Hence, non-product advertising about CSR efforts is often a poor choice. So what are some potentially effective communication channels for CSR?

COMMUNICATION CHANNELS FOR CSR INFORMATION Both controlled and uncontrolled media channels can be used to create awareness of involvement in CSR initiatives. The term “control” denotes

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whether or not the corporation has control over if and how the message is used. For example, a traditional media outlet can ignore a news release (determine if the message is used) or develop their own version of a story based on the news release (determine how the message is used). “Uncontrolled” media include news releases and targeting information to social media sources such as blogs. Sending information to social media sources mimics a news release and acknowledges the growing power of the social media. Social media include text, audio, video, images, bookmarking, podcasts, and any combination thereof that can be shared between people (Safko & Brake, 2009). Uncontrolled tactics benefit from a third-party effect. Because the news media or social media users, rather than the organization itself, become the source of the CSR information, the third-party information may seem more credible. The corporation benefits by (1) saving costs, (2) not appearing to be an active self-promoter, and (3) gaining CSR credibility from the third parties. The downside is that CSR-related information may be ignored or be distorted in how it is reported. The media outlet can chose to frame the information as it wishes. For example, a corporation may find that the news media overlooked what the corporation believed to be positive accomplishments and focused instead on how the corporation is “not doing enough” to address a social concern. We will focus on controlled social media in this chapter. Controlled media does not have to be expensive. The corporation creates the message, selects the medium, and distributes the message. Starbucks, for instance, has long included simple brochures about their CSR initiatives at their cafes. They also provide much more extensive information about their CSR efforts at their web site. Web sites are low-cost options for providing detailed CSR information. Corporations frequently provide a section on their web site devoted to CSR. While web sites are low cost, even motivated (hot issue) publics are unlikely to seek out a corporate web site and navigate through the pages to review CSR activities. Social media are a viable controlled channel for CSR because of their wide use and low cost. Stakeholders, especially consumers with disposable income, are heavy users of Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter both are easy to access through mobile devices such as smartphones increasing potential exposure to messages appearing in these channels. The downside for these two social media channels are that stakeholders need to “Like” the corporation on Facebook or “follow” the corporation on Twitter to have the most reasonable chance of encountering

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the CSR messages. The challenge becomes to get stakeholders to voluntarily subscribe to a corporation’s CSR messaging? One answer is online gaming or gamification to be more precise. Online gaming is very popular. There are thousands of games people can play on their mobile devices and computers. Moreover, Facebook has a number of popular “free” games to occupy people’s time such as Candy Crush, FarmVille 2, and Words with Friend. In September 2013, the daily user count was 15.5 million for Candy Crush, 4.8 million for FarmVille 2, and 3.3 million for Word with Friend (Daily active users of the most popular Facebook games in September 2013, 2013). The basic game is free but people can and do spend money to upgrade their characters and game playing experience. Zynga built a business on Facebook “free” games though that business has had problems recently. Advertising has leveraged the communicative power of video games for over a decade. Gamers encounter product advertising, product placement, and even virtual purchasing during game play. Games are an established medium for delivering controlled messages. A free game tied to CSR is unique way to attract stakeholders to a corporation’s CSR through a channel that has a subdued tone and is low cost. Advocates of gamification claim participations enjoy the experience. Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used as a case to illustrate the value of connecting stakeholders to CSR information through gamification.

KRAFT FIGHTS HUNGER THROUGH ONLINE GAMING: THE “TWO-MINUTE DRILL” Kraft is a well-known food company. Consistent with its industry, Kraft’s CSR efforts include efforts to feed people facing hunger. Starting in 2010, Kraft began its annual “Huddle to Fight Hunger” CSR effort. It is Kraft’s largest, annual CSR effort. The CSR action is built around the American version of football (huddle is a term used in American football) and includes the sponsorship of a U.S. college football bowl (a championship game). In 2011, Kraft added a new, social media component to “Huddle to Fight Hunger,” called the “Two-Minute Drill” for short. A two-minute drill in American football is a quick paced effort to score during the last two minutes before halftime or before the end of the game. Before examining the specific game Kraft created, it is helpful to review the way games

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are used in advertising and social networking sites. With that background, we then can explore the “Two-Minute Drill.”

GAMIFICATION OF ADVERTISING As people began spending more times playing video games and less time watching television, advertisers had to find new ways to reach consumers. Necessity prompted the creation of in/game advertising (IGA), advergames, and social networking games. IGA places products or brands into video games to expose consumers to them. Advergames “are specifically designed and created to promote a brand, product, service, or idea. The main aims of advergames are to deliver a powerful message for the advertised brand and to achieve higher traffic on brand websites” (Terlutter & Capella, 2013, p. 96). Social network games are accessed through social network sites, such as Facebook, and allow people to link to their friends in some way (Terlutter & Capella, 2013). Advergames are commonplace in the food industry. Lee, Choi, Quilliam, and Cole (2009) found 623 games on the web sites of 47 different food product companies that targeted children. Hence, Kraft’s use of the “Two-Minute Drill” was not unique from an advertising perspective. What is unique is that the game was for social networks and was a CSR effort.

KRAFT’S “TWO-MINUTE DRILL” The official name of the CSR game was the “2-Minute Trivia Drill.” The CSR game was a partnership between Kraft and a number of groups with the most prominent partner being About Feeding America, the leader hunger NGO in the United States. The CSR game could only be played at the Facebook page for the annual “Huddle to Fight Hunger.” Though an advergame, the placement on the Facebook page categorizes it as a social networking game. The CSR game donated meals for participation in the game. A “like” would donate a meal and playing the game increased the number of meals donated. Each game was a two-minute trivia contest. The questions were about Kraft products and American football. Correct answers helped players to score points. Kraft would donate one meal for each point a player scored. People were encouraged to share the game with

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Facebook friends. The shares helped to ensure others would be aware of the CSR effort even if they elected not to participate in the game. There was the message, “Playit, share it, DONATE MEALS!.” Kraft also offered a bonus of 5,000 meals if a post from the game’s Facebook page reached 500 “shares.” There was also a leaderboard with the name of persons with the most meals donated via the game and the number of meals. The leaderboard was updated periodically. The final winner earned 143,051 meals for About Feeding America. The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” represents the gamification of CSR. Gamification is the “use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011, p. 2). Games are characterized by rules and a competition or effort to achieve some specific outcomes. Serious games are designed primarily for entertainment. Gamification occurs when game elements are extended to other realms, in this case CSR. The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” uses the leaderboard interface design pattern common in games (Deterding et al., 2011). In addition, the “2-Minute Trivia Drill” included rules and competition between players. Game design elements were applied to CSR in an effort to make learning about CSR seem more fun and less promotional of the company. The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” helps to overcome the CSR promotional communication concerns of tone and cost. The tone on the Facebook page and the game is subtle in relation to Kraft. The dominant message and theme is feeding the hungry. Kraft, the source of the messages, is there in the background through its logo, name, and the names of prominent Kraft products. More importantly, the stakeholders are treated as the drivers of the CSR effort. The individual playing the game are what create the donations from Kraft. Donations could even be personalized. By entering your zip code, the meals you earned would be sent to your area, thereby increasing the sense of proxemic involvement in the CSR effort. The costs appear to be low. Obviously Kraft did have to invest money to have the game created and to develop the Facebook page. But the game and Facebook page are viewed as low cost by stakeholders because they are common elements found online. None of the comments posted to the Kraft Fight Hunger Facebook page questioned the expense of the project. Overall the comments were very favorable. Below are some representative comments from the Facebook page: I think it is great Kraft took the time to create a game to help fight hunger and it was fun answering the questions Kudos to Kraft for that. Thank you it felt good to help and have fun doing it. Keep it up. (On a scale of 1 to 10 how good are you in the 2-Minute Drill Trivia game?, 2011, para 42)

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cool opportunity thanx to the kraft family to be able to reach out to my community. (On a scale of 1 to 10 how good are you in the 2-Minute Drill Trivia game?, 2011, para 54)

Overall the comments indicated stakeholders experienced a sense of involvement and identification.

CONCLUSION The marketing literature has revealed the CSR promotional communication dilemma. Corporations benefits from CSR only when people know about their CSR efforts. Most stakeholders are uninformed about corporate CSR efforts but want to know more about corporate CSR efforts. However, stakeholders react negatively when corporations promote their CSR efforts. How does a corporation create awareness of CSR efforts without offending stakeholders? Part of the answer lies in the channels used to promote CSR. Stakeholders react negatively to CSR promotion that appears to be directly from the corporation, very prominent (strong tone), and costly. Social media channels are one option corporations have used to cope with the CSR promotional communication dilemma. However, social media adds additional complicating factors. Stakeholders must follow the corporation’s social media to find the CSR messages embedded within those channels. Stakeholders do follow corporations of social media but that majority of the following is a result of enticements. Especially young stakeholders follow corporations on social media because of some incentive such as coupons and other discounts. We believe gamification is a potential solution to the CSR promotional communication dilemma and the concern with following. Games are an enticement. People enjoy playing the games and will follow a corporation to play the game. Kraft’s Two-Minute Drill add to the fun of playing the game and the ability to help society through the game an altruistic incentive as well. Gamification allows the corporation to be in the background rather than the foreground. The focus is on the game with the corporation’s name appearing as a sponsor and at points in the game play. The tone is low-key and does not appear costly. Stakeholders that are games are accustomed to free online games so the game itself does not appear to be costly. Gamification is not the only answer to the CSR promotional communication dilemma. Many stakeholders are not “gamers” and are unlikely to be engaged by the gamification of CSR. However, gamification is an excellent option for stakeholders with an interest in or willingness to play games

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because communications CSR is a way that can create awareness while minimizing the possibility of a boomerang effect.

REFERENCES Alsop, R. J. (2004). The 18 immutable laws of corporate reputation: Creating, protecting, and repairing your most valuable asset. New York, NY: Free Press. Bhattacharya, C. B., & Sen, S. (2004). Doing better at doing good: When, why and how consumers respond to corporate social initiatives. California Management Review, 47(Fall), 9 25. Bhattacharya, C. B., Sen, S., & Korschun, D. (2011). Leveraging corporate social responsibility: The stakeholder route to business and social value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2012). Managing corporate social responsibility: A communication approach. Boston, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Daily active users of the most popular Facebook games in September 2013. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/221190/monthly-active-users-of-themost-popular-facebook-games/ Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011, September). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining gamification. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments, ACM, New York (pp. 9 15). Fombrun, C. J. (2005). Building corporate reputation through CSR initiatives: Evolving standards. Corporate Reputation Review, 8, 7 11. Fombrun, C. J., & van Riel, C. B. M. (2004). Fame and fortune: How successful companies build winning reputations. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. Grunig, J. E. (1997). A situational theory of publics: Conceptual history, recent challenges and new research. In D. Moss, T. MacManus, & D. Vercˇicˇ (Eds.), Public relations research: An international perspective (pp. 3–46). London: ITB Press. Lee, M., Choi, Y., Quilliam, E. T., & Cole, R. T. (2009). Playing with food: Content analysis of food advergames. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 43(1), 129 154. Morsing, M., Schultz, M., & Nielsen, K. U. (2008). The “catch 22” of communicating CSR: Findings from a Danish study. Journal of Marketing Communications, 14(2), 97 111. On a scale from 1 to 10, how good are you at the 2-Minute Drill Trivia game? (2011). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/KraftFightHunger?sk=app_1323474 5433892 Pomering, A., & Dolnicar, S. (2009). Assessing the prerequisite of successful CSR implementation: Are consumers aware of CSR initiatives? Journal of Business Ethics, 85(2), 285 301. Pride, W. M., & Ferrell, O. C. (2006). Marketing: Concepts and strategies. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Reichart, J. (2003). A theoretical exploration of expectational gaps in the corporate issue construct. Corporate Reputation Review, 6(1), 58 69. Safko, L., & Brake, D. K. (2009). The social media bible: Tactics, tools and strategies for business success. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

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Sen, S., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Korschun, D. (2006). The role of corporate social responsibility in strengthening multiple stakeholder relationships: A field experiment. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(2), 158 166. Smith, J. (2012). The companies with the best CSR reputations. Retrieved from http://www. forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/12/10/the-companies-with-the-best-csr-reputations/ Terlutter, R., & Capella, M. L. (2013). The gamification of advertising: Analysis and research directions of in-game advertising, advergames, and advertising in social network games. Journal of Advertising, 42(2 3), 95 112. van Riel, C. B. M. (2013). Corporate reputation and the discipline of public opinion. In C. E. Carroll (Ed.), The handbook of communication and corporate reputation (pp. 11 19). Boston, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Wartick, S. L. (1992). The relationship between intense media exposure and change in corporate reputation. Business & Society, 31(1), 33 49. Werther, W. B., Jr., & Chandler, D. (2011). Strategic corporate social responsibility: Stakeholders in a global environment (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

COMMUNICATING CSR ON SOCIAL MEDIA: THE CASE OF PFIZER’S SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS IN EUROPE Ana Adi and Georgiana Grigore ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 143 163 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007009

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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. Findings 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.

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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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications and originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Social media has become a major player in the media and communications arena. Facebook is captivating almost a half of the world’s Internet users and dominating the charts in terms of social media engagement. Pinterest has recorded a phenomenal growth of 88 percent compared to 2012 and is one of the strongest Internet traffic drivers. Tumblr and Twitter continue

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their growth as well each recording rates of 74 percent and 40 percent, respectively, compared to 2012 (Bullas, 2013). Yet, although adoption at user level is fast and continues to grow, at corporate and business level the outlook is not so coherent. A study of public-facing Fortune 500 companies and their use of social media revealed that ‘adoption of blogs, Twitter and Facebook in 2011 appears to have plateaued, with no significant change in the past year’ (Arthur, 2011). In fact, a longitudinal study conducted on four major sectors of the US economy the Fortune 500, Inc. 500, charities and higher education during 2008 and 2011, reveals that out of the four sectors the F500 have constantly lagged behind in comparison to the other industries. For example, last year [2010], 71 percent of the Inc. 500 was on Facebook, as was a whopping 98 percent of the higher ed institutions and 97 percent of the charities studied. Compare that to the 56 percent of F500 companies that had Facebook pages in 2010. (Arthur, 2011)

However, while adoption is important, it does not necessarily correlate with strategic, planned or even constant use. A recent study of United Kingdom’s top 100 FTSE companies reveals for instance that 88 of the companies that do have a Twitter account, ‘seven have never tweeted, four have not tweeted at all this year [2013] but were active once, and 61 do not have verified accounts’ (Benvie, 2013, p. 4). There is a clear trend in this report that shows consumer businesses are generally more social media savvy. The least active on social media are corporate, business-to-business organisations who no doubt see less of a need to embrace social media in their communications function. (ibid., p. 4)

This discrepancy between consumers and corporate users as well as between corporate users from different industry sectors brings many questions about their relationship with technology. A clear digital divide in terms of the understanding of the impact and benefits of technology as well as of its appropriate uses is visible. The causes however are many, lack of a digital strategy, lack of internal knowledge, lack of resources to manage and monitor the new channels and legal and regulatory issues being among some of them (Mack, 2013). When social media is used, the applications are varied most of them being related to marketing or communications (Stelzner, 2012). They cover both internal and external communication and include knowledge transfer, internal crowdsourcing, enhancing communication related to the company brand and enabling enable dialogue with customers (Vuori, 2012). They also include monitoring, networking, market research and reputation

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management (Orderofbusiness.net). Moreover, of the companies that did use social media for their marketing communications, 85 percent reported an increase in their marketing exposure (Stelzner, 2012). Taking into account the rather inconsistent performance and uses of social media by companies, this chapter aims to analyse the case of Pfizer’s uses of social media across Europe. Pfizer currently occupies the 148th position in the Global Fortune 500 list (CNNmoney, 2013) and belongs to a business environment that has been reported to face challenges in adopting social media. In their survey of attitudes of 107 healthcare, pharmaceutical and life sciences executives from the United States about social media, Popovic, Smith and Hellebusch (2013) reveal that very few of those interviewed believe that social media marketing has been transparent and responsible. To make the discussion of Pfizer’s case clearer and more meaningful, this chapter will focus on the uses of social media for marketing communications, in particular for public relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR). In doing so, it will evaluate the relationship between public relations and CSR as well as review some of the uses of social media for healthcare communications and CSR. This will help explain the setup of the case study as well as elaborate further on the meaning and relevance of the results of our case study.

CSR AND PR Depending on the scholarly trends followed, public relations is presented either as a stand-alone practice, an element of the marketing mix, namely its promotional or communications aspect side by side with advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing and publicity or as a management function. Clark’s (2000) review of public relations history on the other hand emphasizes some of the changes, showing the transition of public relations from Lippmann’s forming of public opinion to more recently Burston-Marsteller’s managing relationships and reputations. This is also in line with Hutton’s (1999) definition of the role of public relations of managing the strategic relationships of an organization. L’Etang’s (1994) summary of the debates and definitions of public relations focuses on the ‘achieving of understanding’ and ‘mutuality’ aspect of the PR practitioner role, positing it within the counselling roles in a company and therefore valuable to senior management.

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CSR on the other hand is defined as ‘principles and processes in place to minimize negative impacts and maximize positive impacts on selected stakeholder issues’ (Maignan & Ralston, 2002 cited in Basil & Erlandson, 2008, p. 126). It is therefore associated with ‘ethical codes, corporate philanthropy, community relations programs, and law-abiding actions’ (Kim & Reber, 2008, p. 337). To a degree, this inscribes CSR within the PR practice, the PR practitioners’ role being presented many times in the past as synonymous or overlapping with that of the CSR practitioner. Edward Bernays for instance declared that ‘public relations is the practice of social responsibility’ (cited in Clark, 2000, p. 386) while James Grunig and Todd Hunt stressed how ‘public, or social, responsibility’ have become ‘a major reason for an organization to have a public relations function’ (cited in Clark, 2000, p. 368). Heath (2006 cited in Kim & Reber, 2008) also reflects similar views in suggesting that public responsibility is also synonymous with public relations. Moreover, the processes associated with CSR and PR work are also similar involving research, planning and evaluation. Furthermore, PR practitioners declared that they ‘played a “large” role in CSR, or that the role was to strongly advise clients or advocate to management on behalf of CSR issues’ (Kim & Reber, 2008, p. 338), that PR was central in promoting human welfare and it was meant to ‘simply to communicate, largely externally, the organization’s CSR activities’ (p. 339). Parsons (2008), Theaker (2004) and Clark (2000) all agree that PR’s responsibility encompasses maintaining credibility and managing issues, which provides further clues about the similarities, integration and increased effectiveness of PR and CSR. This leads to much of the literature presenting CSR, and in particular CSR communication, and PR as interrelated and mutually supportive practices, whereas good social responsibility programmes can have benefits for image and reputation (Parsons, 2008). Sriramesh, Ng Wee, Ting Ting, and Wanyin (2007) study of perceptions and practices of CSR in Singapore during which they surveyed and interviewed local SMEs and multinational company representatives also recognize CSR’s contribution to enhancing reputation and community support, their data also revealing that CSR related decisions were taken in more than a third of the situations by head of corporate communications. Moreover, L’Etang (1994) in her review of the issues arising related to public relations and CSR also indicates that CSR is often treated and presented as a tool for public relations. She argues that definitions of PR that link the practice with ‘the responsibility of management to serve the public interest’ (p. 112) inscribe indirectly CSR within

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the practitioners’ toolkit to meet its wider societal obligations and responsibilities. Even considering Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) models of public relations, CSR could be a good example of symmetrical public relations as it reflects a company’s reaction and/or contribution to a matter/issue raised by the public. This chapter will also consider CSR and PR as interrelated and interdependent and it will focus mainly on the externally facing, public and online communication outputs of one multinational pharmaceutical company. In order to do so a further exploration into online communication of PR and CSR is needed. The next section will address these aspects.

COMMUNICATING PR AND CSR ONLINE With the increased penetration of Internet and social media around the world and its growing adoption among businesses, research has also focused on the new medium considering it an excellent broad-based tool of information dissemination, for defining and controlling their image, a good environment for demonstrating CSR as well as for communicating with various publics and stakeholders (Bondy, Matten, & Moon, 2004; Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). Most of the papers however focus on website analysis and many provide a quantitative, content analysis approach. For instance Basil and Erlandson (2008) analyse and compare the websites of 159 Canadian companies looking at their declared internal and external CSR activities. Their results reveal an increase with 40 percent from 2003 to 2006 of companies expressing some form of CSR activity on their website. Bravo, Matute, and Pina (2011) also analyse websites. Using the websites of 82 banking institutions, they used content analysis to evaluate the multidimensionality of CSR and its use as a vehicle to reveal corporate identity. Their findings show that although companies disclose CSR information to construct and communicate their identities and legitimate their behaviours, the number of companies undertaking the practice is still low. Chaudhri and Wang’s (2007) study of the top 100 IT Indian companies’ corporate websites focuses on the dimensions of prominence of communication, extent of information, and style of presentation websites to communicate CSR. Their findings suggest that the number of companies with CSR information on their websites is strikingly low highlighting therefore a missed opportunity for the companies to communicate their CSR initiatives. Similar results were obtained by Ingenhoff and Koelling’s (2009)

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whose study of 39 Swiss charitable fundraising non-profit organizations also shows that the internet’s potential for dialogic communication not being efficiently used by the NPOs. In their study of five pharmaceutical companies’ mission and value statement web pages Sones, Grantham, and Vieira (2009) also employ content analysis. In this case the researchers developed a list of keywords and assigned them to a level of Lerbinger’s pyramid of CSR schema in order to determine whether the website was focused on internal or external audiences. Their study shows that the keywords communicating the organizations’ values are mostly internally facing, some sections of the websites analysed addressing both internal and external stakeholders. With all the interest in online communication and the growth of social media adoption and reach, research is lagging behind with very few studies (if any) dedicating any attention to social media communications. An analysis therefore of the use of social media is timely and necessary. As the pharmaceutical companies face higher challenges due to regulatory constraints in communicating via social media (Alkhateeb, Clauson, Khanfar, & Latif, 2008; Mack, 2013), this chapter will focus on one of the industry’s biggest representatives, Pfizer.

PFIZER’S SOCIAL MEDIA IN EUROPE 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. In 2007 for instance two journal articles scrutinized the company’s use of ghost-writers for medical journal articles (Moffatt & Elliott, 2007; Sismondo, 2007) while Lemmens (2004) wrote about the pharmaceutical company and the industry’s general practice of supporting medical education. More recently, studies about direct-to-consumer (DTCA) advertising via mobile and social media have included Pfizer among their case studies for analysis. The descriptive study of the prevalence of eDTCA 2.0 marketing in the top 10 global pharmaceutical corporations and 10 highest grossing drugs of 2009 undertaken by Liang and Mackey (2011) showed that all companies reviewed had a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, sponsored blogs, and really simple syndication (RSS) feeds. In

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addition, 80 percent (8/10) have dedicated YouTube channels, and 80 percent (8/10) developed healthcare communication-related mobile applications. No study yet has analysed Pfizer’s uses of social media and this chapter aims to fill that void. Using a deductive approach a methodology that combines qualitative content analysis aimed at identifying communication themes and social media audits on brand integration and communication coherence, this study aims to identify how Pfizer’s European offices use social media to communicate online. Social media audits represent an assessment technique of a company’s online activity, particularly social media activity, meant to uncover the weak or potential areas of concern with respect to communication on a brand’s social profiles (Breakenridge, 2012), establish a baseline of performance and expose high-risk areas (Gattiker, 2012, p. 32). By providing a ‘snapshot’ of where the organization stands in terms of its social media capacity or performance (Npower Northwest, 2010), an audit can be used both as a method of benchmarking as well as of a method of assessment of an organizations’ use of social media. An audit can also be undertaken from a variety of perspectives: branding, content management, usability, legal compliance or measurement among others (Adi, 2013; Gattiker, 2012). In general, social media audits reflect the needs of the organization undertaking them, are linked with the strategy of the organization undertaking the audit and should be conducted by an objective third party (Breakenridge, 2012). As the purpose of this research is to explore and assess how Pfizer’s European Offices communicate online, this research will incorporate some of Breakenridge’s suggested properties including: type and size of the community (follower, fans, subscribers), brand consistency (use of logos, imagery associated with the brand, bespoke backgrounds, etc.), purpose of the social media profile (public relations, CSR, customer service, human resources, research), type of content shared, tracking and measurement (existence of link shorteners such as bit.ly and any evidence of usage of third party monitoring and measurement platforms such as Hootsuite both displaying custom URLs), engagement and frequency of conversations. In assessing the ‘organizational commitment to, integration of, and performance on the practice’ (Npower Northwest, 2010, p. 4) we will be using Npower Northwest’s five-level scale as reference: 1. ad hoc (uncoordinated, unassigned, no resources, reactive and disorganized)

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2. planned (deliberate/managed, resources allocated, responsibility assigned, purposeful and proactive) 3. institutionalized (regularly performed, ‘Best’ practices, coordinated Performance) 4. evaluated (performance measured, progress tracked, practice predictable, regular) 5. optimized (regular reflection, continuous improvement) 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. This has been done as a means of providing a benchmarking platform for future analysis and for identifying the main keywords that describe the aim and focus of Pfizer’s PR and CSR communication and activities: we apply science (…) to bring therapies to people that extend and significantly improve their lives. (…) We strive to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacture of health care products (…) Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with our responsibility as one of the world’s premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies, we collaborate with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 150 years, Pfizer has worked to make a difference for all who rely on us.

Out of Pfizer’s corporate overview we noted the emphasis on the team expressed through the use of the first person plural pronoun ‘we’ and the reference to ‘Pfizer colleagues’, the positioning as ‘world’s premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies’, a recognition of duty synonymous with the responsibility that comes with such positioning and finally, a focus on science and therapies rather than medicines, products and drugs. We expect therefore this to inform the bio/about sections of Pfizer’s European social media accounts and to recognize some of the formulations and keywords. This would indicate that the accounts are consistent with the corporate brand and provide an indication of social media activity being planned. To this we will add the ‘customer-centred approach to business’ as recorded it its corporate responsibility statement. From the home page, social media links were then sought. To ensure all links recorded the researchers used two gateways, one using the social media links on the website and one through the each country’s website and their included social media links on their home page. The Pfizer official

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accounts were excluded from this analysis, the interest being on the country uses of social media and not Pfizer’s official general channels. A future analysis could perhaps make that comparison. Pfizer’s Russian accounts were also excluded from the analysis, due to Russia’s dual geographical positioning. General traffic and engagement data automatically reported by each social media platforms such as number of tweets, followers, fans, number of views were recorded manually. For more insight into Twitter activity FollerMe1 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 corporate and CSR descriptions included on the main website. To assess the content of the messages, the emerging themes and thus purpose of the social media profile, Google Translate was used for countries where the researchers didn’t speak the language. This therefore provides a linguistic approximation of content, sufficient for the purpose of the analysis. Two data capturing moments were used: October 2012 and in January 2014 providing a comparative view and a snapshot of the evolution of Pfizer’s European communications online. All the data recorded was publicly available, the researchers requiring no login details to retrieve it. No information about users and comments made by users was recorded or taken into consideration for this research. Out of the 20 the 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. Table 1 shows the distribution of social media channels across the European countries in this sample. While Pfizer.com records most of the European offices social media presences, there are several accounts that are not reported: Belgium’s Facebook page, Spain’s Slideshare and Flickr presence and Turkey’s Pinterest. Additionally, some of the social media channels recorded on Pfizer.com are not directly linked with the main country pages. This is mostly the case of YouTube, neither Turkey, Portugal, the United

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Table 1.

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Pfizer’s European Social Media Accounts (as Reported on www. pfizer.com and the Country Websites).

Country Austria Belgium Czech Republic Denmark France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Finland Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Russia Slovakia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey The United Kingdom

YouTube

Facebook

Twitter

X

X

X X

LinkedIn

Slideshare

Other

X X

X X X X

Webtv

X

X

X X

X

X

X

X

Flickr

Pinterest

Kingdom nor Norway including the platform’s button on their home page. The analysis will focus on the most commonly used platforms: Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

PFIZER IN EUROPE ON TWITTER Out of the 20 European offices, six of them have a Twitter account. As Table 2 shows, Spain was the first one to adopt the channel and Belgium the last. Spain is also by far the most active of the accounts, having both the highest number of tweets and the highest following and number of followers. All countries record a growth activity from late 2012 to early 2014 both when it comes to sharing content and being followed. This shows a natural progression but a rather slow growth of the accounts. Still, with the

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Table 2.

Pfizer’s European Twitter Accounts

Country

Austria Belgium France Germany Spain Turkey

Tweets

Following

2012 2014 Comparison. Followers

2012

2014

2012

2014

2012

2014

227 76 24 140 791 263

406 129 52 293 1,658 460

381 36 12 53 1,048 530

527 63 15 283 1,085 518

364 125 588 308 5,153 2,616

567 266 981 479 8,272 3,920

Created on

28-Jun-10 02-Mar-11 13-Jan-11 25-Oct-10 15-Mar-10 20-Mar-10

exception of the Belgian and French accounts, Pfizer’s account activity is above the average following and follower numbers, recent statistics indicating the following to average at 102 per user and the followers at 208 (Gilbert, 2013). In terms of brand consistency, all Pfizer’s European accounts have bespoke backgrounds, with complete bios and links to the country website. They are in line with Pfizer’s blue and white colour and display a Pfizer logo avatar. Spain’s account background links to all its other social media presences, Turkey’s links to Facebook and Austria’s account links to their most recent campaign, ‘Get old’, and its website. Belgium’s and Spain’s Twitter bios repeat Pfizer’s positioning (research-driven, biomedical). Belgium’s, Austria’s and Germany’s bios also define their accounts as ‘official’ emphasizing therefore the corporate nature and control of the accounts. Based on this general information displayed and the size of the networks, one can assume that the accounts’ function is to support communication activities aimed at external publics including but not limited to media organizations, NGOs and other institutions of interest to Pfizer and drive traffic to the country websites of each account. In terms of frequency of posting, there are big differences between the accounts. Spain tweets regularly up to three times in a day whereas Belgium hardly tweets once every week. However, when it comes to content shared, the accounts display many similarities. For instance, Foller.Me’s analysis of the last 100 tweets of each account indicates that all accounts include links in most of their tweets and hashtags but hardly ever include media, replies or mentions (Table 3). This indicates a very high level of sharing information but a very low level of engagement with other users showcasing either a lack of experience with the platform, a reticence towards adopting a more opened, dialogical communication and potentially a higher concern for controlling messages.

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Table 3. Pfizer’s Twitter European Accounts Type of Content (Data from Foller.me Reported to the Last 100 Tweets or to the Last Tweets Available). Country

Replies

Mentions

#

RTs

Links

Media

Austria Belgium France Germany Spain Turkey

2/100 5/99 2/51 3/100 8/100 3/100

26/100 17/99 29/51 16/100 26/100 16/100

89/100 35/99 36/51 37/100 93/100 37/100

6/100 3/99 20/51 10/100 11/100 10/100

97/100 82/99 40/51 86/100 56/100 86/100

1/100 7/99 1/51 0/100 2/100 0/100

Of the links most shared the country website of Pfizer is among the most common ones. This confirms the initial assumption that the accounts are used for communication purposes and to drive traffic to the country websites. Other websites used the most include bit.ly and ow.ly, associated with URL shorteners and tracking platforms indicating that Pfizer’s European Twitter use is evaluated and not only institutionalized. Of the most common words and hashtags used, Pfizer appears among five of the six country accounts, supporting the assumptions of external communication, traffic driving and company-focused messages. They keywords and hashtags also reveal secondary functions of the accounts. For instance Belgium’s account is also used to publicize job openings at Pfizer through the #vacature (vacancies) hashtag. France’s account focuses on medicine and world health, Germany focuses on ‘people’ (menschen) and information, Turkey speaks about ‘us’ (bizimle) and ‘shares’ (payla) while Spain’s messages have a CSR/PR function through their focus on smoking/ quitting smoking. Table 4 has more details.

PFIZER IN EUROPE ON YOUTUBE YouTube as a platform is equally popular as Twitter for Pfizer in Europe. Like with Twitter all accounts recorded a growth both in terms of content shared as well as in terms of attention received. Table 5 shows the differences in numbers of subscribers to the channels, videos uploaded and total views recorded. With exception to Norway’s account that has maintained its number of subscribers and has uploaded only one more video since 2012, all other accounts doubled their numbers of subscribers while also

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Table 4. Country Austria

Top Three Websites, Keywords and Hashtags Used in Pfizer’s Twitter European Accounts (Based on Foller.me Data). Top Three Links

Top Three Keywords

bit.y, getold.at, derstandard.at bit.ly, cot.ag, pfizer.be

Belgium

pfizer, gesundes, via pfizer, vandaag, klinish pfizer, medicine, mondiale pfizer, infos, menschen fumar, hoy, buenos bizimle, payla, pfizer

France

goo.gl, pfizer.fr, docteur3w.fr Germany bit.ly, zwei-in-netz.de, pfizermed.de Spain pfizer.es, ow.ly, bit.ly Turkey

bit.ly, gelecek-var.com, ufakbirara.com

Table 5.

Top Three Hashtags #gesundheid, #getold, #medizin #pfizer, #wistjedat, #vacature #sante, #hcsmeufr, #sant #focm2013, #schuppenflechte, #psoriasis #feliz2014sintabaco, #sintabaco, #navidadsaludable #farmaskop2013, #salkinhareketet, #ufakbirara

Pfizer’s European YouTube Accounts (a 2012 2014 Comparison).

Country

Belgium Norway Portugal Spain Turkey The United Kingdom

Subscribers

Videos

Views

Created on

2012

2014

2012

2014

2012

2014

24 3 8 43 16 100

47 3 19 96 55 165

8 6 1 33 11 16

10 4 12 41 21 12

56,961 451 3,155 27,414 3,713 39,202

120,267 808 23,673 40,940 537,543 62,178

02-Mar-11 30-Jun-11 13-Jan-11 21-Apr-10 20-Mar-10 N/A

considerably increasing the amount of content they uploaded. Like with Twitter, this shows a natural progression of use and an increasing visibility of the account. In terms of brand consistency, Pfizer’s YouTube presence is not as uniform as Twitter across Europe. Out of the six countries having a channel on YouTube, only two have bespoke backgrounds (Portugal and Turkey) the others displaying only the logo of the company and a link to the country website. Also, only two out of the six have a discussion section on their channel (Belgium and Turkey) however none of them have any active discussions or comments recorded. The about us section is equally less consistent. Belgium, Portugal and Spain display only a link to their country

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website in the about section. Norway and Turkey have an added sentence describing the company in line with the corporate overview. The United Kingdom’s YouTube “about” section on the other hand is extensive including a one-sentence description of the company which is in line with the corporate overview, two policy paragraphs about the purpose of the content (‘the information of residents in the United Kingdom and should not be taken as medical advice’) and Pfizer’s liability (‘does not have control of third party content and accepts no liability for the quality or accuracy of suggestions made by Google and advertisers’) and some more information about patient safety and adverse reactions to products of the company including the phone number to its Medical Information unit. While with the other five channels it is difficult to determine the role of the channel within Pfizer’s communication plans, the United Kingdom’s YouTube account is seen as a public information, company-controlled channel aimed primarily at the general, consumer public. In terms of frequency of posting there is no consistent pattern across the channels. Some have content uploaded up to a year ago (Belgium, Spain) while others have their most recent content uploaded 1 2 months ago (Turkey, the United Kingdom). In terms of the type of content posted however several patterns were noted: the videos include advertising content (TV advertisements), public information (explaining symptoms or diseases), CSR/public education campaigns (this includes campaign evaluations) and event coverage. What is most remarkable however is that among the most popular content in all countries public information/CSR activities videos are the most frequent together with ads and campaign evaluations. In terms of user interaction, all channels with the exception of the one of Turkey have disabled comments. United Kingdom’s videos come with a note on regulatory requirements to remove comments. YouTube therefore is used by all Pfizer’s European countries as a public information/CSR dissemination, company-controlled channel. This posits Pfizer’s YouTube use in Europe as institutionalized at best on Npower North’s scale.

PFIZER IN EUROPE ON FACEBOOK Facebook is used only by three of the ten social media active Pfizer European offices. Among them are Belgium and Turkey, the only two countries to have three or more social media active channels. Like with Twitter and YouTube, there is a general pattern of growth recorded on

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Facebook, suggesting that, with the time passing, the pages gain more visibility. While Belgium’s activity is limited, Turkey’s activity on the other hand is remarkable; while the number of likes shows a high degree of awareness and user interest the talking about this2 metric indicates a high level of interest, user support and endorsement for the page (Table 6). In terms of brand consistency, all three pages present Pfizer’s logo, have a custom banner and have an extended page menu. Belgium’s menu includes photos, likes, map and a link to its YouTube channel, Finland’s menu includes photos, likes, notes, an external link, an adverse effects reporting form and a policy while Turkey’s menu includes photos, likes, videos, notes, events, an external link and a policy document. The “about” section of the three pages is similar as well, with all three using descriptions similar with the corporate overview. The presence of policy documents is a sign of optimized activity as a policy document is an indicator of regular reflection and evaluation of the actions and desired effects. In terms of content frequency, the three accounts could be inscribed into low, moderate and high frequency activity with Finland posting once a week the most, Belgium posting content every 3 5 days and Turkey posting at least once or twice every day. Monitoring efforts are visible, some of the messages shared containing tracked links. All Pfizer’s Facebook pages share only posts with images and some with links and images; however the nature of the posts is very different. A quick reading of Finland’s latest post will reveal lengthy, story-focused posts centred on a healthy lifestyle theme. A similar exercise reveals Turkey’s focus on family and its recurrent promotion of its Twitter account and other campaigns while Belgium’s page includes posts about job fairs, health information backed up by scientists, research developments and specific campaigns (psoriasis, pneumonia). Pfizer’s European Facebook pages are therefore used as user engagement platforms; the content shared aiming to position the company as an expert and an authoritative voice in its field. Table 6.

Pfizer’s European Facebook Pages (a 2012 2014 Comparison).

Country

Belgium Finland Turkey

Likes

Talking about This

Checkins

2012

2014

2012

2014

2012

2014

83 344 75,327

319 716 99,914

7 5 2,274

12 13 92

11 66 N/A

57 N/A N/A

Created on

02-Mar-11 08-Feb-10 20-Mar-11

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PFIZER’S SOCIAL MEDIA IN EUROPE INSTITUTIONALIZED PRACTICE

AN

Out of the 10 countries active on social media, only three are using more than two channels: Turkey, Spain and Belgium. They show an overall integration and coordination of messages with themes mirrored from one platform to another. For instance, Belgium’s #vacature (vacancies) hashtag is mirrored in its Facebook posts about a job fair. 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. This confirms our initial assumptions that social media is used as information dissemination outlet, company-controlled meant to drive traffic to the country websites. Also, all the accounts reflect some if not all the corporate themes mentioned in the corporate overview. Moreover, Pfizer’s European social media channels also focus along the year on similar events and themes such as anti-smoking, healthy living, worldwide health days dedicated to raising awareness and help prevent specific illnesses (rheumatism, psoriasis, pneumonia, etc.). This too is a sign of coordination and planning, indicating that Pfizer’s social media activity in Europe, although a responsibility of national teams, follows a corporate calendar and corporate guidelines. This could also explain the reoccurrence of the #pfizer hashtag and Pfizer focused messages on Twitter and Facebook. When it comes to social media integration however, except from Spain’s accounts that list and always link to all their social media accounts and their website, the others do not always do that. Moreover, although social media provides a platform for dialogue, two out of the three platforms we analysed has 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. Taking into account that the social media accounts descriptions/ bios make reference to local teams, the matter of allocating resources to social media content planning, implementation, monitoring and measurement could be very plausible. Speaking of content shared, although there are common themes that unite the three platforms, the functions and publics addressed via each are different. YouTube proves to excel as a public information/CSR medium for the general public, the most popular content fitting into those

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categories. Twitter however 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. This research confirms Liang and Mackey’s (2011) results showing that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the most commonly used social media channels by pharmaceutical corporations, including Pfizer’s. The existence of policy documents on Facebook and mentions to regulatory requirements on Pfizer United Kingdom’s YouTube account confirm Alkhateeb et al. (2008) and Mack (2013) indication of increased regulatory constraints on the pharma industry. This research also 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. As shown in Pfizer’s European example there are very few direct interaction examples of activity, all country offices presenting a deliberate withdrawal or avoidance from comment. 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.

NOTES 1. A Twitter analytics application that provides insights about any public Twitter profile. Accessible for free from http://foller.me/ 2. Facebook’s ‘talking about this’ metrics shows the number of unique users who have created a ‘story’ about a page in a seven-day period. This shows engagement with the content on a page beyond the simple ‘like’.

REFERENCES Adi, A. (2013). Social media audit and analytics: Exercises for marketing and public relations courses. In B. Patrut, M. Patrut, & C. Cmeciu (Eds.), Social media and the new academic environment: Pedagogical challenges (pp. 1 349). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-2851-9 Alkhateeb, F. M., Clauson, K. A., Khanfar, N. M., & Latif, A. D. (2008). Legal and regulatory risk associated with web 2.0 adoption by pharmaceutical companies. Journal of Medical Marketing: Device, Diagnostic and Pharmaceutical Marketing, 8(4), 311 318.

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Arthur, L. (2011). Are corporations giving up on social media? Retrieved from http://www. forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2011/11/01/are-corporations-giving-up-on-social-media/. Accessed on October 10, 2013. Basil, D. Z., & Erlandson, J. (2008). Corporate social responsibility website representations: A longitudinal study of internal and external self-presentations. Journal of Marketing Communications, 14(2), 125 137. Benvie, D. (2013). Twitter and the FTSE 100. Retrieved from Battenhall.net/FTSE100. Accessed on September 22, 2013. Bondy, K., Matten, D., & Moon, J. (2004). The adoption of voluntary codes of conduct in MNCs: A three-country comparative study. Business and Society Review, 109(4), 449 477. Bravo, R., Matute, J., & Pina, J. M. (2011). Corporate social responsibility as a vehicle to reveal the corporate identity: A study focused on the websites of Spanish financial entities. Journal of Business Ethics, 107, 129 146. Breakenridge, D. K. (2012). Social media and public relations: Eight new practices for the PR professional. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Retrieved from http:// ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780132983211/samplepages/0132983214.pdf Bullas, J. (2013). 12 awesome social media facts and statistics for 2013. Retrieved from http:// www.jeffbullas.com/2013/09/20/12-awesome-social-media-facts-and-statistics-for-2013/ #hywywm24Sz55JFGe.99. Accessed on October 10, 2013. Chaudhri, V., & Wang, J. (2007). Communicating corporate social responsibility on the internet: A case study of the top 100 information technology companies in India. Management Communications Quarterly, 21, 232 247. Clark, C. E. (2000). Differences between public relations and corporate social responsibility: An analysis. Public Relations Review, 26(3), 363 380. CNNmoney. (2013). Fortune 500. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ global500/2013/snapshots/324.html. Accessed on October 13, 2010. Du, S., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Sen, S. (2010). Maximizing business returns to corporate social responsibility (CSR): The role of CSR communication. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12(1), 8 19. Gattiker, U. E. (2012). Social media audit: Measure for impact. Springer. Gilbert, J. (2013). Twitter, by the numbers. Yahoo News. Retrieved from http://news.yahoo. com/twitter-statistics-by-the-numbers-153151584.html. Accessed on January 2014. Grunig, J. E., & Hunt, T. (1984). Managing public relations. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Heath, R. L. (2006). Onward into more fog: Thoughts on public relations’ research directions. Journal of Public Relations Research, 18(2), 93 114. Hutton, J. G. (1999). The definition, dimensions and domain of public relations. Public Relations Review, 25(2), 199 214. Ingenhoff, D., & Koelling, A. M. (2009). The potential of web sites as a relationship building tool for charitable fundraising NPOs. Public Relations Review, 35, 66 73. Kim, S.-Y., & Reber, B. H. (2008). Public relations’ place in corporate social responsibility: Practitioners define their role. Public Relations Review, 34(4), 337 342. L’Etang, J. (1994). Public relations and corporate social responsibility: Issues arising. Journal of Business Ethics, 13(2), 111 123. Lemmens, C. (2004). Pharma goes to the laundry: Public relations and the business of medical education. Hastings Center Report, 34(5), 18 23.

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USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CSR COMMUNICATION AND ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS Imran Ali, Ana Isabel Jime´nez-Zarco and Marta Bicho ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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. Findings 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

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 165 185 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007010

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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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications 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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Social media has emerged as a powerful and successful tool for sustainable business communication. A large number of people are using social media for communication and exchange of information globally. Thus, people can use this media to create content, or freely express their opinions about companies’ brands, or behaviours. Social media is a source of information dissemination within minimum time and cost at the larger scale. It is also being used by corporations to communicate their messages, as well as engage various stakeholders and develop competitive advantage in today’s digital age (Urluab, 2012). Statistics reports that about 800m people use Facebook, 200m use Twitter and 64m use LinkedIn worldwide (Cowen, 2012). Considering the significance of social media in today’s communication dynamics, the corporations are also communicating important messages on social media. According to the recent survey of SMI-Wizness

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Social Media Sustainability Index 2011, more than 250 prominent corporations are using social media to communicate their messages and 100 major companies have a blog, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube channel that is committed to sustainability (CSR communication Is social media an enabler of CSR, 2013). Media activities generated by stakeholders or communities that are neither paid for nor induced by brand owners are claimed to have a potentially game-changing impact on communication and corporate reputation building. By engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, companies can not only generate favourable stakeholder attitudes and better support behaviours (e.g. purchase, seeking employment, investing in the company) but also, in the long-term, build a strong and credible corporate image, strengthen stakeholder company relationships, and enhance stakeholders’ advocacy behaviours (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). An effective communication of CSR actions to stakeholders not only increases their level of credibility and involvement with the company but also turns them into the company’s advocates on social media. The communication through social media is more transparent and helpful in shaping stakeholders behaviour including that of consumers. The emerging developments in communication technologies and the IT revolution in recent years have forced corporations to use new communication strategies to convey their important messages to engage stakeholders. The traditional communication channels and strategies are relatively less effective in today’s digital age. So companies need to do more than just listen. They need to engage in consumer’s conversations. The traditional notion of a ‘target customer’ in the companies-communication paradigm must be enriched to take account of the fact that the consumer now has a voice and wants to be heard. And social media gives the consumers the opportunity to voice their opinions and be heard. Social media offer both opportunities and challenges to corporations to communicate their CSR messages and stories (Corstjens & Umblijs, 2012). The main benefits of social media include its wide reach to large number of stakeholders in minimum time and cost, whereas the challenges include the stakeholders ‘options to publicise and share their negative remarks on corporate blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms. The corporations should respond to these negative remarks in an efficient way to adapt the stakeholders’ misperceptions into positive way. Merely deleting negative remarks on CSR activities on the social media can aggregate the matter and repudiate the corporate image, whereas explaining the ambiguous matters to negative minded

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stakeholders can convert them into positive and more engaged stakeholders. The company can share their stories and videos to convince stakeholders regarding their contribution about their efforts contributing to the betterment of employees and their families, as well as contributing to the life of customers, investors, the environment and the society at the large. Another advantage of social media over conventional communication strategy is that it offers two-way communication to corporations. Companies can convey their CSR activities to their stakeholders and receive instant feedback and generate a dialogue with its stakeholders to build better relationship. According to stakeholder theory, it is not only the shareholders of the company that stress the significance of corporate social responsibility for the sustainable growth of corporations, but also many other stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers, governments, environmental associations, NGOs and local communities. Freeman (1984) defined stakeholders as ‘group and individuals who benefit from or are harmed by, and whose rights are violated, or respected by corporate actions’. It means that variety of people has their stakes in corporate actions and therefore, organisations should respond to their needs and rights. The companies are not responsible to shareholders only; rather they are accountable to variety of stakeholders who have different interests in business operations. The notion of corporate social responsibility has remained into debate due to its complex and conflicting nature. For instance, Freeman and Liedtka (1991) opposed the idea of CSR by arguing that corporations neither were meant for social activities nor do they have expertise to carry out social interventions. They should only focus on maximisation of profits and fulfilment of their legal obligations. This defines a business only through its ‘economic’ goals and not the ‘social’ goals, implying therefore that corporations should not focus on ‘social’ activities. However, in real life the practice is quite different, the economic decisions have social outcomes (and the vice versa) so a clear distinction between economic and social goals is not possible. In fact, new trends in business culture such as marketing 3.0 show how people want to be treated as whole human beings with minds, hearts, and spirits, not as simple, mere consumers. While companies try to address these needs for social, economic and environmental justice in their mission, vision and values, they also aim to provide solutions to address wider societal problems (Kotler, Kartajaya, & Setiawan, 2010). For all these reasons, it is obvious that managers find it difficult to handle these conflicting interests of various stakeholders as presented in the stakeholder theory.

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The ultimate objective of corporations to communicate their CSR activities on social media is to engage its stakeholders to gain favourable considerations. For instance, if CSR activities are properly communicated to customers, they can influence positively on consumer behaviour in case of their purchasing behaviour. Literature provides ample evidence on the positive and significant influence of CSR activities on consumer behaviour in various countries across different industries. For instance, Ali, Rehman, Yilmaz, Nazir, and Ali (2010) examined the influence of CSR on customer behaviour and noted that consumer prefer corporations doing CSR activities, However, they also point out that consumer awareness of CSR activities is important in shaping favourable consumer behaviour. Similarly, Auger, Burke, Devinney, and Louviere (2003), Miagnan (2001), Mohr, Webb, and Harris (2001) and Sen and Bhattacharya (2001) noted positive influence of CSR awareness on consumer behaviour. The link between CSR activities and the consumer behaviour is therefore established, several studies noticing the positive and significant association between CSR and consumers’ purchase intentions. Companies with good corporate social responsibility policies also enjoy good employee outcomes. Research suggests that employees give good weight-age to companies doing CSR activities. In the employees’ context, Brown and Dacin (1997) identified two types of CSR dimensions: CSR association and CSR participation. CSR association refers to the employees’ perception of company character towards social issues, whereas CSR participation means the degree by which employees participate in the implementation of CSR strategies or formulation of CSR related strategies. Many researchers have focused the relationship between CSR and employees behaviour. For instance, Collier and Esteban (2007) noted that a socially responsible corporate profile is important to gain employee willingness to achieve individual and organisational goals. This means that the higher the CSR activities by corporations, the higher will be the employees’ willingness to contribute towards attaining organisational goals. In order to achieve higher employee motivation to perform well for socially responsible corporations, the communication of CSR activities and employee involvement is very important. Greenwood (2007) states that the development and maintenance of stable relationship between corporations and employees through proper communication, identification, dialogue and exchange processes or even a combination of these are very important to achieve sustainable organisational goals. Similarly, Ali, Khan, and Rehman (2013) analysed the influence of CSR participation and CSR association on employee behaviour, concluding that CSR activities increase the

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employees’ engagement level with the corporation. The corporations that work for employee welfare and for the betterment of their families enjoy therefore better relationships with their employees, who in return display higher level of commitment towards achieving corporate objectives. Corporate social responsibility is also noticed by shareholders as well as future corporate investors. A conflict of interest however is noticed between the investors’ perspective and other stakeholders. The investors view CSR as an expense that reduces the profitability of corporations whereas other stakeholders consider CSR as duty of corporations to pay back for the betterment of environment and other societal issues (Ali, Rehman, & Akram, 2011). However, the literature provides mixed results regarding CSR and investor behaviour; some studies argue that investors tend to perceive CSR as a source of sustainable business growth and hence like to invest in such corporations. Other studies indicate that investors do not consider CSR as an important parameter in their investment decision-making. However, there is ample evidence available in the literature that supports the connection between CSR and favourable investor behaviour. For instance, Ali et al. (2011) noted the significant association between CSR, investor satisfaction and loyalty among individual equity investors for the case of Pakistan. Similarly, Dam and Scholtens (2009) stressed that large equity investors pay more attention towards corporate social performance in the evaluation of different companies in their investment decision-making as compared to small investors. Smith, Adhikari, Tondkar, and Andrews (2010) noted the significantly positive influence of corporate social disclosure on individual investor’s behaviour across different countries. Alsop (2004) noted that investors are willing to pay premium price to corporations which are socially more active towards the welfare of the community. The objective of this study is to examine the role of CSR communication on social media on stakeholders’ engagement. The study examines how stakeholders including customers, employees and investors perceive the significance of social media as CSR communication strategy. It investigates the role of social media in engaging stakeholders to solve social and environmental problems, the importance of social media as compared to other traditional CSR communication strategies, and the role of social media in building better relationship with different stakeholders including customer, employees and investors. It will examine the perceived consumer purchase behaviour towards corporations using social media for communication of their CSR activities. Finally, it will also identify the social media platforms used more frequently in Pakistan.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK CSR and Consumer Behaviour Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) occupies a prominent place on the global corporate agenda in today’s socially conscious market environment. For that more than ever companies are devoting substantial resources to various social initiatives, ranging from environmental protection, community outreach, collaborative consume, to socially responsible business practices and ethical behaviours. During the last years, CSR became a commonly used notion in business literature. This concept is defined as ‘the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, with their families, the local community and society at the large to improve their quality of life’ (World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004). Mohr et al. (2001) hold that ‘CSR is minimization of negative externalities of a firm’s operating activities and the maximization of beneficial effects on the society’. Thus CSR is all about minimising the harm of organisational operations to the environment and society and working for the benefits of employees and their families, consumer welfare and betterment of society as a whole. The ultimate objective of corporations towards CSR is to strengthen the relationship with the society and all related stakeholders to get better business opportunities and to respond to the social problems. We are currently experiencing changes at social, political and economic level that instil the development of a new corporate culture. Globalisation and technological developments too contribute to the emergence of a new model of society, with new actors and behavioural models. New questions as well as expectations about governance, relationship and social responsibility therefore emerge. As a result, more and more companies of all sizes and from various activity sectors are recognising the importance of their role in society and the real benefits of adopting a proactive approach to CSR. Moreover, they also recognise the wide range of business benefits they can reap as a result of engaging in CSR (e.g. Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2007; Lichtenstein, Drumwright, & Braig, 2004; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Sen, Bhattacharya, & Korschun, 2006). For example, companies can reap substantial business benefits of CSR from one stakeholder group: the consumers. By being a good corporate citizen, a company can foster consumer loyalty and turn consumers into company/brand ambassadors and champions who engage in advocacy behaviours (e.g. positive word-of-mouth,

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willingness to pay a price premium and resilience to negative company news; Du et al., 2007). Of course, the business rewards of CSR are rarely confined to the consumer domain. Sen et al. (2006) noted that individuals’ react to a company’s CSR activities in multiple ways, such as buying its products, seeking employment with the company and investing in the company.

Using Social Media for Communication Jahdi and Acikdilli (2009) emphasise that CSR communication tools play an important role in conveying a company’s CSR message and socially responsible image. Unlike corporate ability-related information such as product superiority and innovation, a company’s CSR information reveals aspects of its corporate identity that are not only fundamental and enduring but also often more distinctive by virtue of their culture traits: mission, vision and values. A key challenge in designing effective a CSR communication strategy is engaging the stakeholders in order to reduce their scepticism and to convey favourable corporate motives in a company’s CSR activities. Recent research on CSR attributions suggest that the stakeholder engagement in CSR activities enables companies to build a strong corporate brand image, strengthen the stakeholder company relationships and enhance the stakeholders’ advocacy behaviour (Ali et al., 2013). Effective communications of CSR actions to stakeholders not only increase their involvement with the company but also turn them into company’s apostle on social media. Technology development has changed the way in which CSR strategies are designed and implemented. Copeland and Malik (2005) hold that new technologies enable connectivity and interactivity of individuals and groups; it also facilitates information sharing through word-of-mouth. Technology has become a tool that allows individuals to express themselves and collaborate with others. People can generate new ideas and use them to improve their lives. Kotler et al. (2010) consider that one of the enablers of the new wave technology is the rise of social media. In particular, these authors classify social media into two broad categories: (a) the expressive social media, which includes blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and photo sharing sites like Flickr; (b) collaborative media, which includes sites such as Wikipedia and Craigslist. Social media is changing the future of business. It is of low cost and companies are using it to gain insights into the market, collaborate with their consumers or design marketing communications. But also, consumers’

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role is changing by the intensive use of new technologies. Consumers are no longer isolated individuals; rather they are connected with one another. In making decisions, they are no longer unaware from the required information but informed. They are no longer passive but active in giving useful feedback to companies (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). The popularity of social media in the modern age has forced corporations to communicate through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogs to communicate their CSR actions to stakeholders (The Guardian, 2012). Using advanced data mining techniques and topic and sentiment analysis to investigate the communication dynamic of corporations using social media to disseminate information about their CSR activities and to gain the stakeholders’ attention, Colleoni (2013) concludes that social media is an important communication tool for corporations to disseminate messages to different stakeholders. Based on the above theoretical discussion, we conclude that social media is an important contemporary instrument for communication of CSR activities to the stakeholders.

MATERIALS AND METHODS The study examines the role of social media in communicating CSR activities to corporate stakeholders including customers, employees and investors. The study is based on data collected through an online structured survey questionnaire. The online survey questionnaire technique is used widely nowadays due to its efficiency, time and cost saving (Kown, 2012). The online link of the questionnaire was shared widely by the author to his connections who were also requested to forward further on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media platforms. A total of 357 usable responses were received. The instrument to measure stakeholder response towards using social media for communication of CSR activities was developed by the authors using guidance from previous studies like 2012 CEO, social media and leadership survey (Brandfog, 2012). The instrument contained 10 questions related to the use and significance of social media for CSR communication, the comparative importance of social media for CSR communication to other communication channels, and the influence of CSR communication on social media on stakeholders’ behaviours. Table 1 describes the sample composition of this study: 71.5% males and 29.5% females that is good representation of both gender in the context of Pakistan. The low participation of females is due to lack of opportunities for women to use social media. In terms of age groups, respondents

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Table 1. Sample Composition. Item

Description

Frequency

Percent

Gender

Male Female Total

253 104 357

71.5 29.5 100

Age

30 and less 31 45 46 59 60 and above Total

159 102 65 31 357

44.5 28.5 18.2 8.6 100

Education

Undergraduate Master Above/other Total

190 131 36 357

53.2 36.6 10.2 100

below than 30 years of age participated the most in survey (44.5%) while 28.5% were aged between 31 and 45 years old. The percentage of participation of respondents decreased with the age. The majority of respondents (53.2%) have undergraduate education, 36.6% are having master education whereas only 10.2% have above or other professional qualifications. This also represents a good combination of different educational levels for the respondents of this research. The reason behind not using less than undergraduate category in sample selection is that most of the contacts in the list of researcher are his students from undergraduate and master programs.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Engaging Stakeholders through Social Media to Solve Environmental Issues The first question is related to the respondents’ perceptions towards engaging stakeholders through social media to solve environmental problems; the responses highlight the significance of social media to engage stakeholders to resolve environmental problems. Fig. 1 shows that majority (80%) of respondents believed that social media is a better forum to engage stakeholders to solve environmental issues. The percentage of respondents who perceived that social media is not an appropriate forum to solve environmental problems is quite low (13.3%), whereas only 7.6% respondents stated that they are not sure regarding significance of social media for

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Answer to Q1: Do you think companies should engage stakeholders to solve social and environmental issues through social media?

80.1%

Yes

Fig. 1.

13.3%

No

7.6%

Not sure

Using Social Media to Solve Environmental Issues.

solving environmental problems. These results are very encouraging as large number of respondents perceived communication through social media as powerful tool to solve environmental problems. Communication through social media on environmental problem can generate a good dialogue between corporation and various stakeholders. This dialogue through social media platforms can help identify environmental problems and produce multiple solutions to deal with these problems. The advantage of social media therefore over conventional communication tools is that it can take on board number of stakeholders at the same time and provide cost and time effective medium of communication. A variety of stakeholders can participate on social media at the same time to solve environmental problems including environmental scientists, volunteers who participate in environmental related activities, NGO’s, concerned governmental agencies like Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Pakistan, community members from any decease area in terms of environmental problems, customers, employees and investors. All these stakeholders can work together along-with corporations to solve community environmental problems, which can lead to some successful CSR stories for organisation to share with other stakeholders.

SOCIAL MEDIA VERSUS TRADITIONAL COMMUNICATION CHANNELS Effective communication of CSR initiatives is very important for organisations nowadays. Therefore, corporations are also using this social media to

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Answer to Q2: Do you think social media is a better forum to communicate CSR initiatives than other traditional communication channels?

39% 60%

Yes

Fig. 2.

No

18%

Not sure

Social Media versus Traditional Communication Channels.

disseminate their CSR activities to the wider range of stakeholders in minimum time and effort. This study incorporates questions related to stakeholders’ perceptions towards social media and the traditional communication channels. Fig. 2 shows that majority (60%) of stakeholders believe that social media is a better forum to communicate the CSR initiatives, whereas 39% disagree. Only 18% of the respondents were unsure about the significance of social media in comparison with traditional communication channels.

THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO BUILD RELATIONSHIP WITH STAKEHOLDERS We also asked questions about the use of social media for building better connections with various stakeholders including customers, employees, investors and others. The results show that most respondents (81.5%) believe that using social media to communicate CSR activities is a better forum to build good relationships with customers. More than a half of the respondents (51.7%) also consider social media as a good channel for corporations to strengthen the relationship with their employees through communication of CSR activities (Fig. 3). In their important study, Ali et al. (2013) also noted that CSR plays an important role in achieving positive employee outcomes. Another 22.4% respondents viewed that social media is better forum to build good relationships with existing and prospective stock investors. While

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Answer to Q3: Do you think using social media to communicate CSR activities help corporations in building better relationship with (select all that apply)

22.4%

81.5%

13.5%

51.7%

Customers

Fig. 3.

Employees

Investors

Others

CSR Communication, Social Media and Relationship with Stakeholders.

13.5% of the respondents also consider social media as an effective tool to communicate CSR activities and strengthen better relationship with other stakeholders, for instance, suppliers, community and government.

SOCIAL MEDIA AS COMMUNICATION TOOL The significance of social media as communication was also a central question in this study. The results show that large number of respondents (63.1%) consider social media medium of better communication due to its wider reach and efficiency in today’s advanced communication environment. 50.8% respondents believe that communication of CSR activities through social media leads to better corporate image, because large number of stakeholders come across the information shared on social media. 29.6% respondents viewed social media as more transparent means of communication. Social media communication has a good component of accountability. If any corporation share falsified information towards CSR on social media, the concerned stakeholders can provide their feedback on the accuracy and validity of such information. For this reason corporations are cautious sharing CSR information on social media. We can therefore deduce that social media is a better instrument for CSR communication as it helps organisations to build a better corporate image and provide more transparent information to stakeholders as depicted in Fig. 4.

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Answer to Q4: Do you think that communicating CSR activities in social media lead to (select all that apply)

29.6%

63.1%

50.8%

Better communication

Fig. 4.

Better corporate image

More transparency

10.7%

None of the above

Advantages of CSR Communication through Social Media.

Answer to Q5: How important do you think is the use of social media for corporations to communicate their CSR activities?

30.6%

83.2%

9.3%

50.9%

Very important

Fig. 5.

Somewhat important

Not important

Not sure

Importance of CSR Communication through Social Media.

IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS COMMUNICATION TOOL Keeping in view the use of social media for communication by individuals and organisations, we also asked about the importance of social media to respondents. The results indicate that majority of respondents (83.2%) think that social media is very important to communicate CSR activities, while for 50.9% stated that social media is only somewhat important. For 30.6% of the respondents social media is not important. 9.3% of respondents are not sure about the importance of social media for communication of CSR activities (Fig. 5).

TRUSTWORTHINESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CSR COMMUNICATION Trust is an important element of successful and effective communication. This research also examines the trustworthiness of social media for

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Answer to Q6: Are you likely to trust a company whose CSR activities are publicised on social media?

47.7% 69.7%

54.9%

Much more likely

More likely

Fig. 6.

28.2%

Less likely

Doesn’t make any difference

Trust in Social Media for CSR Communication.

communication of CSR activities as perceived by respondents. The results indicate that 54.9% respondents perceive that social media is more likely a trustworthy medium for CSR communication. Similarly, a large part of respondents consider social media much more likely a trustworthy tool to communicate CSR related activities with the stakeholders. Whereas, relatively a small number of respondents (28.7%) believe that social media is less likely trustworthy. Interestingly, 47.7% respondents view that it doesn’t make any difference when corporations publicise their CSR activities on social media. Overall, respondents believe that social media is a trustworthy tool to communicate CSR activities to stakeholders to engage them for favourable organisational outcomes (Fig. 6).

CSR COMMUNICATION THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR Once the importance of transparency and trustworthiness of social media is established for communication of CSR initiatives by the stakeholders, the examination of how CSR communication through social media influences stakeholders’ behaviour is also necessary. 55.7% of the respondents declared that they would be most likely to purchase products from a company that communicates its CSR activities through social media. 66.4% showed agreement regarding positive influence of CSR communication on social media on their buying behaviour. This is a very significant finding and also in line with our previous results regarding importance, transparency and trustworthiness of social media for CSR communication as perceived by respondents of this research. A relatively less number of respondents showed disagreement that communication of CSR activities on social media is likely to influence their buying behaviour (Fig. 7).

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Answer to Q7: Are you more likely to buy products from a company whose CSR activities are communicated on social media? 55.7% 66.4%

Strongly agree

Fig. 7.

Agree

44.2%

Disagree

40%

Strongly disagree

CSR Communication through Social Media and Consumer Behaviour.

CSR COMMUNICATION THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA AND EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOUR Employees are also important stakeholders, examining the influence of social media for CSR initiatives on employee behaviour are therefore important. When asked about the likelihood to work for a company whose CSR activities are communicated on social media the majority (82.8%) respondents showed strong agreement while 79.5% showed agreement. This depicts the strong intentions among employees to work for socially responsible corporations who are successful in communication their CSR initiatives to their employees through social media. A small number of respondents (27.4%) showed disagreement and very few only (8.7%) depicted strongly disagreement that they are likely to work for a company who communicate CSR activities through social media (Fig. 8).

CSR COMMUNICATION THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA AND INVESTOR BEHAVIOUR CSR communication through social media is also noticed by the existing and the prospective investors. We found high number of respondents (73.4%) having strong agreement and 44.1% having agreement that communication of CSR activities through social media is likely to influence their investment decision-making. The number of respondents having disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement is relatively low, 24.6% and 19.3%, respectively. This depicts that like other stakeholders, investors

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Answer to Q8: Are you more likely to work for a company whose CSR activities are communicated on social media

82.8%

Strongly agree

Fig. 8.

79.5%

Agree

27.4%

Disagree

8.7%

Strongly disagree

CSR Communication through Social Media and Employee Behaviour.

Answer to Q9: Are you more likely to invest in a company whose CSR activities are communicated on social media? 44.1% 73.4%

Strongly agree

Fig. 9.

Agree

24.6%

19.3%

Disagree

Strongly disagree

CSR Communication through Social Media and Investor Behaviour.

are also closely connected to social media and noticed the CSR activities communicated through social media. In their important study, Ali et al. (2011) also found positive influence of CSR in shaping favourable investor behaviour (Fig. 9).

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS There are number of social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, corporate blogs and many others. The study includes only those social media platforms that are more commonly used in Pakistan. Here, it is important to note the frequency of use of various social media forums by the respondents of this study. In this context, we found majority (78.1%) of respondents are using Facebook, 62.4% Twitter and 40.2% LinkedIn. The study noted relatively less use of Google +, corporate

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Answer to Q10: What source of social media do you use most?

40.2% 78.1%

62.4%

Facebook

Twitter

27.5%

18.3%

Google plus

Corporate blogs

Fig. 10.

Linkedin

9.2%

Other/s

Social Media Source.

blogs and other social media forums in the context of Pakistan as depicted in Fig. 10.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS The objective of this study was to examine the role of social media towards CSR activities communication to engage stakeholders. The findings of this study show that a large number of respondents believe that using social media to communicate CSR activities is a better forum to build good relationships with customers, employees, investors as well as other stakeholders. Social media is better instrument for CSR communication, it helps organisations to build better corporate image and provide more transparent information to stakeholders. The results indicate that the majority of respondents think that social media is very important 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

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influence their buying behaviour positively. We found strong intentions among employees to work for socially responsible corporations who are successful in communication their CSR initiatives to their employees through social media. The study recommends the use of social media to strengthen the relationship with various stakeholders and engaging them to achieve organisational outcomes. The corporations should encourage stakeholders’ views on CSR communication and carefully address their suspicions in order to engage them. The fact remains that not all stakeholders have access to computers and internet, therefore corporations should use segmentation strategy to identify the respondents for communication of CSR initiatives on social media. The respondents who do not use social media should be approached through other communication channels in order to convey CSR related activities to engage them for better organisational outcomes. To communicate CSR initiatives more effectively, corporations should pay more focus on social media forums that are used mostly by stakeholders in various countries.

LIMITATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH The findings of this study are based on the perceptions of respondents. The sample size of this study is small which limits the generalizability of the findings of this research; a study with large sample size can provide significant results. This study also did not consider the role of respondent demographics towards use of social media for CSR communication. We recommend a cross cultural study of various countries including developed, developing and under developed countries in order to examine the role or access to computers and internet and the stakeholders’ behaviour towards social media communications. This could provide an insight into the different perspective regarding the significance and adoption of social media towards corporate communications. A study with more in-depth analyse of socio-economic demographic profile of respondents may also provide interesting information towards use of social media for CSR initiatives communication among people with diverse backgrounds and demographic profile. The use of social media forums differs in various countries, and it is also important to investigate the user friendliness and effectiveness of various social media forums to successfully communicate CSR initiatives to multiple stakeholders.

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Jahdi, K. S., & Acikdilli, G. (2009). Marketing communications and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Marriage of convenience or short gun wedding? Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 103 113. Kotler, P., Kartajaya, H., & Setiawan, I. (2010). Marketing 3.0: From products to customers to the human spirit. New York, NY: Wiley. Kown, S. E. (2012). Exploring consumer’s attitudes and behaviour through product placement in television shows. Master thesis, S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University, USA. Lichtenstein, D. R., Drumwright, M. E., & Braig, B. M. (2004). The effects of corporate social responsibility on customer donations to corporate-supported nonprofits. Journal of Marketing, 68, 16 32. Miagnan, I. (2001). Consumer perceptions of corporate social responsibility: A cross cultural comparison. Journal of Business Ethics, 30(1), 57 72. Mohr, L. A., Webb, D. J., & Harris, K. E. (2001). Do consumers expect companies to be socially responsible? The impact of corporate social responsibility on buying behaviour. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 35(1), 45 72. Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). The future of competition: Co-creating unique value with consumers. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Sen, S., & Bhattacharya, C. B. (2001). Does doing good always leads to doing better? Consumers’ reaction to corporate social responsibility. Journal of Marketing Research, 38(2), 225 243. Sen, S., Bhattacharya, C. B., & Korschun, D. (2006). The role of corporate social responsibility in strengthening multiple stakeholder relationships: A field experiment. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34, 158 166. Smith, J. V. L., Adhikari, J., Tondkar, R. H., & Andrews, R. L. (2010). Impact of corporate social disclosure on investment behaviour: A cross-national study. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 29, 177 192. The Guardian. (2012). Social media for corporate social responsibility. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/social-media-forcorporate-social-responsibility-event-new-york. Accessed on December 18, 2012. Urluab, J. (2012). 8 CSR communication trends powered by social media. Retrieved from http:// blog.taigacompany.com/blog/sustainability-business-life-environment/8-csrcommunications-trends-powered-by-social-media. Accessed on December 15, 2012. World Business Council for Sustainable Development. (2004). Cross cutting themes Corporate social responsibility. Retrieved from http://www.wbcsd.org. Accessed on June 13, 2013.

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A SYNOPTIC RESEARCH OVERVIEW OF CSR AMONGST ROMANIAN MANAGERS Dumitru Bor¸tun ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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. Findings 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).

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 187 196 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007016

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Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications 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. Social implications 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. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION In the decades that passed since the collapse of the totalitariancommunist systems, it became more and more obvious that globalization is mainly the product of multinational corporations and that the collapse of these systems has been a consequence of the international capital preeminence over the nation state. Concurrent with this understanding, an anti-corporatist literature emerged (see Klein, 2000, 2007; Ridderstra˚le & Nordstro¨m, 2007; Young, 2003), going from new ethical exigencies imposed on capitalism to the denial of the corporative system or even of the capitalism in general, at least in the version tailored by the School of Chicago led by its main representative, Milton Friedman (Friedman, 1962/2002). In the last two decades we have been witnessing a current that we could call the ethical criticism of capitalism that puts forward a new version of the contemporary capitalism, accused of choking democracy, of turning citizens into consumers, and of being incapable of blocking the wave of greed and selfishness in favor of compassion and solidarity. This is an approach of corporatist capitalism from ethical positions and an endeavor of raising the subject of its responsibility toward society both the present and the

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future one. This is the point where the issue of social responsibility of corporations intertwines with the issue of the sustainable or self-supporting development. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) cannot be perceived without an organizational culture supporting it “from the inside” in other words, a corporation cannot behave as a good citizen (citizen company) if its employees are not good citizens. Moreover, it cannot be a devoted member of the community if it does not have a human capital devoted to the corporation. This current has been widely studied in the business schools in the developed countries (see Baxi & Pasad, 2006; Henriques & Richardson, 2002; Prahalad & Porter, 2002). In Romania, CSR is treated either as a Public Relations strategy through which corporations make indirect advertising or as an economic activity (mostly of marketing), with a substantial reversion rate. It cannot be denied that for many economic operators CSR represents a way of gaining “positive notoriety” (especially for those whose products and services come against the new dominant values, such as the alcohol and cigarette manufactures and the pollutant industries). Moreover, we cannot elude the fact that a CSR politics may lead to sales increase and, inherently, to profit maximization. But remaining in the two extremes (symbolic capital versus financial capital) seems to be a dangerous simplification. In various interventions (Bor¸tun, 2005/2012, 2012) I have proposed a criterion for the establishment of a conceptual difference between the concepts of symbolic capital and financial capital and I have strived to prove that only the public interest, understood as a resultant of the public debate on the common welfare, can be a landmark for social responsibility. My hypothesis is that invoking the public interest as CSR landmark indicates a marketization trend of the general welfare. In this case, CSR remains a mere pretext of advertising and, in the long run, of sales increase; therefore, it is simply a stratagem for profit maximization. In fact, CSR represents a “sign of time,” it announces another epoch and another world that is already shaping around us. In today’s world, in which the “grand narratives of legitimization” (Francois Lyotard) have collapsed, the legitimacies are being built and the corporation stands all chances of becoming the “church of the 21st century” that is of offering people a picture of the world, a meaning of life and an identity. The philosophical studies instrumented through the social empirical research are absolutely necessary for the Romanian society. In a society in which, by way of tradition, neither the Church, nor the State have excelled

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in carrying out social responsibility activities, it would be worth learning to what extent CSR may become a source of social change and a lever to sustainable development. A bias-free and illusion-free approach of this issue could give raise to a way of accelerating the rhythm of modernization, a “historical shortcut” through which Romanian society could make up for the historical gaps and the modernity handicap.

RESEARCH AMONGST ROMANIAN MANAGERS Within the period 2007 2010 I have conducted the research program entitled “Study on the transformation of the corporate social responsibility policies in levers to sustainable development in Romania,” financed by the National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS) through the National Center of Programmes Management (CNMP). The program focused on the analysis of the CSR concept and its affiliated practices, correlated, for the first time in Romania, with three fundamental factors: the public interest (PI), the corporate competitiveness (CC) and sustainable development (SD). The starting hypothesis was that only the public interest (PI), understood as the resultant of the public debate on common welfare, can be a landmark for social responsibility, so as not to confound it with philanthropy or marketing. I have considered that CSR can exceed its condition of image strategy in order to support the CC and, more generally, the SD in our country, given the pressures triggered by globalization. One of the National University of Political Science and Public Administration (NUPSPA) partners within the research program was the research institute Data Media SRL, which has performed various studies at national level. The first survey Data Media carried out aimed to capture the managers’ representation and attitudes on corporate social responsibility. This has been a quantitative research, performed during the period February 13 March 13, 2009 amongst managers in charge with the CSR activity in 100 Romanian companies. The sample has comprised the most powerful companies in Romania with regard to their turnover (according to the data supplied by the Ministry of Public Finances). A standardized questionnaire has been used, including 20 simple and multiple questions, out of which 13 closed-ended questions (i.e., with a predefined list of answer choices) and 7 open-ended questions (i.e., with free answers).

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From a list of 8 main CSR components, the respondents have been asked to indicate the ones that are most present in the CSR activity of the company they work for. Each respondent has indicated at least two, arranged in a hierarchy. The study conducted by Data Media in 2009 has been an exploratory, nation-wide study meant 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. Although there have been studies addressing topics adjacent to CSR matters, such as the top of the best employers, the 2009 Data Media study was the first that called into question the scientific research of this phenomenon.

METHODOLOGY We have considered that for Romania, the most adequate research methodology is the one enabling us to place the CSR development study on a continuum, allowing us to understand the status of Romanian companies in 2009. From this standpoint, the most suitable theoretical model seemed to be the one developed by Zadek (2007); Zadek, Pruzan, & Evans (2004), that focuses on the organizational development targeted on the introduction in the general business practices of the CSR-related concepts. The four-stage model that we shall present henceforth is similar to the definition of CSR1, CSR2, and CSR3 concepts by W.C. Frederick (2006). Following the diachronic conception of Zadek (2007), the four stages can also be called “generations.” The first CSR generation is focused on the compliance and risk management, on failures removal, on a short-term good reputation and a costbenefit ratio at local level. The second generation is based on strategy and innovation. Innovation refers to the way in which certain matters in new products and processes can be transformed, sustained by strategies concentrated on the exploitation of emergent markets and on the creation of new markets. In certain moments, this would mean the implementation of some major technological innovations. The third generation responsible competitiveness the companies adhere to the proposal put forward at branch or line of activity level, on

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the initiative of governments or civil society. Therefore, the alliances between corporations and NGOs are essential in the evolution of nonstatutory standards that may lead to the attraction of new companies. It can be observed from the important role played by the state. The forth generation: the future of civil corporation is one based on a powerful government, different from the libertarian model and often associated with the corporate political empowerment. The forth generation passes beyond the remodeling of the companies’ role in society, inching toward the invention of a new policy. A successful transition towards the forth generation shall mean, in the long run, a modification of the purpose of the business environment. Such a modification shall be mirrored in the laws related to government, fiduciary responsibilities, the compass used to concentrate the decision-taking process by the ones empowered with authority by the government. The fifth development stage of the companies is not an actual stage but rather an anticipated one. As such, we preferred using the previous theoretical model (Zadek et al., 2004), more appropriate for the Romanian situation. Within this model, Zadek argues that the speed with which an organization learns and applies a series of policies and procedures is directly proportional to the speed with which the phenomena triggering the change are assimilated by the society in general. In compliance with Zadek’s theory (Zadek et al., 2004), we formulated five stages that describe the type of organizational development and the introduction stage of CSR polices in the current activity (Table 1). The operationalization has been performed through the content analysis and the validation of the scales has been obtained through the expert’s agreement conspectus method.

RESEARCH OUTCOMES By aggregating the answers average for each answer, we reached the conclusion that the average score for all 5 questions is 3.38, taking into account that 58 companies obtained above-average scores. The distribution per models, computed by using 3 out of 5 questions is the following: Model 1 2%; Model 2 4%; Model 3 18%; Model 4 9%; Model 5 8%. Only 41% of the companies fall into a model in which 3 out of 5 criteria are observed, the most frequent model being 3, as indicated in Fig. 1.

Operationalization of the Implementation Stages of CSR within Companies.

What Companies Do

Why They Do It

Zadek Items

New Items

(1) Defensive

Deny responsible To defend against attacks to its practices, reputation, attacks that in the products, or short term could affect sales, policies recruitment policy, productivity, and its brand

The company I work for is not The company I work for is not an interested in society matters entity or a department taking related to the way it unfolds their interest in social matters activity resulting from its normal The company I work for engages in activity performance the settlement of some social The company I work for has never issues only when it is accused of been subject to an external audit breaching the law or as a sign of The company I work for makes no denying its involvement in illegal reporting on its own activity action

(2) Compliant

Adopt a policybased compliance approach as a cost of doing business

To mitigate the erosion of economic value in the medium term due to reputation or litigation risks

The company invests money for the settlement of social issues only when other companies do this The company I work for engages in the settlement of some society issues only to comply with the legal requirements

The company I work for has created those departments required by law in order to deal with social responsibility matters The company I work for is subject to those audits required by law, especially in the financial domain The company I work for carries out an annual activity report in which the CSR issues are mentioned briefly in the context

(3) Managerial Integrate social matters in the fundamental management processes

To mitigate medium term erosion of economic value and achieve long term gains through the integration of responsible business practices in its daily operations

The company is involved in the settlement of some social issues as part of a marketing strategy The company I work for engages in the settlement of some society issues because it realizes the

The company I work for allots the CSR issues to some persons in the Marketing, PR or Communication departments The company I work for requires external audits on product quality

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Stage

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Table 1.

Stage

What Companies Do

Why They Do It

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Table 1. (Continued ) Zadek Items

New Items

potential economic gain of the approach

The company I work for performed, within the annual report, a reporting on CSR in a separate chapter

(5) Civil

Promote broad industry participation in corporate responsibility

To enhance long term economic value by overcoming any firstmover disadvantages and to realize gains through collective action

The company I work for is a leader The company I work for does not in the social involvement domain need structures to deal with The company I work for not only CSR matters since all company adapts its production and employees perform their activity strategy in order to responsibly according to the CSR principles deal with the social problems but The company I work for is CSR it also stimulates and encourages accredited following an external other companies to settle such audit in compliance with an issues international accepted standard

.

Integrate societal To enhance economic value on a The company I work for is engaged The company I work for has a issues in their long run basis and gain the firstin the settlement of some social specialized department (founded core business mover advantage, by aligning issues, based on a general a foundation) dealing with the strategies strategy and process innovations strategy, because it gains a relations with the community to the societal issues competitive advantage on the and with the stakeholders market The company I work for is CSRThe company I work for knows that accredited following an external if it manages to adapt its audit, in compliance with one of production and business strategy the national CSR standards or so that it responsibly deals with with the standards afferent to its the social issues, it shall gain a line of business competitive advantage over The company I work for draws up rivals an annual report exclusively dedicated to CSR matters

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(4) Strategic

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20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1

Fig. 1.

2

3

4

5

Distribution of Companies per Models, Depending on the Observance of 3 out of 5 Criteria.

CONCLUSIONS 1. The greatest part of Romanian companies included in Top 100 by turnover adopt hybrid development and implementation models of CSR policies in their daily operations; however, the relatively pure model with the highest frequency is the Managerial one, which partially confirms the starting assumption of this research. 2. We have noticed the incongruity between the intention of getting involved in societal issues (which can also be the effect of the desirability) and the reporting of CSR actions, in other words the discrepancy between words and facts concerning the Romanian corporations’ activity. 3. The fact the CSR matters are dealt with by marketing, communication and PR departments is an additional argument that many of the Romanian corporations perceive this activity in terms of the promotion and maintenance of company’s reputation. 4. The required audits are generally related to the services and products or financial audits, which represents a step ahead in the organizational learning for the Romanian companies; however, an insufficient number of companies declare that they have been subject to an external audit performed in compliance with the international standards (only 2 of the studied companies). 5. As regards the reporting, the leading Romanian companies prefer to limit themselves to the documents required by law, not taking their responsibility toward external stakeholders seriously.

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REFERENCES Baxi, C. V., & Pasad, A. (2006). Corporate social responsibilities. New York, NY: Excel Books. Bor¸tun, D. (2005). Public relations and the new society. Bucharest: Tritonic. Bor¸tun, D. (Ed.). (2012). Corporate social responsibility from public relations to sustainable development. Bucharest: Tritonic. Frederick, C. W. (2006). Corporation, be good! The story of corporate social responsibility. Indianapolis: Dog Ear Publishing. Friedman, M. (2002). Capitalism and freedom. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Henriques, A., & Richardson, J. (Eds.). (2002). The triple bottom line, does it all add up?: Assessing the sustainability of business and CSR. Klein, N. (2000). No logo. London: Flamingo. Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Prahalad, C. K., & Porter, M. E. (2002). Harvard business review on corporate responsibility. Harvard Business Review Paperback Series. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Ridderstra˚le, J., & Nordstro¨m, K. (2007). Karaoke capitalism. Bucharest: Publica. Young, S. (2003). Moral capitalism. Reconciling private interest with the public good. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Zadek, S. (2007). The civil corporation: The new economy of corporate citizenship. London: Earthscan Publications. Zadek, S., Pruzan, P., & Evans, R. (2004). Building corporate accountability: Merging practices in social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting. London: Earthscan Publications.

CSR AND SOCIAL MEDIA: COULD ONLINE REPOSITORIES BECOME REGULATORY TOOLS FOR CSR RELATED ACTIVITIES’ REPORTING? Camelia Crisan and Alexandra Zbuchea  ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 197 219 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007011

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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. Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications 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. Originality/value The value of our chapter consists in exploring such simple and on-hand online repositories and finding issues of interest for further research.

INTRODUCTION We are living in a society of networks, where technology is part of our everyday existence. We have instant access to news, data and information about neighbours and friends but also about our corporative neighbours and their deeds. The mass media audience, the publics and the newspapers

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have entered an era where they are, to a large extent, obsolete. Content is co-created and shared instantly by people. Such new means of communication and their advantages have been fast grasped and adapted by companies in order to increase reputation, notoriety and promote themselves as good citizens. This opens the space for debates on the role of CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting and the mutual relations of influence between social networks and corporative actors. Who’s determining who to do what, at which extent, with what results? We aim to provide a few exploratory answers related to this complicated equation related to role businesses play in society and, more importantly, to the way in which technologically agglutinated networks, through social media means and, specifically, online repositories could help shaping the CRS reporting practices of companies.

DEFINING CSR CSR covers the area at the junction of economic, social, legal, political, and communication sciences. Judging by the array of definitions and new developments, it looks like a concept in the making, to the same extent as the relations it defines, those between business and society. Unlike many authors who see CSR from an economic sciences perspectives (Friedman, 1970/2007; Henderson, 2001; Mitchell, 1986; Sternberg, 1999), or from a socio-environmental perspective (Doppelt, 2003; Elkington, 2007; Hawken, Lovins, & Lovins, 1999; McDonough & Braungart, 2002), we position our definition of CSR in the stakeholder engagement theory, along with Preston (2001), Philips (2003), and Freeman, Harrison, and Wicks (2007), part of a larger paradigm about business-government-society relations that has been best articulated by Chomsky (2012). Within this framework, in the large sense, CSR refers to the relations between the economic environment (business) and society as a whole, having in view the sustainable development, as a must, when business is carried out; while in a small sense CSR refers to a new style of corporate governance and management where the decision-makers must take into account, in pursuing profits, the interests of all stakeholders that are being affected by the corporate activity, in an equitable manner. Our view is that the strongest emphasis in the CSR definition should be put on the S-term, the social dimension towards which the business has a responsibility. Corporations should perform their duties in relation to the

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entire society, as a corporate citizen (Crane, Matten, & Moon, 2008). The rights companies have, awarded by national states upon their setup should mirror a series of responsibilities, and such responsibilities transcend a certain state territory when we are discussing about multinational corporations. Authors like Frederick (2006) and Ray and Anderson (2000) have defined CSR in relation to the large societal movements for rights from a macro perspective indicating that different types of large social groups have put pressure on businesses to change their behaviour. Bonner and Wiggin (2006) and Reich (2007), on the other hand, embrace the micro perspective on CSR emphasizing the need of transforming consumers back into responsible citizens. However, the society in the beginning of the 21st century has many added features compared to the early days’ pressure, when social movements have been mobilized by newspapers or television. We are witnessing societal transformations, where people evolved from masses to publics and networks, and this determines a new understanding of CSR, from the perspective of social media and globalization. Taking over the concept of CSR 2.0 from Visser (2008), we aim to demonstrate that CSR practices in business will become a generalized must, due to the network-organized people, endowed with the power of almost free instant communication in the postmodern world. The technology and the network represent a new powerful leverage in the relationship between business and society (Cri ¸san, 2013).

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND THEIR POWER When information on a company abuse is posted online, the reactions of the social networks transcend national borders and the response of citizens and consumers affect companies, sometimes, beyond their capacity to react. The online networks, the user created content, in one word, the social media shape not only CSR as a concept but could lead to intentional alteration/regulation of corporate behaviour. By that, we mean that the power of networks, through pressure, and sanctioning potential abusive/ irresponsible conduct of companies may determine a change. People are not judges, they cannot pass sentences, but they can ‘smear’ images, promote negative representations about a company and, in extreme cases, they can take their indignation to the streets. People organized in networks are not a new concept. Deleuze and Guattari (1980) speak about a system without a central point, without

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hierarchy and representation, without a central core, which changes in accordance to situations and circumstances: the rhizome. The rhizome is creating connections with itself, it has many singularities, but it reacts as a whole in connection with third parties. It acts in the same manner even if one of its parts is destroyed, the remaining parts carrying on functioning, and being able to develop because, we would add, it’s a Weltanschauung that the parts and the whole are sharing.1 The fact that groups are not inert, that their border changes and they exist because they do something, translates into Latour’s (2007, p. 132) definition of network. For a network to exist, a point to point connection is established, which is physically traceable; such a connection leaves empty most of what is not connected; … this connection is not made for free, it requires effort; … a network is the trace left behind by some moving agent, … it has to be traced anew by the passage of another vehicle, another circulating entity.

In other words, such a network is in fact a work net or an action net, rather than a static entity. The pre-existing situation of the rhizome, its regeneration, does not automatically apply in the actor-network theory (ANT) of Latour (2007). The interactions within ANT presume the existence of a large number of participants where actions will already be interfered with by heterogeneous entities that don’t have the same local presence, don’t come from the same time, are not visible at once and don’t press upon them with the same weight.… Stretch any given inter-action and, sure enough, it becomes an actor-network. (p. 202)

These statements apply very well to Internet facilitated networks and their call to action in different situations. The idea once started has an unpredictable trajectory, like a snowball which defies gravity, or can break into small parts which continue their movement with the same effect. The definition of the network as a point to point connection is proposed by Castells (2010). However, Castells sees networks as structures which can expand ad infinitum, integrating more and more points and nodes. In society terms, such networks are open systems, susceptible to innovating without threatening their balance. Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power and culture … the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure. (Castells, 2010, p. 500)

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Both Latour and Castells talk about globalization and localization. In the network, ‘no place dominates enough to be global and no place is selfcontained enough to be local’ (Latour, 2007, p. 204). Technology is the intermediary for Latour, but the first layer in the ‘space of flows’ for Castells, where the flow is defined as all types of exchanges which take place between the societal actors. For Castells (2010, p. 443) the second layer is made of nodes and hubs, hierarchically organized and in continuous adaptation to the processes that take place in the network. Small cities can become global cities, depending on the resources they provide at a certain point in time for a certain network, while big cities may remain local actors, because they are not included in a significant network at some point in time. For Latour (2007) understanding the network requires almost an amoral sense of observation, small steps in following the actors. Castells (2010, p. 445) adds a new layer and that is ‘the spatial organisation of the dominant, managerial elites’. In his view: ‘Articulation of the elites, segmentation and disorganisation of the masses seem to be the twin mechanisms for social domination in our societies … In short: elites are cosmopolitan, people are local’ (Castells, 2010, p. 446). This point of view is supported by the theory of Leslie Sklair (2010) who calls it the transnational capitalist class (TCC) and argument that they are the main supporters of the cultural globalization. Because they have economic interests everywhere, the representatives of TCC are both global citizens and local ones in their country of origin. It looks, from the theoretical analysis performed above, that all possible networks are interconnected. And, like in the Marxist vision on economy, capital owners/elite dominate the local masses/workers, people a rather bleak and grim perspective. A ray of light is coming, in our opinion, from the same layer one, from the basis of the network. Technology has become widespread; access to information is instant and is becoming locus communis for most people. Their agglutination in virtual communities and then in the real life is something we see more and more in the public sphere. We are talking here about social media, a form of computer mediated communication, or, smart phone mediated communication, where content is created by people for people, by people for corporations, by corporations for people and, by people against corporations. Public agendas are forged today on Facebook; people gather at large protest movements via Twitter. Corporations are being subject of scrutiny and evaluation. And if this has not been a concern before, when the financial media was read by the elite, it is now, because a viral piece of news, propagated through the right network can be read by millions of people.

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But it is not only the technology; it is a change in the mindset of people. In 1962 Rachel Carson and her editorial from The New Yorker, ‘Silent Spring’ have started the ecological revolution (Griswold, 2012). But it was not only an ecological movement she started, it was a social one as well. She urged citizens to understand the effects pesticides and other substances have on their lives, organize in grass-root movements and protest in order to protect their rights. Carroll and Buchholtz (2006, p. 16) mention the social and rights movements among the factors which lead to awareness of social problems to be dealt by increasing CSR practices. Last, but not least, Ray and Anderson (2000) identified and researched a type of sub-culture inspired by the 1950s movements for civil and social rights, the new spiritualties, and ecology. It’s a sub-culture transcending social classes, fundamentally based on new values, and it differentiates itself from traditionalists, modern and post-modern people. The values at the core of this subculture are: volunteering, equal rights, increasing business presence for women, sustainable business. A research study from 2008 shows that such new types of citizens, who are embracing the values of the cultural creatives, have gone global and are expanding beyond the United States and Western Europe (Ray & Anderson, 2013). We have so far the means: technology and technological revolution, the context (‘the generic globalization creating transnational spaces’ (Sklair, 2010, p. 34), the networks as flows of information and the will/motivation for social involvement. Social media and the co-creation of content is a consequence of the above causes, and it can be used by companies as well as by people. On one hand, we have the business media, which has made the switch for marketing purposes to the online format and, on the other hand, the capacity of people to consume, mobilize, find and challenge businesses reports.

SOCIAL MEDIA

AN AGORA FOR CSR REPORTING AND DISCUSSIONS

Communicating CSR activity and results is a continuous challenge for companies, having a relevant strategic significance (Ogilvy, 2010). The strategic benefits for a company could be observed in different contexts. Most of them are market related (such as enhancing corporate reputation, establishing an industry leadership position, launch a brand, leapfrog competitors and others) and consumer related (engender customer loyalty, drive

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positive and stimulating word-of-mouth and such). Others, maybe not so obvious and therefore not systematically observed by companies, are stakeholder related (better connecting with stakeholders and engaging them) or human resources related (generate employee commitment, consolidate organizational culture and others). In this context, disclosing CSR becomes a business-wise approach, not just a proof of the transparency of a company. Therefore, reporting CSR and keeping various networks informed on the CSR efforts of a company is a must. This, as well as other contextual factors such as regulations, homogenous business practices, etc., lead to an increased reporting of CSR. This phenomenon is observed worldwide (KPMG, 2011, p. 17, 2013, pp. 25 26). The importance of this issues is revealed by the existence of CSR reports repositories, the most prestigious being Global Reporting Initiative,2 as well as prises awarded for best reports world-wide, such as Corporate Register.3 The relevance of CSR reporting (i.e., of the CSR activity of companies) is recognized by the European Union which requires CSR non-financial reporting from large companies, having more than 500 employees (EC, 2014). Wim Bartels, Global Head of KPMG’s Sustainability Assurance, arguing that CSR reporting is nowadays a critical business imperative, suggests the need for specificity, rigour and quality in this process. This is supported by the study of KPMG Advisory (2010, p. 3), showing a tendency for integrated reporting, including both quantitative and qualitative data on the performances of the company. A study developed by Ernst and Young (2011, p. 13) shows that reporting CSR influences the public appearance of the company, facilitating the acceptance of the image the company itself promotes. In this framework, not just annually reporting CSR is important, but also being transparent and present in the media, including social media, so as to reach and convince a wide variety of publics. The links between media and CSR are complex. As Visser, Matten, Manfred, and Tolhurst (2007, pp. 322 323) note, some current CSR issues are media related. There is a trend considering that media should promote content considered ‘socially responsible’, therefore reflect more CSR activities and associated news. In 5 years, the number of CSR related articles in media increased with 600% (Grayson, 2009). Nevertheless, media has its own agenda (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) and is in a complex way tight to its readers/consumers and their expectations (Hartley, 2012, pp. 59 90). In this context, it is more realistic to presume that when evaluating a story, media considers not only the message itself, but also possibly in a large

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degree the sender of news (e.g., the company). Media give more attention to certain sectors, to some public figures such as social activists. By reflecting on CSR and in general on social topics, raise the public awareness of CSR and even influences the demand for CSR (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001, p. 121). Therefore, media public relations strategies could be very relevant in order for a company to have a visible place in the media coverage. Even more, the risks of being presented as an irresponsible company is substantial, since media tend to present negative aspects, as enormous top-level staff benefits, harmful products, and such. Favourable attention is given especially to sensational news, rather than to the ones of large impact (Grayson, 2009). Consequently, there is the risk of media superficiality in covering CSR related topics, and companies should consider this in their communication strategies. Another aspect companies have to consider when being visible for the general public is that there is a double vision on the business world today. As Zadek (2007, p. 29) puts it, the views of the society on business ‘hang in balance’. On the one hand there are the critics on various mischiefs and suspicion on the deeds of the companies. On the other hand, the emergence of CSR practices and their increased visibility legitimate companies at least in the eyes of part of the society. After the abrupt decline in 2009, the Edelman Trust Barometer has registered an almost continuous increase of the confidence in companies, reaching 58% in 2014 (Edelman, 2014, p. 1). While trust is declining in central government, stakeholders would like to see a better regulated market and a good consumer protection. The respondents of the study would like businesses to move from thinking their mission in terms of ‘license to operate’ towards ‘license to lead’ (Edelman, 2013). This attitude is clearly highlighted by a Cone study published in 2013 that presents the beliefs on the role of businesses today. 6% of the respondents consider that businesses exist in order to make money and are not responsible for any social issue. 13% voted for the limited implication of companies in proximity communities, but consider them not to be responsible for supporting social and environmental issues. All the others (82%) consider that firms, in various ways, should be actively involved in social and environmental issues (Cone, 2013, p. 8). The Edelman’s Trust Barometer for 2014 confirms that 84% of the population considers that companies could obtain profits and be responsible in the same time (Edelman, 2014, p. 1). The importance of making the public/stakeholders aware of the good behaviour of a company is also related with the contemporary consumer,

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who is not anymore part of a mass but needs to be treated more and more as a ‘citizen consumer’. Many studies (Edelman, 2008, 2012, 2014; Green Brands, 2011; Nielsen, 2008, 2012, 2013; Strategic Oxygen and Cohn & Wolfe, 2008; TNS Global, 2008) show that consumers positively evaluate companies which are socially responsible and they declare that they favour them when buying. Variations on the degree exist when considering different countries and segments of markets. This last aspect is not so well documented, but there are suggestions that there is a difference between intention and action (Audouin, Courtois, & Rambaud-Paquin, 2009, p. 120). Limited data is available on this issue, but the most recent study shows that 92% consider that if given the opportunity they would buy products from responsible companies, but just 67% declare they had done that during the previous year (Cone, 2013, pp. 24 25). Therefore, the direct pressure of consumers is not so evident in terms of selling success, but the impact on the image of the companies could be substantial. Another aspect to be considered is that people are increasingly more engaged online with companies. A worldwide study developed in 2010 shows that 67% of the public considers that the Internet has widely changed the way they inform online on companies and 44% would use the Internet to sanction companies. Almost a quarter of the respondents already posted a negative consideration about mischiefs of companies (TNS Sofres, 2010). Considering the development of social media in the last few years, the actual figures today are even higher. Lyon and Montgomery (2013) argue that the risks of negative reaction on social media make companies be more responsible, both in actions and in communication. In some cases, the violent public reaction (amplified and made wellknown via media), made companies be more social responsible to cope with the image crises and to prevent future similar situations (such an example is Nike Locke and Siteman (2002). The same pressure from the public and the risks perceived by the companies, as well as development of responsible practices, led companies on various segments of market (textiles, coffee and others) adopt voluntary ethical trading codes (Vogel, 2005, pp. 84 87). All the previously mentioned aspects (traditional media behaviour, the need to be very visible and such), as well as the contemporary consumer characteristics and behaviour including the increased power of the social networks we signalled earlier in the chapter impose an active and wide presence of companies on new media. Since the Internet is superior to traditional media in many ways (Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009) it offers

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a wide variety of opportunities for and approaches of CSR related communication. Grayson (2009, p. 23) encourages companies to be more interactive and engage in dialogue about the strategies of the companies. This could be done via several online channels: the website of the company, micro-sites, Facebook and blogs. The importance of website communication in the context of CSR is proved by the systematic inclusion of links to the websites in the CSR reports, as well as by the high number of pages dedicated to CSR on the websites of companies (Moreno & Capriotti, 2009). Still, websites are too much company-related and people are aware of the direct control of the information. Therefore, additional independent online platforms (we include here online repositories, where a third party is promoting the CSR related activities of a company as a means of making the public/networks aware of good practices) have to be considered to be more convincing and far-reaching. In this context, social media offers a great opportunity of visibility for companies, and could be a forum for its advocacy. The content on social media is created by billions of people, who are supposedly interested in sharing their thoughts and interests with their friends and communities, not being influenced by third-parties agendas. Their aims might be personal and hedonistic, or socially engaged. The literature identified several motives of being online, the most mentioned being self-expression, social interaction, information seeking and entertainment (Lee, Jarvinen, & Sutherland, 2011, pp. 61 62). A study of McCann (2008) shows not only that consumers are online, but they also turned massively from passive users of social media to engaged users and creators of content. Even more, almost 10% of them promoted a brand in the context of their social network profile, while almost 30% wrote on products and brands on their blogs (McCann, 2008, pp. 13 14). In this context, being on social media is part of the new business climate, more exactly is associated with the profile of the ‘new-generation consumer’ and offers opportunities of customer engagement (Ros-Diego & Castello´Martı´ nez, 2011). This is relevant not just for branding processes, but also for more convincing CSR messages. Nevertheless, communicating CSR is secondary for the strategy of business communication via social media of companies despite the facilities it offers (Ros-Diego & Castello´-Martı´ nez, 2011, p. 67). Social media could generate value for companies and help them establish a dialogue with society, especially with their stakeholders (Moretti & Tuan, 2013, pp. 2 3). A survey of the Italian SMEs developed by Moretti and Tuan (2013, p. 7) suggests that despite the potential of social media communication, companies tend to use social media primarily

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to enhance their reputation. A study of Gomez and Chalmeta (2013) investigating the way 50 of the most admired companies from the Fortune list communicate CSR on social media also shows that one-way communication is predominant, while a study of Lee, Oh, and Kim (2013, pp. 803 804) suggests that firms are cautious in using the opportunities offered by social media. Grayson (2009, pp. 23 24) considers that the main impact of new media on business is the establishment of higher standards of accountability and transparency due to increased access to news and development of citizen journalism. The latter aspect leads to increased coverage of the activity of companies on blogs around the world (Nielsen, 2008). The topics preferred by bloggers are those related to the quality of everyday life: health and environment. The reactions of the bloggers are influenced by various factors, both personal and company-related, which lead to different reactions to similar actions of different companies. The bloggers might address CSR related issues either as responsible citizens, or being involved in business PR campaign. Nevertheless, in most cases the reaction of the public they reach is the same, since the public is not aware of the background of a certain opinion. The CSR communication via blogosphere is a positive aspect since it permits interactivity with various stakeholders and reaching specific public, but achieving this is no simple task due to the personal style and particular approach of each blogger (Palade, 2011a). Companies also have the option of having corporate blogs, either dedicated to CSR topics or not. The issue is of great importance since these blogs are an excellent forum for developing relationships with stakeholders. A study of Fieseler, Fleck, and Meckel (2010) on CSR corporate blogs suggests that these blogs are not very prominent in the blogosphere, but probably the most active consumers and interested parties are connecting with the company this way. The authors consider that corporate CSR blogs could be a means for diffuse reaching of communities that otherwise could be distant to those companies. Twitter and Facebook also could be effective channels of dissemination of information, of image development and stakeholder engagement. Lee et al. (2013) show that the more trusted are companies in terms of their CSR activity, the more responsive are the stakeholders are. The studies above show us that citizens, in their capacity of consumers (citizens consumers) use the options offered by social media to their full extent, which is not the case with companies. They should attempt to position themselves as civic actors, they use every mean to convince, persuade

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and finally engage people. Social media offers the necessary infrastructure. Whelan, Moon, and Grant (2013, pp. 781 782) propose ‘social mediaaugmented corporate arenas of citizenships’ in order to engage regular individuals and give them a voice in a real dialogue on CSR issues. Advantages for corporations are multiple, from reducing costs of communication to enabling citizens and thus drawing them closer to the company. However, on the one hand, research so far has failed to demonstrate a direct, causal relation between valuing a company as responsible and the actual purchasing behaviour (Zbuchea, 2013). On the other hand, literature has indeed shown the connection between a company’s irresponsible behaviour and the reaction of the networks including the damaging effects it can have on its reputation. In some cases, like the campaign against Rosia  Montana˘ Gold Corporation in Romania (Crisan, 2008), the reaction of the  networks has been seen manifesting itself also in the real life and on the streets of major cities. Based on this, our contention is that social media, especially independent sites (stories’ repositories), have the capacity to regulate, even alter the behaviour of companies in terms of initiating, implementing and presenting more CSR related activities. While the purpose of repository sites is to present and propagate good practices in different industries, they also aim to engage networks and users in a constant manner incentivising them to express an opinion. Using these repositories, companies would preserve a perception of ‘good citizens while inviting a comparison with their competitors and their achievements.

THE IMPACT OF REPOSITORY SITES: CAN THEY REGULATE/ALTER BUSINESS BEHAVIOUR IN TERMS OF CSR REPORTING? A study of Palade (2011b) investigates whether companies adequately reach their CSR public via Facebook campaigns and if the Facebook fans form interactive communities offering the company information on their preferences and expectations. The study identified 3 approaches/types of Facebook accounts for CSR campaigns: informational, development, and community-accounts. Just on the last type of account the company-public interaction generates positive and consistent reactions from the fans. The impact of social media is enhanced by the power of example. If social networked friends are involved in company-related messages, than the recall,

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awareness and purchase intent increase. Responding positively and having an active behaviour in relation to marketing messages also depends on the gratifications sought online self-expression, social interaction, information seeking and/or entertainment. Those most favourable to responding positively to companies involved in online communication are users of social networking sites who what to maximize all the mentioned benefits (Lee et al., 2011). Social media has, as a whole, a significant impact since it offers a wide variety of means for the public to express themselves. McCann (2008) identified almost 30 different channels by which a person influences intentionally or unintentionally another person in the social media age. At the time, at least one out of 4 persons was sharing his/hers opinions on products/ brands/services on one or more online channels (McCann, 2008, p. 29). These endorsements are taken seriously by peers in the social network: online recommendations are trusted almost as much as face-to-face ones, strangers are trusted much more than celebrities and any message coming from the company (McCann, 2008, pp. 34 35). Despite the obvious advantages and wide recognition of social media, as well as risking damage to their corporate reputation, not all companies are adopting professional social media communication, especially when considering the CSR related strategy (Ogilvy, 2010, pp. 63 64). Independent repositories, like the one making the subject matter of our study (www.responsabilitatesociala.ro), show that not just the reaction of the public and the social networked-communities are important when considering the effectiveness, transparency and accountability of CSR activities but also how they are communicated. Such a repository targets several types of communities: CSR specialists from different companies, consultants and civic actors interested in responsible business. If in the case of the first users’ category (CSR professionals), the purpose is quite simple: the site is a means of presenting good practices, and increase reputation but also an opportunity to learn what the competitors are doing and, in some cases, join efforts for better results. In the case of consultants, it provides materials for case studies and debates. For civic engaged actors (NGOs, bloggers and opinion leaders), it is an opportunity to see who does what, what are the results, if the projects are in line with an assumed strategy or a one-time wonder, if the projects presented are green washing rather than added value actions in other words a rich source of information related to projects that can be monitored, evaluated or commented upon. Each study case presented by a company is checked for accuracy by the site’s representatives, then posted and after that users have the opportunity to

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get engaged: offer feedback, comment or vote the most interesting project of a certain month. www.responsabilitatesociala.ro is a repository site of CSR stories (it includes: success stories from companies, interviews with CSR managers, news and paid advertising marked as such). Set out in 2006, www.responsabilitatesociala.ro is also the oldest Romanian CSR web repository. This enabled us to perform a comparative analysis related to previous years, number of companies present in the repository and the number of CSR related activities per company. The site has a policy to be independent and present cases from all companies; the site is administered by a media agency, which has sensed that more and more PR projects of companies have a civic engagement dimension. It was a normal development, considering that in Romania, CSR has entered the public sphere and became a business approach through PR strategies (Bort un, 2011; Zbuchea, 2008). Romanian managers are increas CSR as a managerial tool which means that companies use ingly embracing CSR tactics as a means to gain a competitive advantage (Crisan, Reveiu, &  Andrusenco, 2011).  Our research objective was to understand if an independent repository site could be a regulatory tool for CSR related activities’ reporting. In other words, our aim was to see if companies imitate the behaviour of others in terms of reporting about their CSR related activities. At the same time we wanted to understand if more reporting from others on such independent site subject of scrutiny for many stakeholders, either a means of pressure or conformity has as result more activities, hence more reporting about CSR related activities. Our research questions were 1. Could a repository site facilitate that more and more companies report their CSR activities? 2. Will a company that presented one case at some point in time present more cases in the next reporting period? In other words, we were expecting a quantitative increase: an increase in the number of companies reporting cases for each year analysed and an increase in the number of cases reported per company from one year to another. We decided to measure the cases by year, considering that the budget for CSR related activities is allocated yearly, so in that way we could evaluate an equivalent period of time. The results are presented below. As we can see from Fig. 1, there has been a steady increase in both the number of companies and articles about CSR activities posted in

212

CAMELIA CRISAN AND ALEXANDRA ZBUCHEA  Number of companies and articles per year

300 256

250 231

Companies

200

Case studies/Articles

166

155

150

143

134

111

100 78 50

102 74

65

67

2010

2011

36 22

0 2006

2007

2008

2009

2012

Years

Fig. 1.

Number of Companies/Articles Published Each Year on the Analysed www.responsabilitatesociala.ro Website.

Table 1.

Number of New Companies Added Each Year on the Analysed www.responsabilitatesociala.ro Website.

Year Total number of companies New companies

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

22 22

78 65

111 72

74 29

65 22

67 15

102 34

the repository within 2006 2008. The years 2009 until 2011 mark a decrease in both companies and activities, while in 2012 both numbers are ascending. As we have mentioned above in the text, 2006 is our initial reference year, because that is the year when the site started functioning. In terms of new companies added to the site every year, the situation looks as follows (Table 1): We see that these numbers are following the yearly patterns identified above. 2009 2011 mark a decrease in the number of new companies which presented CSR related activities, while in 2012 the number has increased. We need to point out here that if a company has presented an activity in 2006 and then again in 2009, for example, it has not been considered a new company in 2009. This means that the companies counted as new in each year are those who have never reported a CSR related activity in the previous years. However, comparing the initial number of 22 companies

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registered to be reporting their CSR activities, the 6 following years present 237 new entrants, an increase more than ten times. As a result, we see a steady increase year by year, between 2006 and 2008. While the number of companies reporting the CSR related activities after 2008 keeps on increasing, the increase rate is lower, with the lowest point in 2011. Related to the second research question, it is the number of activities per company each year that yields interesting results (Fig. 2). The largest number of activities per company/organization is registered in 2012, with the lowest point compared to the reference year 2006, in 2011. 2010, the year with the lowest number of companies performing CSR related activities, has the second most numerous activities/company average, while within 2007 2009 although there was a large increase and then decrease of both number of companies and activities, we have comparable averages. We also checked whether the pattern noticed also applies particular companies. As a result we have only selected those companies which displayed activities in minimum 6 out of the 7 years studied. For 5 companies out of 12, the larger number of articles/case studies, has been reported in during 2012, with an abrupt increase and peak in some others up to the year of 2008 and then an abrupt decrease between 2008 and 2009, a low decrease to 2010, an even lower decrease for 2011 and then an abrupt increase in 2012. However, there is no common pattern

Fig. 2.

Average of CSR Related Activities Per Company Reported Each Year on the Analysed www.responsabilitatesociala.ro Website.

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CAMELIA CRISAN AND ALEXANDRA ZBUCHEA 

that can be established for all the companies in our sample. At the same time, there are big differences among the number of activities reported by each company. For instance Petrom was recorded with 82 activities in total, while Holcim, although has published an annual report every year, has only reported on the repository 11 activities in total.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS We conclude that the first research question could be answered to in a positive manner. Results show a significant increase related to the new companies which, every year, reported about their activities. Although, the increase is not steady, there is a noticeable peak year in 2008 and a low year in 2011, and we see again an increase from 2011 to 2012 (Table 2). There are many potential causes that are worth exploring further: the overlap between the decrease of CSR related activities and the economic crises, which cut the budgets for social involvement projects; other web sites/repositories have been set out and perhaps some companies decided to post their results/activities there. On the other hand, the increase in activities between 2006 and 2008, and then a new increase between 2011 and Table 2. Evolution of the Number of Activities Reported on the www. responsabilitatesociala.ro Website for the Analysed 2006 2012 Period.

BRD Cosmote MOL Orange Unicredit Group Ursus Vodafone Erste Foundation Holcim Petrom Tuborg Vodafone Foundation

Year 2006

Year 2007

Year 2008

Year 2009

Year 2010

Year 2011

Year 2012

3 1 2 2 2 2 4 0 0 0 0 0

5 5 8 6 0 6 9 1 1 11 3 5

12 5 4 8 4 5 9 2 3 22 3 8

6 3 6 4 9 0 11 2 0 14 2 2

3 4 3 7 8 2 4 2 1 9 5 1

3 3 1 3 5 1 2 1 1 10 2 1

4 7 9 13 11 4 7 4 5 16 1 6

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CSR and Social Media

2012 could be the result of an emerging trend that could be attributed to the repository site itself and to the fact that companies would not want to be perceived as lagging behind competitors. Further research could produce an analysis on each industry which would enable us to understand whether competitor reactions and market trends could be linked to social reporting online. In terms of the second question we proposed to explore, we could not find the common ground for a pattern. The numbers of articles per company follow, in some cases, the pattern of the newly included companies, however, there is a small sample and we would not be able to draw any conclusion from that. Some of the differences in articles number per company could be the result of the size of the company, commitment to CSR related activities, willingness to publish on the repository site we have analysed. Moreover, as only 6 companies out of the total 259 analysed have published study cases in at least 6 years out of the 7 analysed, it seems that reporting is an extensive rather than an intensive phenomenon. It may be something that companies do and try, however as long as there is no additional reward to that, they stop doing it. The pressure of the network, the competition with others or their own sense of responsibility does not seem to be a powerful motivation for companies to continue telling stories about their good deeds. We can infer that social networking, through such independent story repositories, play a major role in spreading the trend for reporting CSR related activities, however, such behaviour is not maintained in time by companies. Further research into the importance of Facebook, Twitter or other tools is needed to advance the understanding. At the same time, one needs to assess 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. While the social networks are expanding and people and organizations alike are becoming more aware of their potential power, it remains to be seen whether their influence will lead to the emergence of a more responsible relationship between the business environment and society.

NOTES 1. www.capitalismandschizophrenia.org/index.php/Rhizome 2. www.globalreporting.org 3. www.corporateregister.com

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DIGITAL REFLECTIONS OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND THEIR CSR COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES Georgiana Grigore, Ana Adi and Anastasios Theofilou ABSTRACT Purpose 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. Methodology/approach 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

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 221 239 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007012

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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. Findings 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. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications and originality/value This chapter promotes an alternative exploratory method of online discourses through computeraided techniques.

INTRODUCTION Suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should report their ethical behaviour might sound contradictory. One could argue that pharmaceutical

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companies are by default ethical organisations as their entire operations and research focus on the development of drugs that protect and cure various, and, in many cases, deadly diseases. Using this perspective one could claim it unrealistic to expect pharmaceutical companies to undertake and invest into socially responsible activities especially when at the core of their activity and vision is the protection of public health and improvement of wellbeing. However, a survey undertaken in 194 countries by the World Health Organisation in 2013 focused on world health statistics shows that almost half of the countries part of the survey ‘ha[ve] access to less than half the essential medicines they need for basic health care in the public sector’ (p. 3). 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, the opposite argument therefore emerges: 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. This need is also supported by numerous examples. For instance, an NHS report (2011) shows how higher drug prices affect healthcare expenses (NHS, 2011). Additionally, according to the Guardian’s Julian Borger (2001): The combined worth of the world’s top five drug companies is twice the combined GDP of all sub-Saharan Africa and their influence on the rules of world trade is many times stronger because they can bring their wealth to bear directly on the levers of western power.

This is challenging the priorities of the pharmaceutical industry’s visions. Nussbaum (2009) also provides examples where NGOs and other pressure groups expose the pharmaceutical industry for failing to keep up with their ethical commitments. More specifically, pharmaceutical companies are accused of a number of irresponsible behaviours such as not providing affordable drugs, maintaining high prices, immoral marketing activities and questionable government relationships (Nussbaum, 2009). This indicates that, similarly to other industries, the pharmaceutical industry is also vulnerable to issues turning into potential crises. Hence, regardless of ethical values and humanitarian vision it is necessary that pharmaceutical companies also invest into and communicate their social responsible practices. To answer that need, this chapter explores how pharmaceutical companies communicate their corporate social responsibility activities. By

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linking this with stakeholder management, this chapter explores how Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi use their websites to articulate CSR strategies. This is achieved by carrying out an exploratory research that combines semantic analysis of the way the mission, vision and objectives of the three companies are integrated and reflected in their communication strategies and how that compares with the companies’ CSR strategies.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES CSR has been receiving extensive research attention (Sweeney & Coughlan, 2008). Some definitions of CSR imply a certain sensitivity towards companies behaving the ‘right way’, engaging with NGOs, being charitable and treating employees appropriately (Lantos, 2001; Lewis, 2003; Novak, 1996; Trevino & Nelson, 1999). Others acknowledge elements associated with CSR measurement methods such as the triple-bottom-line, where economic, environmental and social dimensions of a responsible behaviour are of essence (Coombs & Holladay, 2012). Operationalized through the Profit (economic aspect), Planet (environmental aspect), and People dimensions of business performance (Elkington, 1994), Hemphill’s (2010) definition extends the triple-bottom-line’s social aspect to include public institutions, such as federal state or local governments, to create a more complex socialpolitical dimension. This in line with Carroll’s (1979) discretionary level of the CSR pyramid (Elkington, 1994) which suggests that the concept can be seen as ‘the social responsibility of business [that] encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organisations at a given point in time’ (1979, p. 500). Drawing on Carroll’s CSR pyramid, Schwartz and Carroll (2003) propose a new model which encompasses economic, legal and ethical dimensions represented as intersecting circles, thus eliminating any suggestions of hierarchy of the responsibilities. Furthermore, by representing them as such, the authors emphasise more clearly the place where economic, legal or ethical responsibilities intertwine. In their model, philanthropic responsibilities, which have a voluntary character, are included in the spectrum of ethical responsibilities, as the authors suggest, they are an example of ethically motivated actions (Schwartz & Carroll, 2003). A clear distinction however between the ethical and philanthropic levels might be

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needed, and so would be a different measurement approach for each (Clarkson, 1995). Wettstein (2009) observes a shift in paradigm from the way companies obtain profit to new tools by which companies can distribute profit. These deal with social responsibility issues (seen as the interface between the activities of the companies and society). Even though definitions and models present CSR as ‘panacea which will solve the global poverty gap, social exclusions and environmental degradation’ (Marrewijk van, 2003, p. 96), Coombs and Holladay (2012) argue that CSR can also address many distinctive aspects which affect diverse stakeholder groups. In fact, Carroll (1991) argues, there is a natural fit between stakeholders and social responsibility: the stakeholders are individuals or groups with an interest into the organisation’s operations, which, in turn, may affect or are affected by the organisation’s operations (Freeman, 1984). Additionally, the stakeholder concept ‘puts a name and a face’ to the members towards which the companies have to react urgently and be responsible to (Carroll, 1991, p. 43). One of the most challenging aspects in managing stakeholders is identifying the salient groups and establishing what are the limits of corporate social responsibility towards them (O’Riordan & Fairbrass, 2008). For example, stakeholders may claim a legal or moral right from a company (the owners expect a certain level of profitability) (Langtry, 1994). Furthermore, they are interested in the way a company’s activity influences national economic growth (Clarkson, 1995). The complexity of stakeholder groups, their potential classifications, their interests and the impact they might have on a company’s strategy are extensively covered in academic literature (see Clarkson, 1995; Cooper, Crowther, Davies, & Davis, 2001; Henriques & Sadorsky, 1999; Wheeler & Sillanpaa, 1997). Stakeholders can be voluntary or involuntary (Clarkson, 1995); primary or secondary (Henriques & Sadorsky, 1999); silent, dominant, discretionary, dangerous, definitive, dependent, demanding (Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997). By exploring the mission, vision, corporate objectives and how CSR is integrated within the core activities of Pfizer, GSK and Sanofi, we aim to discover what the salient groups for these companies are and how they communicate with stakeholder groups via their websites. CSR in the pharmaceutical industry and the reporting of CSR initiatives has been only marginally explored by research (Lee & Kohler, 2010; Sweeney & Coughlan, 2008). There is therefore a lack of literature about how pharmaceutical companies report the social and environmental impact

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of their activities to stakeholders (Sweeney & Coughlan, 2008). While investigating reports of pharmaceutical associations (specifically French Pharmaceutical Companies Association LEEM) and examples of major companies’ members of this associations (i.e. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Genzyme, Interleukin Genetics and Novo Nordisk), Nussbaum (2009) observed that the key CSR concepts appearing in sustainability reports involve engaging with stakeholders, transparency, strategic partnerships and employees participation. He further argues that CSR is a necessary field for the pharmaceutical industry and that should even become a specialisation in order to tackle more effectively future business challenges given the distinctive characteristics of the industry. Esteban (2008) too maintains that the pharmaceutical industry has to deal with a variety of stakeholders (patients, health professional, the media, general public, etc.) and their expectations have to be understood in order for the companies to better integrate CSR into their business, vision and mission. Smith (2008) recognises the peculiarity of the pharmaceutical industry while also emphasizing on the role CSR plays for it. Lee and Kohler (2010) also argue that from an ethical standpoint, pharmaceutical companies have a responsibility to give back to society whilst researching, producing and developing medicines in a profitable way. In addition, when discussing the principles of beneficence and justice, Resnik (2001) claims that pharmaceutical companies have a social obligation to advance the welfare of humankind, which, in turn, will help consolidate sustainable relationships with their stakeholder communities. For example, when examining GSK and Bayern, Smith (2008) highlights that both companies show sensitivity towards economic and social elements in order to build employee and community relations and improve their image. Both GSK and Bayern depend on and value their employees. Finally, research, development and protection of the environment are included in GSK and Bayern’s CSR agendas. By concluding that CSR may affect customer decision-making, Smith (2008) calls for regulations to be developed to allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise their socially responsible strategies. There is also evidence of multinational companies being criticised for not offering sufficient support and access to medicine in poor countries (Leisinger, 2005). Chang (2006), for example, lists five reasons why they should bear a moral obligation to offer responsible access to medicines. As they produce lifesaving medicines at low production costs, this itself holds pharmaceutical companies morally responsible to society. Furthermore, as they benefit from public and governmental support, they should also

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reciprocate and help those in need. Moreover, as they have ability to share intellectual property rights to produce new lifesaving drugs, which does not affect their other products, they are put in an advantageous position where economic criteria are not influenced. On the contrary, pharmaceutical companies have been consistent in producing higher profit margins than any other industry. In 2003 alone the industry’s profits were at 14% of sales, above the 4.6% for all other industries (Angell, 2004, p. 1451). Therefore one could argue that pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to give back to society and support those in need, especially those in poor countries. Additionally, the poor are an important and salient stakeholder for these pharmaceutical companies. By exploiting the intellectual property rights they hold and thus facilitating access to drugs, pharmaceutical companies could answer that moral obligation. However, the giving back to society argument differs from early theoretical foundations of social responsibility, where the moral obligation is not seen as mandatory, but rather a voluntary corporate behaviour (see Carroll, 1999; Chang, 2006; Lee & Kohler, 2010; Porter & Kramer, 2006). Considering renewed European strategy for corporate social responsibility which states ‘the responsibility of enterprises for their impact on society’ (European Commission [EU], 2011, p. 3), and conflate this renewed strategy with the Green Paper (2001) where social responsibility is seen as ‘a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis’ several points can be raised and discussed. This new EU view suggests that social responsibility is no longer voluntary, therefore all companies, including those in the pharmaceutical industry, are obliged to consider their impact on society and salient stakeholders (in our case, those people who need access to medicine). It also suggests interests of shareholders, salient stakeholders and other communities are seen as equal. One group cannot dominate the other. This is certainly not the case in the United States for instance, where there are no regulations and limits in increases of drugs’ prices (Angell, 2004), and where a large number of uninsured patients have to pay considerably more money for access to medicine than those insured. Finally, it implies that pharmaceutical companies are responsible for being proactive in identifying, preventing and diminishing negative impact that they might have on society. One could therefore ask to what extent does the ‘Good Samaritan intuition’ (Huebner, 2014) that those who create wealth have a moral obligation to help those who are less privileged apply in the pharmaceutical industry?

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And what kinds of risks does such a profitable industry face in the digital age? An analysis of the way in which pharmaceutical companies communicate with different stakeholder groups will provide an answer to these questions.

CSR COMMUNICATION IN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY The suggestion of advertising within the context of Smith’s (2008) research may be perceived as a form of communicating CSR even though the notion of advertising per se falls under certain restrictions and obstacles which cannot be ignored (van de Pol & de Bakker, 2010). Due to these restrictions in advertising and the nature of the industry, the reporting of CSR initiatives relies merely on digital tactics. The digital tactics aim to communicate CSR to a wide and diverse range of stakeholder groups that deal with the pharmaceutical industry (Lee & Kohler, 2010). Before looking in more depth at the pharmaceutical industry, one needs to note the growing body of literature on CSR communication and reporting in particular. For example, Rolland and Bazzoni (2009) explore the motivations for CSR reporting and the impact it might have on corporate identity and management of stakeholder relationships within the automotive industry. Drawing on a content analysis, they show a rise in the use of websites for CSR communication and this is a response to stakeholders’ pressure and societal expectations to see organisations operating in a transparent and accountable way. Another example is a case study approach on CSR reporting in banking industry in Ghana (Hinson, 2010), which shows that the bank with the most awards for their social responsible behaviour has the weakest CSR reporting. Moreover, Branco and Rodrigues’ (2006) study indicates that the social responsibility disclosures of Portuguese banks cover environmental, human resource, products and customers and community involvement aspects. Current research therefore emphasises motivations for engaging in CSR communication, social responsibility reporting in different industry and the most relevant groups on different markets. For the pharmaceutical industry the main stakeholder groups include the media, governments, employees, consumers and competitors. According to Sweeney and Coughlan (2008) the online reporting of CSR activities is different

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depending on the nature of the activities undertaken and the stakeholders addressed. For instance, if the pharmaceutical products are for medical purposes, the CSR reports are aimed primarily at the industry’s community and its employees. If however, pharmaceutical products are for health and beauty purposes then the reporting is aimed primarily at customers and secondary to business partners/environment stakeholders. This highlights how the Internet enables effective communication with multiple stakeholder groups (Chaudhri & Wang, 2007) and provides a suitable platform for the implementation of what Morsing and Schultz (2006) refer to as three CSR communication strategies (i.e. stakeholder information strategy, stakeholder response strategy and stakeholder involvement strategy). The enhancement of stakeholder engagement is necessary and has not yet been rigorously investigated in the pharmaceutical industry (O’Riordan & Fairbrass, 2014). One of the few attempts to evaluate CSR communication of pharmaceutical companies indicates that messages focusing on social responsibility aspects through the company’s mission are aimed at external stakeholders, while those covering safety and social costs are communicated and embedded in the company’s values and usually target internal stakeholders (Sones, Grantham, & Vieira, 2009). Moreover, Ketola (2008) argues that between an organisation’s rhetoric and vision and its dialogue with stakeholders there is a big difference. This difference is visible through inconsistencies in how companies engage in communication about their mission, vision and values on one hand and, their defensive attitude against accusations made by different stakeholders as a result of a crisis on the other hand. Perhaps, at the basis of these inconsistencies is the companies’ realisation that they can re-create or, where appropriate, consolidate their reputation and corporate image after a crisis through different marketing tools and tactics (Benoit, 1997). In this context, new media brings about many challenges. While increasing transparency, the Internet also increases the potential for irresponsible behaviour to be noticed and brought to the attention of various stakeholder groups. Additionally, the Internet can also help increase the visibility of responsible behaviour. Activities therefore that contribute to sustainable economic development, social equity and minimise the negative impact on environment or future generations all over the world, can be communicated to and accessed by different publics via sustainability reports or other corporate communications. This chapter will also reflect on the impact on the Internet on the communication of CSR activities of pharmaceutical companies.

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH 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. Wordle is a Java-based word cloud generator that visualises frequencies within a text using data either from a user input file, a URL or a delicious collection. The visualisations thus generated can provide an indication of the type of text: whether cursive/narrative or short/dialogical but also of the emerging themes within it. They also can provide a snapshot into the main messages of the text helping thus determine the focus and emphasis chosen by each company/author. VOSViewer is a java-based programme that creates maps based on network data, that employs a linguistic filter to selects all word sequences that consist exclusively of nouns and adjectives. Unlike Wordle that visualises only the most frequent words within a text, VOSViewer operates by selecting the most relevant noun phrases helping identify thematic clusters and therefore helping expand on the insights gained from Wordle. VOSViewer’s mapping and clustering of the phrases is done based co-occurrence, and the results are colour-coded based on density of terms (blue lowest, red highest). We argue that the themes with the stronger clusters are more central to the discourse of the companies analysed permitting thus the creation of a chart of thematic priorities. To create the clusters the texts used for Wordle were saved in a txt format and imported into VOSViewer. Only words occurring more than 10 times were selected and the clustering used full counting (all words in the text, rather than counting for absence or presence). Representations

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thus obtained show only the words in a cluster that is directly connected.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION While exploring the websites of Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Sanofi, their investment in CSR activities covering social, environmental and economic aspects is evident. Pfizer invests in five areas of activity including global health programmes, grants and contributions, working with healthcare professionals, workplace and environment. Similarly, GSK also invests in five areas covering behaviour, governance and engagement, people, environment and health while Sanofi focuses on four including healthcare, workplace, ethical acting and the environment. The analysis of word frequencies of the mission, vision and objectives texts published on the three company websites shows several similarities. All companies mention themselves the most (GSK 151 times, Sanofi 167 times and Pfizer 367). This indicates a high sense of ownership of the activities undertaken as well as a high need of association of the activities with the three companies and their core activities. In a sense, these messages are aimed to define and represent the three companies so the repetition of their own name is not surprising. On the other hand however, it raises questions about corporate-speak and its inflexibility as well as about whether corporations can have egos. The frequent words also provide insight into the stakeholder groups deemed important by the three companies, the core of their activities and the importance they assign to either of them. While for GSK and Pfizer, ‘health’ is the second most used word, a reflection of their activity area, its focus and impact, this is not the case with Sanofi who speaks more often about the United States, employees (41) and patients (38) identifying its target market as well as some, we argue, of their core stakeholders. Stakeholders are also included in the top 10 most used terms in GSK and Pfizer’s words as well and their different frequencies could be an indicator of the importance and attention they receive from the companies. For GSK (Fig. 1) it is children (121), communities (85), people (71), patients (70), and world (59) while for Pfizer is patients (146), organisations (106) and professionals (101). See Table 1 for the frequencies of the top 20 words for all three companies.

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Fig. 1.

GSK Wordle.

Table 1. Mission, Vision, Objectives and Responsibility Top 20 Word Frequencies for GSK, Sanofi and Pfizer Selected Concepts from Wordle Outputs. Company

Word Frequencies

GSK

GSK 151; Health 136; Children 121; Communities 85; Healthcare 78; People 71; Patients 70; Support 59; World 59; Work 57; Business 55; Medicines 52; Cancer 49; Research 48; Employees 47; Diseases 45; Access 44; Products 42; Foundation 36; Disease 23; Innovation 18

Sanofi

Sanofi 167; US 71; Employees 41; Patients 38; Health 37; Safety 30; Program 26; Business 24; Information 24; Healthcare 22; Support 21; Water 21; Company 18; Work 18; Global; Training 16; Human 15; Patient 14; Climate 14; Change 14; Ethics 14; Diversity 13

Pfizer

Pfizer 367; Health 346; Care 166; Patient 146; Medical 142; Organizations 106; Professionals 101; Support 92; Research 83; Information 81; Medicines 79; Program 61; Foundation 56; Education 50; Public 50; Business 49; Grant 48; Clinical 47; Treatment 46; Colleagues 45; Development 44; Safety 41; Healthcare 40

This focus on particular stakeholders as well as on particular outcomes is confirmed at a careful reading of the mission and vision texts. For instance GlaxoSmithKline’s ‘what we do’ section on their websites is focused on people, however the mission and vision put a much higher emphasis on business and profit making: Our business is focused around the delivery of three strategic priorities which aim to increase growth, reduce risk and improve our long-term financial performance. These

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priorities are: grow a diversified global business, deliver more products of value, and simplify the operating model. (GlaxoSmithKline, 2013)

GSK’s social responsibility is also integrated in the company’s vision: We believe that being a responsible business is good for GSK and for society. It helps us operate efficiently, gain the trust of our stakeholders, create the products that people really need and foster the right conditions for the growth of our business (GlaxoSmithKline, 2013).

From this, it can be concluded that the general aim of GSK’s activities is profit-driven which is achieved by creating value through the delivery of more products: a reflection of neo-classical economy principles where there is a strong focus on economic criteria (Garcı´ a-Rosell, 2012). In this context social responsibility is described as ‘being good for GSK’, a way to consolidate stakeholders trust and advance, stimulate GSK’s business activities, whereas the focus on society plays a secondary role. Contrary therefore to general expectations and definitions GSK includes CSR in the strategic toolkit used to achieve organisational goals. The discourse thus created invites questions about the motives for integrating corporate social responsibility in GSK’s mission. The word frequencies also suggest a strong emphasis on business, many of the words used being associated with the industry and activities GSK undertakes: GSK (151), work (75), business (55), medicines (52) and product (42). Some words designating stakeholder groups and initiatives are frequently used: health (136), children (121), communities (85), healthcare (78), people (71), patients (70), support (59), world (59), work (57), business (55), cancer (49), research (48), employees (47), diseases (45), access (44), foundation (36), innovation (18). Sanofi’s word frequencies analysis of over 38 pages of text reveals similar trends with GSK. Sanofi’s mission emphasises the company’s passion for changing people’s life by innovating products and technologies. They also provide a definition for corporate social responsibility which is: an integral part of the process to bring novel healthcare solutions to patients, including making ethical, social, and environmentally responsible decisions that serve patients and the community. (Sanofi, 2013)

Here ethical, social and environmentally responsible decisions are included in a novelty solution offered to patients. Instead of explaining how these decisions were responsible and ethical in the first place, like GSK’s definition of CSR, Sanofi’s use of CSR is to advance healthcare around the world, and arguably increase profits. Even with this clear profit-driven

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vocabulary, Sanofi also speaks about ethics (14). This, we assume, is related to its supported causes and actions such as climate change (14), water (21), safety (30) and diversity (13) (Fig. 2). ‘We work for what really matters: health!’ is mentioned in Sanofi’s yet their duty to offer access to medicine to those people who need it is not mentioned anywhere. On the contrary, the focus is on health as a way to contribute to the development of their business: programme (26), business (24), healthcare (22) company (18). Sanofi’s stakeholders are patients (52) and employees (41) to whom Sanofi provides or receives work (18), training (16) and support (21). Pfizer’s analysis includes 86 pages of text. From their careful reading it emerges that Pfizer’s is committed to maintaining ethical standards in all their activities. Similar with the other two companies, Pfizer’s mission too is orientated towards its main stakeholders and the mutually beneficial relationship that arises as a result of their engagement: We are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in everything from research and development to sales and marketing. We are focused on nurturing a workplace of diversity and inclusion for our colleagues, maintaining a customer-centred approach to our business, and giving back to the communities where we work and live. And we are dedicated to making continual progress in innovation by investing our resources wisely and engaging collaboratively with our partners around the world. (Pfizer, 2013)

Unlike Sanofi and GSK, Pfizer’s most frequent words gravitate around medicine: health (346), care (166), patient (146), medical (142), medicines (79), clinical (47), treatment (46) and healthcare (40). In Pfizer’s case, business (49) is close in frequency to education (50) and development (44),

Fig. 2.

Sanofi Wordle.

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however overshadowed by support (92), research (83) and information (81). This frequency distribution confirms Pfizer’s short social media bios (see Adi & Grigore, 2015) as ‘world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company’. This also explains the appearance of new groups of stakeholders not seen mentioned as frequently within the texts of the other two companies: organisations (106), professionals (101), public (50), colleagues (45) (Fig. 3). Two elements need to be remarked here: that Pfizer does not reference to its employees as such but rather as ‘colleagues’ indirectly suggesting a more collaborative and horizontal organisational structure. This raises questions about the organisational structure at Sanofi and GSK as well as about the relationships between the corporation and its stakeholders. Moreover, judging from the word frequencies obtained Pfizer is referring less to patients than the other two companies. While associations with the medical trade are expected, it is striking that at semantic level Sanofi and GSK’s stakeholders are generally referred to as patients, so people that need treatment/cure, or to use synonyms of the word sick person, case, sufferer, victim, invalid or infirm. This posits patients in a reactive mode and to a degree into a position of dependence if not even servitude to the pharmaceutical companies. In a way, the rhetoric makes sense patients need treatment, pharmaceutical companies provide that treatment hence they provide cures and contribute to improving healthcare. However, we believe this semantic reflection should be extended to the pharmaceutical

Fig. 3.

Pfizer Wordle.

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companies’ overall vocabulary and invite further considerations about the way in which they represent themselves, their role and describe their relationships with their key stakeholders.

CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH This chapter analysed how social responsibility messages were communicated through the corporate websites and the mission, vision and values statements of three major players in pharmaceutical industry, targeting both internal and external stakeholders (individuals, media, communities, society at large). 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. This research confirms Rolland and Bazzoni’s (2009, p. 259) findings according to which the Internet and websites in particular are ‘a communication channel for the creation and maintenance of a particular organisational identity’; however it also highlights the existence of inconsistencies in how messages are communicated particularly between the companies’ own definitions of CSR and those widely promoted by the literature. 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 profitdriven 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. Finally, this chapter promotes an alternative exploratory method of online discourses through computer-aided techniques.

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CSR ONLINE AND IN REAL TERMS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CONTROVERSIAL SECTORS IN HUNGARY Gyo¨rgy Pataki, Richa´rd Sza´nto´ and Re´ka Matolay ABSTRACT Purpose Online CSR communication of top Hungarian companies has been analysed, aiming at the exploration of the internal and external consistency of corporate communication practices. Methodology/approach 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. Findings 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

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Volume 7, 241 264 Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2043-0523/doi:10.1108/S2043-052320150000007019

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actions on the one hand, and commit different forms of misconduct on the other. Research limitations/implications 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. Practical implications Our findings show remarkable dissonances in CSR communication and point to a rhetoric-reality gap that needs more attention from practitioners as well. Originality/value 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.

INTRODUCTION Communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles, initiatives and activities has become a common practice of companies all around the world. Firms use the Internet more and more often to communicate their CSR initiatives to their stakeholders. As Isenmann (2006) claims: Current trends indicate that CSR communication is in a phase of transition, entering a new digital online stage: The field elevates from a rather ‘managerial closed shop procedure’ towards a ‘quasi public effort’ of engaging and involving various stakeholders like employees, customers, suppliers, investors, ranking and rating institutions, governments and local authorities, but also pressure groups and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs). (pp. 247 248)

Parallel with the extensive use of the online media, more and more research has been elaborated on the field of online CSR communication in the last decade. These studies usually have a strong descriptive focus trying to reveal connections between the intensity of online communication of CSR values and activities, and company size, industrial background and other explanatory variables. In contrast, we analysed corporate web pages and social media dedicated to CSR through critical lenses. We designed our research to explore potential dissonances and contradictions within online communication and between communication and real activities.

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In previous studies (Ligeti & Oravecz, 2009; Sweeney & Coughlan, 2008; Sza´nto´, 2010), some specific industries were identified that have been generally active in the field of CSR communication (such as telecommunications, chemical industry, the food sector, energy trade and production). In this chapter, we critically analyse the online communication practices of firms from construction, retail and telecommunications industries. We followed the approach of critical discourse analysis (Wodak & Meyer, 2009) of the selected corporate web pages and social media presence of companies, and we also compared the companies’ online disclosure and presence with the actual data on unethical moves. The database of punitive decisions of the Hungarian Competition Authority was investigated in order to identify any unfair market behaviour patterns. The resolutions of the General Inspectorate for Consumer Protection were monitored in order to reveal whether firms in question mislead their consumers. The database of resolutions of the Hungarian Labour Inspectorate was scrutinized for exploring companies’ malpractices related to human resource management. Lastly, the reports of the Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration were also analysed to find firms that failed to pay their taxes and/or went through bankruptcy procedures. We are aware that compliance with legal regulations is not equal at any point with ethical behaviour and value-based thinking, however we believe that is a necessary minimum requirement for responsible business activities. Negligence of legal norms is often a sign of broader ethical problems and decreases a firm’s credibility. Our research demonstrates that it is not unrealistic to suppose that CSR communication in the sectors under question can have window-dressing motives, communication often omitting unethical corporate activities.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE There have been more and more studies dealing with the online communication of corporate social responsibility. One of the first empirical studies was elaborated by Esrock and Leichty (1998). They took a stratified systematic sample of 100 companies from the Fortune 500 list and looked for the most frequent CSR messages and contents on the corporate web pages. Even at the relatively early stage of the Internet technologies, they realized that companies were eager to promote their community or civic involvement, their environmental initiatives and their philanthropic and sponsorship activities on the World Wide Web.

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Another relatively early and often cited analysis is that of Maignan and Ralston (2002). They examined the websites of 400 European (more precisely, Dutch, French and British) and US-based companies in order to assess CSR image-making by firms and explore the motivations, processes and issues that convey the responsible image. They categorized CSR motivations as value-, performance- and stakeholder-driven; CSR processes ranging from philanthropic ones through programmes to environmental management processes; and the issues by stakeholder groups, such as community, customers, employees, shareholders and suppliers. They identified differences between countries, and the dominance of Anglo business (the United Kingdom and the United States) in online CSR communication. Among others, they pointed out that value-driven CSR communication was a characteristic of US-based firms, as opposed to the performancedriven motivation of European ones. Other studies such as Silberhorn and Warren (2007) and Martin and Woodward (2009) applied their methods and therefore conducting content analyses of CSR web pages of large companies. Several country studies focusing on different sectors were also elaborated. Branco and Rodrigues (2006) studied the practice of Portuguese banks, and their findings suggest that banks with a higher visibility show greater concern to present a responsible image to their stakeholders. Chaudri and Wang (2008) investigated top 100 information technology companies in India. They found a relatively low ratio (30%) of IT firms using the internet to communicate CSR information, and their study indicates that there is a general lack of broad, proactive CSR communication on corporate websites among leading companies in India’s IT sector. Chapple and Moon (2005) compared the experiences from seven Asian countries and they found great differences among the countries by analysing 50 web pages in each country. According to the authors the variations cannot be explained by the development level of the countries, but by the factors of the respective national business systems. After reviewing web pages of 127 corporations from eight emerging countries (Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Thailand) Wanderley, Lucian, Farache, and Sousa Filho (2008) also state that the country of origin strongly influences online CSR disclosure practices. The above mentioned studies as well as some more recent ones (e.g. Moreno & Capriotti, 2009; Paul, 2008; Sones & Grantham, 2009) exemplify a popular way of conducting research on online CSR communication: content analysis based on pre-given categories or themes. Researchers typically define CSR themes to be looked for while examining

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corporate web pages and apply quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods. A minority of researchers conducts their analysis by first exploring websites, then constructing their categories of analysis (see Holcomb, Upchurch, & Okumus, 2007; Snider, Hill, & Martin, 2003) similar to the approach of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). However, there is another stream in the literature analysing online CSR communication of business firms. These studies typically employ a discourse analytic approach and apply methods related to critical discourse analysis (Nielsen & Thomsen, 2007), grounded theory (Coupland, 2006) or linguistics (Pollach, 2005). Some of them concentrate on the legitimizing role of corporate websites. Coupland (2005), for example, examines the language drawn to describe socially responsible activities. She identified clusters of argumentation repertoires that appear to legitimize the organizations’ CSR activities. Coupland (2006) also explored the webbased CSR communication of five banking groups, operating in the United Kingdom. By her grounded theory research, three aspects of CSR emerged: doing good (activities targeting communities), being good (environmental activities) and funding good (main financial operations). The findings demonstrate that for traditional banks, ‘CSR is about community and the environment, that is doing good and being good’ (p. 873), while the only bank in her sample that is a value-based organization provides all of the bank activities under the issue of ethics. Thus, the majority of banks’ web pages are silent on the issue of lending, one of the main banking activities that has a major influence on the whole economy. Pollach (2003) investigates the websites of six companies using software supported textual analysis. She points out that, on their ethics-related web pages, ‘companies avoid issues that have shed a bad light on the company’ (p. 283). Related to the potential areas of misconduct, corporate websites typically refer to international standards and commitments that are supposed to prevent those misbehaviours. Another study of her (Pollach, 2005) demonstrates that online CSR communication often neglect one of the main possibilities provided by the Internet, namely, opportunities for dialogue and interaction. Research on the relationship of CSR and social media is much more limited. Social media seems to be an attractive or even ideal tool to communicate messages about corporate social responsibility since technological solutions enable users to give direct feedbacks, creating an active dialogue between the firm and its stakeholders (Capriotti, 2011). As Dixon (2012) puts it, it is authentic, continuous, targeted and interactive. Although top motivations of corporations for engaging in social media activity do not

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include CSR and/or stakeholder involvement the major drivers are branding, increasing corporate reputation and internet visibility (Barnes & Lescault, 2012) social media might be an appropriate tool in the array of participatory communication with stakeholders. A quantitative research on CSR-social media activities of US companies reveals rapid changes in using interactive online tools, such as sharing options built in CSR reports, educational videos and interactive online learning materials on corporate sustainability and CSR, crowdsourcing options in order to collect idea and feedback from stakeholders, and the use of social media (Dixon, 2012). Firms obviously like to disclose information that promotes good news about the company and their activities. However, regarding CSR communication more and more signals of alarms are triggered bringing attention to criticism of company practices. For instance, in 2011, tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris spent 75 million USD on social initiatives while within the same year the company spent 100 million USD on the communication of those social initiatives (Morsing, 2003) raising questions about its commitments and intentions. Another controversial example is that of British Petroleum (BP) jointly winning the 2006 ACCA (Association of Chartered, Certified Accountants) UK Award for sustainability reporting in the category of electronic media. BP also topped the Fortune list of corporate accountability rating for CSR in 2007 (Accountability Rating, 2007). Four years later however the oil giant was involved in one of the biggest environmental scandals in history (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2012). This, for instance, led (Wagner, Lutz, & Weitz, 2009) to introduce the concept of corporate hypocrisy that explains how the inconsistency between the disclosed CSR values and activities and information about the actual behaviour of those firms affect the consumers’ perception. How far does this inconsistency reach? How can we explore whether corporate CSR communication is, to a great extent, window-dressing or is validated by substantial steps by corporations in their day-to-day operations? Does CSR reporting demonstrate a ‘rhetoric versus reality’ controversy? Few studies have been conducted so far to answer these and similar questions. Clement (2006) studied the reports in the business news between January 1, 2000 and June 30, 2005 for types of activities that can be considered unethical. Unethical behaviour is defined by meeting three conditions: a guilty plea, ruling against and paying a fine. He examined news about unethical behaviour related to organizations on the Fortune 100 list in 1999. His disappointing finding is, among others, that 40% of the companies under

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question committed unethical behaviours. According to his judgement, ‘this level of misbehavior in American business is substantial …’ (p. 323). Investors, consumers and employees are the stakeholder groups, he claims, that are most harmed by corporate misdeeds. Surprisingly, these stakeholders are traditionally the most important ones for for-profit companies. Cho and Roberts (2010), by quantitatively examining the environmental reporting on the internet by America’s Toxic 100 firms, also reach the disturbing conclusion that ‘poorer environmental performing firms (…) provided more extensive environmental disclosures in terms of content and presented their disclosures on savvier websites’ (p. 12). Using the perspective of legitimacy theory, their results indicate that online environmental disclosures by companies are more concerned with legitimating corporations than enhancing corporate accountability. As it was shown earlier, several comparative studies confirmed that country of origin matters in online CSR communication (Chapple & Moon, 2005; Maignan & Ralston, 2002; Wanderley et al., 2008). In Hungary, the CSR rhetoric has been proliferating for years. Frequent conferences and workshops, dedicated sections of business magazines, formal university courses and summer schools, a booming consultancy business, and an appointed government official for CSR in the former Ministry for Economic Affairs were all signs of a lively CSR discourse being institutionalized in the Hungarian organizational field, indicating that it could be time to assess the state of affairs from a critical point of view. Although Ligeti and Oravecz (2009) concluded that CSR activities are managed separately from the core business in most Hungarian firms, investigations about the credibility and the internal coherence of the CSR messages are still missing and are therefore needed.

METHOD In order to analyse external consistency (i.e. to what extent firms’ real actions correspond to the communicated ideals and values) and internal consistency (whether communicated values and activities are coherent with each other) of the online CSR communication of large Hungarian firms two different methodologies were applied. First, the credibility of online CSR communication undertaken by the top 200 Hungarian companies was examined. We compared the intensity of online CSR disclosure of the companies with their actual misbehaviour. Then, internal consistency was analysed: here we focused on a much

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smaller sample. Firms from the top 200 list in three different industries (telecommunications, food and construction) with dedicated CSR web pages were selected. Table 1 presents the complete list of the selected 10 firms. The chosen three industries can be considered highly controversial since the actors of these sectors have produced numerous problematic cases in recent years and have had serious conflicts with different regulatory authorities. The selected 10 web pages were examined by applying critical discourse analysis. At the beginning of our research we categorized four different types of activities that can be considered unethical: (1) misconducts related to employment and human resource management, (2) violation of the rules of fair competition, (3) use of misleading practices towards consumers and (4) tax evasion or tax avoidance. By creating these categories, we were able to use the publicly available information about company misconduct. This enabled us to use the Hungarian Labour Inspectorate chronicles of misconducts related to employment as well as consult the publications listing the amount of fines imposed on companies since 2006. We also used data released by the Hungarian Competition Authority, responsible for enforcing the rules and regulations that enable fairness and freedom of competition in the country. The Authority registers violations against competition regulations and infringements of the competition law such as abuse of dominant positions, market allocating agreements or misleading advertising. The resolutions of the Authority have been available for the public since 1997, and also the fines had to be paid by the firms found guilty. The Hungarian Authority for Consumer Protection oversees compliance with Hungarian regulations on protection of the consumer and has the right to impose fines on wrongdoing companies. Fines can be imposed if a company’s activity affects negatively its customers (e.g. prices are not displayed correctly or the company serves alcoholic beverages or tobacco products to under-aged consumers). These resolutions however have been made publicly available only since 2007. Lastly, the Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration has made public the list of companies that failed to pay their taxes, or who had bankruptcy proceedings launched against them since 2001. All these pieces of information were provided by the Feketelista Adatbank (Black List Database), available online on www. feketelista.hu In our analysis, we investigated three issues. First, we checked whether the members of the Hungarian top 200 were on the Black List or not. Then, we counted up the number of resolutions that any of the aforementioned authorities had issued against the largest companies. Finally, we

CSR Communication of the Selected Companies.

Corporate Product & Human Economic Social Environmental Corporate Corporate Relationship External Profile Services Resources Action Action Action Governance Ethics with Publics Criteria Hungarian Telekom Hungarian Post Office Telenor Hungary Vodafone Hungary Tesco-Global Spar Hungary IKEAa Heidelberg Cement Hungary Holcim Hungary KE´SZ Construction a

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CSR Online and in Real Terms

Table 1.

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IKEA Hungary’s website does not have any content about the Hungarian initiatives of IKEA.

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summed up the fines the firms had to pay.1 We assume that the magnitude of the fine imposed on a firm was a good proxy indicator of the significance of the unethical act that was committed. Our findings therefore reflect on the state of affairs at the end of July 2010. ˝ (The Observer) reports every The weekly economic magazine ‘Figyelo’ year about the Hungarian companies with the largest turnover in the country. We relied on the 2009 list (that is based on the financial data of the 2008 business year) when we compiled our sample. Fig. 1 represents the sample distribution according to company industrial sector. The list of the top companies is generally diverse: the largest Hungarian corporation MOL (a regional oil firm) had a 3,500 billion HUF revenue (circa 1,250 million EUR) while the smallest company on the list, Hungerit, a poultry producer, realized 30 billion HUF (107 million EUR) turnover in the year 2008. The average revenue reported in 2008 was 147 billion HUF. Despite minor changes the list is relatively stable: 186 firms out of the 200 were present in the elite group of companies in the previous year as well. The top 200 companies are the dominant players of the Hungarian economy: they employ approximately 10% of the country’s workforce, and they are

Energy 11%

Wholesale 12%

Transportation & Logistics 5% Other 1%

Other services 4%

Construction 6%

Automotive 12% Food, Beverages & Tobacco 9% Metal Processing 3% Coal, Petrol & Chemical 8% Telecommunication 3%

Retail 7%

Vehicle & Gas Commerce 8%

Fig. 1.

Electronics, Machinery & Tools 11%

Sample Distribution.

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also the largest exporters of the country. Nevertheless, the top 200 list does not include banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. The corporate websites of the 200 largest companies were easily found. Generally, the addresses of the web page were created by using www.thenameofthecompany.hu form. If this was not successful the firm’s name was typed into the Google search engine. It turned out that out of the top 200 companies 28 did not have corporate web pages. This study exclusively focuses on Hungarian contents of the web pages. Since most of the companies in the sample are affiliates of multinational companies having headquarters outside Hungary, Hungarian web pages are often directed to international corporate home pages. However, English or other foreign language web pages were not observed, our aim being to investigate what and how firms communicate to local (Hungarian) stakeholders. Some CSR initiatives addressed by the company had separate websites. The analysis concentrated on corporate websites; hence we did not observe websites with different domain names from the initial website (at this point, the method of Esrock & Leichty, 1998 as described in the literature review was utilized). We did not scrutinize documents found on the corporate web pages dealing with corporate social responsibility issues. Although CSR reports or sustainability reports contain important information about the CSR activities and objectives of the companies, this analysis would have been far beyond the scope of this study. Interestingly enough, a narrow cluster of firms had the strategy of introducing their CSR initiatives and activities almost solely in their reports, not promoting or only in a very modest way these activities on the interface of the website. All websites and documents were downloaded in July 2010. As it was previously mentioned a much smaller sample was selected in order to understand internal consistencies of online CSR communication. By creating a 10-item-sample we were able to look at CSR disclosure from different angles in a more detailed way. Websites of the firms were analysed focusing on which stakeholder groups they communicated to and what type of CSR activities they reported about. We deliberately looked for the primary term for each company website: what concept is explicitly used as the main term for denoting the reported activities? We also tried to infer who is or are the main target group(s) of CSR communication by each company: which stakeholder group(s) is/are referred to the most as the most significant motivational force behind CSR activities? We have also checked each websites according to whether it provided

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information according to the 10 issues developed by Moreno and Capriotti (2009). The 10 issues, each representing a potential field with CSR reporting relevance, are the following: corporate profile, products and services, employment and human resources, economic action, social action, environmental action, corporate governance, corporate ethics, relationships with publics, external criteria (p. 164). Table 2 summarizes the most important CSR, Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability Development related issues that mostly derive from the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines (2002). In 2013 we have replicated our previous research focusing on the sample of the 10 selected firms on the one hand, and extending the online research by looking at their presence and activity on social media. The 10 firms still possessed websites, and they all had subpages covering their CSR activities. We used the Black List database in order to check whether these firms committed further wrongdoings in the years since our initial research. We have also extended the focus of our research to include the social media presence of the companies in the study. Nowadays Facebook is the most widely used social media in the world, therefore in our study we Table 2.

Corporate Social Responsibility Issues on the Web (Moreno & Capriotti, 2009).

Issue Corporate profile Products and services Employment and human resources Economic action

Social action Environmental action Corporate governance

Corporate ethics Relationship stakeholders External criteria

Definition GRI (2002) GRI (2002) GRI (2002) Declarations and actions that are related to economic impacts of the company in its local, regional, national and supranational environments Declarations and actions that are related to the enterprise’s involvement in social issues Declarations and actions that are related to the enterprise’s involvement in environmental issues Declarations and explanations of its transparency commitments in the governance of the company. Explanation of the structure of power, remuneration, responsibilities, governance departments, etc. Declarations and explanations of its ethical commitments in relation to its business and groups of the public Declarations and explanations of the interests and importance of groups of the public with regard to the company Declarations, explanations and links with national and international CSR/CC/SD

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Table 3. Keywords. CSR Responsible/responsibility Environment Philanthropy Charity

Ethics/ethical Sustainable/sustainability Donate/donation Sponsor Support

focused on this platform in our study. Facebook pages of the 10 selected corporations were scrutinized based on a specific keyword search (see Table 3). Our analysis did not include user comments made; it focused only on the messages disclosed by the companies themselves in 2013.

BEING FAIR AND CLAIMING TO BE RESPONSIBLE We found that 43% of the top 200 companies are on the Black List. This means that 86 out of elite 200 were involved in at least one case where the authorities mentioned above (or at least one of them) issued a resolution disapproving of their unethical and illegal behaviour. This significant finding resonates with the results of Clement (2006). Yet, it is apparent that top companies mostly comply with tax regulations; one can hardly find any condemning resolutions from the Hungarian Tax and Financial Control Administration in the database. Nonetheless, it seems though that the level of misbehaviour among Hungary-based top 200 firms is significant. If one believes following many critical approaches to the concept of CSR that communicating about socially responsible activities is a tool to regain or build trust and to veil company misconduct (see Aid, 2003), it could be hypothesized that the firms having problems with certain authorities may put a stronger emphasis on their CSR communications, including online disclosure. However, the statistical analysis suggests a subtler situation. In fact, there is no correlation between being on the Black List and having a dedicated CSR web page within the corporate website; hence it is overly simplistic to suggest that CSR communication is mere greenwashing activity for most of the firms. One must admit that the presence of a dedicated CSR web page within the website of a company is not an absolute predictor of intensive online CSR communication activities. However, we found it is a good proxy for further analysis. Yet, to negate this optimism, we can state that a negative correlation is also missing: those companies that behave in a fair way (or at least were not indicted in the observed period) do not communicate more

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intensively about their socially responsible values and behaviour. Fig. 2 demonstrates that about half of the companies that have dedicated CSR page/s within their corporate website committed at least one unfair act that triggered the attention of regulatory authorities. However, it is also true that a large proportion of the firms in our sample (39%) are not on the Black List, do not communicate their CSR activities in a visible manner or they do not communicate them at all. It is important to note that those firms who have dedicated CSR web pages seem to violate the regulations of fair competition more often than those without remarkable online CSR communication activity. The former group had more problematic cases than the latter one and paid more fines to the Hungarian Competition Authority.

THE COMMUNICATIONS OF CONTROVERSIAL INDUSTRIES Regarding their unfair market behaviour there are three industries that deserve greater attention: telecommunications (which had nine offences on average over the last decade), retailing (have been violating consumer protection regulations 16 times on average in the recent years) and construction (have been paying the highest amount of fines to the regulatory authorities). In the following section, we provide a detailed analysis of the web pages of the most active communicators of these sectors and we reveal the paradoxical situations revealed by our statistical analysis. Our critical discourse analysis of the websites supporting our quantitative data

Number of firms

90 80

On the Black List

70

Without negative cases

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Dedicated CSR page

Fig. 2.

Without dedicated CSR page

CSR Communication and Fair Business Practices.

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was informed by the 10 basic CSR issues identified by Moreno and Capriotti (2009).

Telecommunications Sector Four companies out of the six in the sample have dedicated CSR web pages on their corporate websites. One of them is the state-owned Hungarian Post Office Ltd. (Magyar Posta), while the other three are Magyar Telekom Group (about 60% owned by Deutsche Telekom), Telenor Hungary (100% owned by Telenor of Norway) and Vodafone Hungary. By investigating the CSR web pages of these companies it is clear that the Hungarian Post Office has the least developed one related to CSR communication. On the main page, under About Us, one can find company information related to social responsibility. The activities are stated to include environmental protection, NGO and professional partnerships, and the support of the disadvantageous groups of society, though no specific information is provided to substantiate these claims. However, the substantive CSR content has no clear structure, and it is presented in a news-like fashion. Most of the activities presented on the CSR web pages of Magyar Posta relate to philanthropy, specifically targeted to female health issues. Other information might be gained by downloading the Sustainability Report of 2008 and the Corporate Ethical Code of Conduct. Due to a lack of information and its unstructured manner, no clear motivation can be attributed to the social responsibility communication of Magyar Posta. The company does not substantiate its claim to be a ‘responsible public service company’. The specific focus on its philanthropic activities might be attributed to the fact that the majority of the employees of the company are women. Therefore, it is especially striking that no responsibility information towards employees is presented by Magyar Posta’s CSR web pages. Similar to Magyar Posta but in contrast to the other two mobile service providers (Magyar Telekom and Vodafone), Telenor Hungary provides no direct link to CSR on its main page. Under About Us, one can find Corporate Responsibility, while Social Responsibility in the main page of Vodafone Hungary; similar content is labelled as Society and Environment on Magyar Telekom’s website. The structures of CSR web pages of all three companies demonstrate a stakeholder focus. It is also a shared characteristic of their CSR communication that health and safety appear as important substantive issues. Health issues related to their products, particularly to electromagnetic

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radiation. Safety issues concern the access of children to Internet contents and parental control possibilities. The end-of-life product and climateenergy issues constitute other areas of shared concern for the telecommunications companies. In contrast to the other sectors examined in the other sections of this chapter, these companies all provide downloadable information about responsibility issues related to their business operations, including ethical codes of conduct, code of ethical purchasing or ethical principles for suppliers. A common feature of the three companies’ web-based CSR communications is their expressed concern for social inequalities. Related activities include philanthropic funding through corporate foundations, partnerships with NGOs working for the poor, initiating projects targeting, for example, the digital divide in Hungarian society. Unlike the CSR communication of other sectors examined below, telecommunications companies (except Magyar Posta) make efforts to communicate activities that demonstrate responsibility towards their employees on the one hand, and requirements targeting their suppliers on the other. All three companies established some form of stakeholder dialogue as well and might be judged to treat CSR issues strategically, forming a dimension of competition in their sector. While Telenor Hungary and Vodafone Hungary primarily apply the Corporate Responsibility to their online information, Magyar Telekom gives priority to the term ‘Sustainability’. Telenor and Vodafone may be considered innovative in their CSR activities in the sense that they both established and finance individuals who initiated socially responsible projects in order to fix some pressing social problems. Telenor for instance awards and finances social entrepreneurs through its foundation, while Vodafone provides a one-year full salary to selected individuals carrying out such work. Magyar Telekom’s CSR-innovations can be found in the field of sustainable development, in the form of extensive partnerships with green NGOs aimed at raising awareness and initiating actions against climate change on the one hand, and targeting equal opportunity project, especially for the rural poor and Roma people on the other. Telecommunications companies in our sample have their own Facebook pages where they place some CSR content and messages too. Although the Hungarian Post Office provides only limited knowledge about the company, the others disclose a large amount of information on Facebook. CSR messages on these pages can be connected mostly to charity, philanthropy and environmental issues. As an exception, Vodafone even has a dedicated Facebook page to its CSR activities found under the label ‘Corporate responsibility’. On this

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Facebook page the company extensively communicates about their CSR events and programmes and also places external links to CSR related activities communicated on other websites (regularly independent from Vodafone activities). Vodafone created more than 120 posts in the year of 2013, which means an average one post every third day. While there are innovative and extensive CSR activities, the telecommunications sector is one of the most controversial in Hungary. These companies had, on average, nine recorded offences of the Law on Competition and the Law on Consumer Protection in the last decade paying considerable fines as a result. They were found guilty in many cases such as abuse of dominant positions, making market allocation agreements or practicing misleading advertising. Checking the Black List performance of telecommunications companies still features many in the industry paying high fines to different authorities. The largest fines can be connected to cases that were disapproved by the Hungarian Competition Authority. This is particularly salient since the companies representing this industry are among the most active CSR communicators in the entire Hungarian economy.

Retailing Sector There are 14 retailer companies in the top 200, but only three of them have dedicated corporate social responsibility page within their corporate websites. These three companies (Tesco, Spar and IKEA) are all Hungarian affiliates of large multinationals. On the one hand, the evaluation of the online CSR communication of IKEA Hungary was relatively problematic since the page is a mere translation of the global internet site, and there is no content that can be related to IKEA Hungary (clicking on the ‘Hungarian CSR Initiatives’ label, an ‘Under Construction’ sign appears). Although we made an assessment of the website anyway (see Table 1), it is rather an evaluation of the global IKEA site, and not of the Hungarian affiliate’s web page. On the other hand, Tesco and Spar disclose information exclusively about their Hungarian CSR activities; nevertheless the former provides a richer content than the latter on the web. Their focus is almost the same they both emphasize their consumer-driven approach customers are in the centre of almost every CSR actions. Corporate responsibility is the primary term used both by Tesco and Spar, but secondary terms are slightly different in the two cases. Tesco has separate subpages for its

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environmental actions and its philanthropic activities, while Spar talks about its CSR activities on a rather ad-hoc basis. Tesco also provides a CSR Report on the site while this kind of report is not placed on Spar’s web page. Given that both of them are amongst the largest employers of the country (Tesco has almost 20,000 employees, and more than 14,000 people work for Spar) it is surprising that none of them communicate about the responsibility towards their employees. They also fail to mention their ethical code of conduct although it would be a crucial element of CSR policies in this sector. As a unique characteristic, they both are engaged in having mostly Hungarian suppliers, a strong expectation of the public in Hungary. It is therefore apparent that both firms look for such potential CSR topics and activities that can be easily communicated and resonate with fashionable issues (such as healthy and organic food campaigns, green bag initiatives). All three analysed retail companies have an active social media presence, where CSR and sustainability news are advocated as well. Tesco dedicates a particular stream to its activities for saving animals. Spar and IKEA do not have an autonomous thematic stream on CSR and/or sustainability, however these topics are regularly present on their Facebook page. The way in which these issues are brought forward on Facebook is usually through cause promotion or cause-related marketing; CSR is thus built around a product enabling that both the responsibility issue and the product to be promoted at the same time. When we compared the online CSR communication and the actual business practices of the sector, we found unexpected results. Each firm from the retailing sector received, on average, more than 16 condemning resolutions from the Hungarian Authority for Consumer Protection in the last three years, and had to pay the largest fines to this authority compared to other industries. While consumers represent these companies’ number one stakeholder group and it is them who they target online, the outstanding number of offences that this group has committed against consumers suggests a highly conflicted reality. IKEA however is an exception.

Construction Sector The construction sector represents 6% of the top 200 companies. Without a doubt, the economic crisis hit the industry hard in 2008, the state financed public infrastructure constructions being the ones that kept the sector alive. After reviewing the top companies of the sector we can declare that online

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CSR communication is not widespread across the industry. Only 3 firms out of the 12 have dedicated CSR web pages, including two cement firms.2 Hence, KE´SZ Construction (the smallest construction firm in the top 200) is the only ‘pure’ constructing company that has a dedicated web page that deals with CSR related topics. However, KE´SZ Construction discloses information about their CSR activities only under the label public relations and also in a very moderate way. Corporate social responsibility is the primary term that is used by the company, but the information shared rather is much closer to corporate citizenship: all activities can be connected to the two cities where the firm’s offices are located. CSR is interpreted in a very narrow way: philanthropy and sponsorship initiatives being the most communicated initiatives on the web. The only exception is the ‘Clean Hands’ campaign that focuses on corruption and can be related to corporate ethics. The two cement firms (Heidelberg Hungary and Holcim Hungary) are more similar to each other providing much more information about their CSR values and activities both of them under the label of sustainable development. Visitors of the web pages can reach CSR related topic with one click. The primary term sustainable development can be divided into two subsections, namely (natural) environment and (local) society. Green topics are intensively communicated in both cases. This is not by accident: the cement industry is widely known for its strong environmental impact, thus trust building is an important motive for these companies. They are very active corporate citizens in the communities to which they belong to (even if they do not use this specific term); almost all social activities can be connected to the region where they are located. Yet, they do not disclose any CSR related information about their products or services and employees as a stakeholder group is hardly mentioned on the web pages (along with KE´SZ Construction). Two out of the three companies do not have Facebook page at all, only Heidelberg Cement Hungary created one in 2013. However, Heidelberg Cement did not dedicate any page or subpage to communicate CSR messages, yet in two cases they mention CSR issues (the slogan of the firm emphasizes the harmony with the environment and they also supported a civil initiative that collected the largest amount of likes in the previous period). Summarizing our findings it can be stated that Facebook activities of these firms are close to nothing. Construction is considered a ‘grey’ industry in Hungary. The sector has had a very bad reputation for many years, and publicly available data about their misconducts can explain this

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problematic status. The members of this cluster (in total 12 companies) had to pay the most fines altogether in the last decade. 75% of the construction firms are on the Black List, many of them were involved in cartel agreements and most companies in the sector also had disputes with the Hungarian Labour Inspectorate. Even though the ethical performance of the industry is far below the average, two of the firms belonging to the construction industry are not members of the Black List database, and the third one had a single case from 2006 only. The online CSR communication of the industry is again below average. Among the three sectors we have discussed in this chapter, they presented the least topics from the Capriotti Moreno list on the websites (see Table 2). They do not communicate about policies at all concerning very important stakeholders such as the state, suppliers or competitors. Only one of them KE´SZ talks about the most serious problems of the sector, namely corruption and cartel agreements. Table 2 confirms that telecommunications firms communicate about a wide variety of issues related to their CSR values and actions therefore they are the most active firms in our very limited sample. On the other end of this continuum the construction sector can be found: as it was stated earlier their online CSR disclosure focuses mainly on social and environmental actions. Retail companies are somewhere in the middle by providing additional information on CSR activities related to their products and services. It is fairly surprising that companies in our sample, even with quite sophisticated CSR communication practices, hardly talk neither about their responsibilities embedded in their economic actions nor about corporate governance related CSR activities.

CONCLUSIONS We analysed the online CSR communication on web pages and in the social media of the top Hungarian firms in this study. Contrary to the most often applied approaches, we discussed the topic through critical lenses and to explore internal (i.e. within online communication) and external (i.e. between communication and real activities) dissonances and contradictions in the companies’ communicational practices. Our findings suggest that the picture is more obscure than one may think. Similar to the American results presented earlier in this chapter (Clement, 2006), it turned out that a considerable proportion of the big

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firms had committed at least one unethical act in the recent years attracting the attention and in some cases punishment of different authorities. Yet, we did not find a positive correlation between culpability and the intensity of online CSR communication, and therefore it is not confirmed that disclosure of socially responsible activities and principles on the web is a mere corporate greenwashing. However, there are some very controversial industries where companies intensively communicate about their CSR actions on the one hand, and commit different forms of misconduct on the other. The retailing sector is in the most paradoxical situation: while customers are in the focus of their online CSR communication, they fairly often receive disapproval of their business activities form the Authority for Consumer Protection. The Telecommunications industry is also in trouble concerning the credibility of their CSR communication. Although they are the most active communicators in our sample, mostly using an up-to-date stakeholder approach, they have been subject to the most punitive decisions on average from the Competition Authority in the last decade. This kind of contradiction is not present in the construction industry where environmental actions and the local community are in the centre of online CSR disclosure. However, this is also a ‘grey’ sector since this sector paid the greatest amount of fines due to their unfair business practices. Online CSR communication on web pages and in social media tends to utilize the most advanced technical developments. Content-wise both websites and social media on CSR are overwhelmingly occupied by one-way communication (providing information to stakeholders) with limited options for feedback. The major and almost exclusively single stakeholder group targeted is consumers. This also contributes to the fact that the social media content of the companies analysed mainly oscillates around products. CSR content is fundamentally about the green nature of certain products or causes the companies tend to support by cause-related marketing or promotion. More progressive or engaging activities such as crowdfunding are missing from social media activities. One must not forget that our methodology certainly has some limitations since we registered only a few forms of unethical behaviour. Among others, we omitted the analysis of environmental performance something that could reveal new findings related to the topic. Additionally, our focus was on large Hungarian companies, therefore the opportunity for generalization is limited. Nevertheless, our findings show remarkable dissonances in CSR communication and point to a rhetoric-reality gap that needs more attention from researchers in this field in the future.

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NOTES 1. Note that not every resolution provoked the imposition of fines; authorities in some cases just warned the wrongdoing company or instructed the guilty firm to cease the identified malpractice. 2. The two cement manufacturers although statistically part of the industry do not really befit the sector since they provide raw materials for construction and they do not construct themselves.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study is part of the ‘Trends in Corporate Social Responsibility in Hungary’ research project funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (reference number: OTKA K68769). Other members of our research team Barbara Bodorko´s, Judit Ga´spa´r and A´gnes Wimmer helped our work with valuable suggestions and supportive criticism. We also would like to thank the Feketelista Adatbank Kft. (Black List Ltd.) who provided generous help and support through providing their database to us free of charge.

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Ana Adi, PhD (www.anaadi.net), is a Professor of Public Relations/ Corporate Communications and Head of Department of Corporate Communications at Quadriga University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. She teaches, researches and provides consultancy on matters related to digital media strategy, digital storytelling and social media policy engaging with various groups from corporations to activists. Imran Ali, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Lahore Campus, Pakistan. His research interests include corporate social responsibility, corporate reputation, business ethics and investor behaviour. Marta Bicho is a PhD student of management at ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, Lisbon, Portugal. She conducts research on legitimacy, corporate social responsibility and category identity with emphasis on marketing strategies. Dumitru Bor¸tun, PhD in Philosophy, is Associate Professor with the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania. Since 1995, Dumitru Bor¸tun is one of the founding members of the Romanian Association of Public Relations Professionals, ARRP, Romania. W. Timothy Coombs, PhD, is a Professor in the Nicholson School of Communication at the University of Central Florida. His crisis books include the award winning Ongoing Crisis Communication, Code Red in the Boardroom, and the co-edited The Handbook of Crisis Communication with Sherry Holladay. Camelia Crisan, PhD in Sociology, is a Senior Lecturer at the National  Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, University of Romania. She has over 14 years of experience in the corporative and nongovernmental field, has contributed to development of the largest Rroma/

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Gypsy community in Romania and has lead an education centre in a former mining town. David Crowther (www.davideacrowther.com) is Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility and Head of the Centre for Research into Organisational Governance at De Montfort University in the UK; Chair of the Social Responsibility Research Network, an organisation which he founded in 2004 and which now has 900 members all over the world; editor and founder of Social Responsibility Journal and editor of 3 book series. He is director of the Durability Institute, an organisation he founded to promote the ideas in one of his recent books: The Durable Corporation. David has also published many works including over 40 books and almost 400 articles. Paolo D’Anselmi is a management consultant and lecturer in CSR at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He is the author of “Values and Stakeholders in an Era of Social Responsibility: Cut-Throat Competition?” Palgrave, 2011, and co-editor of “SMEs as the Unknown Stakeholder: Entrepreneurship in the Political Arena,” Palgrave, 2013. Massimiliano Di Bitetto is a senior researcher at the Italian National Research Council, in Rome, Italy. He wrote ‘Why Public Service Reforms Fail’, Multidisciplinary Journal of Applied Ethics, no. 1, 2012. He is coeditor of ‘SMEs as the Unknown Stakeholder: Entrepreneurship in the Political Arena’, Palgrave, 2013. Georgiana Grigore, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Corporate and Marketing Communications at The Media School at Bournemouth University, UK. Georgiana’s research focuses on CSR strategies and their implementation, the impact of CSR on different stakeholder groups, ethical stakeholder engagement, business ethics in decision-making process and CSR in the digital age. Elisabeth Hoff-Clausen, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Hoff-Clausen’s research focuses on digital rhetoric, mainly issues of ethos, trust and rhetorical agency in new media environments. Sherry J. Holladay, PhD, is a Professor at the Nicholson School of Communication at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Dr. Holladay’s research interests include corporate social responsibility, reputation management, crisis communication, activism and stakeholder relations.

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Øyvind Ihlen, PhD, is Professor at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo. His research focuses on strategic communication and journalism, using theories of rhetoric and sociology on issues such as the environment, immigration, and corporate social responsibility. Ana Isabel Jime´nez-Zarco, PhD, is Associate Professor of Innovation and Marketing Area at Economic and Business Studies and UOC Business School at Open University of Catalunya (Barcelona-Spain). She is also Part-time professor at Marketing Department at ICADE-Pontificia of Comillas University (Madrid-Spain). She is a Senior Researcher at I2TICIN3, her main areas of research interest concern entrepreneurship, product innovation, and brand equity, image and identity. Re´ka Matolay, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Decision Sciences, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. Her research interests are decision theory and decision techniques, CSR and business ethics and social entrepreneurship. She is part of the faculty-team educating CSRspecialists at the University of Applied Sciences, Budapest. David McQueen, PhD, is Lecturer in Advertising & Media, The Media School, Bournemouth University, UK. His research interest include broad questions of media, power and politics, critical perspectives on PR and the media, lobbying, government and party political PR, CSR and ‘greenwashing’, framing and agenda setting and the history of propaganda. Gyo¨rgy Pataki, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. His research field covers corporate sustainability, social entrepreneurship, nature conservation policy and biodiversity governance, deliberative valuation of ecosystem services, and participatory planning for sustainability. Salvatore Pettineo, is a sociologist of the social media in Italy. His areas of interest are corporate social responsibility, public relations, government management and SMEs. Mihai Ioan Rosca, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Bucharest University of  Economic Studies, Romania. His areas of interest include green marketing, corporate social responsibility, and business-to-business marketing. He teaches courses on CSR, Marketing Data Analysis and Media Planning.

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He is involved in several research grants on topics such as online marketing research, organic food products and CSR. Andrei Claudiu Sara˘u is a PhD student at Faculty of Marketing, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania. His current research fields include various projects in areas such as marketing and communications, marketing places, CSR and tourism. Shahla Seifi (www.shahlaseifi.com), PhD student at Putra Malaysia, is an industrial engineer who is employed by ISIRI the Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran and is based in Tehran. She has been a member of the Iranian Shadow ISO 26000 working group. She has been the secretary of many national standards (more than 200). Recently she has authored two books on topics related to governance as well as a number of articles and chapters in books all related to sustainability or social responsibility. Richa´rd Sza´nto´, PhD in Organisational Science, is Associate Professor at the Department of Decision Sciences, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. Currently he teaches courses on decision theory and decision techniques, and he has been also acting as an associate dean of the Faculty of Business Administration of the university since 2012. Anastasios Theofilou, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at The Media School at Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests focus on CSR, history of public relations, crisis management and sponsorship. He is an active member of the Creative Enterprise Bureau and Programme Leader for the BA Public Relations degree at Bournemouth University. Andreea-Angela Vontea is a PhD candidate in Marketing, and Teaching  Fellow in Marketing, Social Marketing and Introduction into the Methodology of Scientific Research at Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania. Her doctoral thesis covers aspects referring the nonprofit organisations’ strategic and tactical approach of fundraising. Alexandra Zbuchea is Associate Professor at the College of Management at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania. Her research interests are CSR, cultural management, cultural tourism and marketing for nonprofit organisations.

INDEX Accountability, 46 48, 55 58, 60, 108, 177, 208, 210, 246 247 Activists, 44, 47, 54, 85, 100 103, 110, 113, 115 117, 120 121, 133, 205

Competition, 42, 53 60, 70, 107, 113, 120, 139, 215, 243, 248, 254, 256 257, 261 Consumer behaviour, 7, 169, 171, 179 180 Contingency, 85 87, 89 91, 93, 95 96 Corporate reputation, 89, 101, 110, 130 131, 167, 203, 210, 246 Corporate social responsibility, 1, 17 18, 29, 39, 44, 57, 63 64, 75, 85, 99 100, 102 103, 111 113, 122, 127 128, 143, 147, 165, 167 171, 187, 189 191, 197, 199, 221 223, 225, 227, 233, 236, 241 243, 245, 251 252, 257, 259, 262 Corporation, 19 21, 23, 26 28, 31 34, 60, 64, 75, 80, 87 89, 92 93, 104, 107, 122, 127, 129 137, 140, 170, 175, 177, 189, 192, 209, 235, 250 Crisis, 9, 11, 29, 32, 51, 57, 65, 90, 93, 106 108, 229, 258 CSR, 18 20, 23, 28 30, 32 33, 39 45, 47, 49 53, 55, 57, 59, 63 80, 85 86, 89, 91, 93, 95 96, 99 101, 103, 105 107, 109 113, 115, 117, 119 122, 127 141, 143 145, 147 153, 155 160, 165 173, 175 183, 187 195, 197 201, 203 205,

British Petroleum, 43, 246 Capitalism, 3, 15, 53, 188 Capitalist, 28, 202 Case study, 85 86, 94, 99 100, 127 128, 147, 228 Cause promotion, 75, 258 Citizenship, 17 34, 47, 71, 252, 259 Civic engagement, 19, 30, 211 Climate change, 48, 75, 234, 256 Communication, 8, 10 11, 15, 17 18, 23 24, 27, 33, 44, 48, 63 64, 66 68, 70, 73, 80, 90 91, 94 95, 102, 109, 111, 128 135, 139 140, 143, 145 146, 148 152, 155 156, 158, 161, 165 173, 175 183, 193, 195, 199 200, 202, 205 210, 221 222, 224, 228 230, 236, 241 247, 249, 251, 253 261 Community, 22 23, 66 70, 75 76, 79 80, 101 102, 107, 117 122, 140, 148, 151, 170 171, 175, 177, 189, 194, 209, 226, 228 229, 233, 243 245, 261 269

270

207 215, 221 222, 224 226, 228 231, 233, 236, 241 249, 251 261 CSR promotion, 128 129, 132 133, 135, 139 140

INDEX

158 161, 165 167, 172 173, 181 182, 198, 202, 207 209, 215, 252 253, 256 259 Flickr, 153 154, 172 Friedman, 53, 188, 199

Digital media, 64 Education, 58, 73, 107, 146, 150, 158, 174, 232, 234 E-mail, 44 Engagement, 18 19, 23, 29 31, 33, 70, 86 90, 94, 100, 102 103, 119, 122, 134, 144 145, 151, 153, 155, 159, 161, 170, 172, 199, 207 208, 211, 229, 231, 234 Environment, 6, 13, 20, 43 44, 53, 55, 63 64, 66 68, 71 76, 79 80, 90, 95, 100, 104, 106, 113, 116, 122, 145, 147, 149, 161, 168, 170 171, 177, 192, 199, 208, 215, 222, 226, 229, 231, 236, 245, 253, 255, 259 Ethical, 33, 42, 46, 54, 65, 71, 76, 106, 110, 114, 148, 171, 188, 206, 221 224, 226, 231, 233 234, 243, 252 253, 255 256, 258, 260 Ethics, 14, 25, 27, 72, 80, 232, 234, 245, 249, 252 253, 259 Europe, 59, 94, 106, 143, 145, 147, 149 151, 153 160, 203 European Union, 204 Facebook, 1 7, 9, 11, 13 15, 17, 19, 29 34, 44, 47, 88, 94, 107 109, 112, 118, 120, 128 129, 136 139, 144 146, 150, 153 155,

Gamification, 127 129, 137 140 GlaxoSmithKline, 221 222, 224, 230 233 Governance, 1, 17 18, 20, 22, 39, 43, 63, 76, 79 80, 85, 99, 120, 127, 143, 165, 171, 187, 197, 199, 221, 231, 241, 249, 252, 260 Human resources, 76, 151, 204, 249, 252 Human Rights, 44, 54, 65, 68, 75, 79 80, 102 Internet, 4, 32, 40, 43 48, 63 64, 66 67, 78, 85 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 99, 102, 145, 149 150, 183, 201, 206, 229, 236, 242 247, 256 257 Issues management, xii Lacan, 1, 3, 7 15 Management, 26, 32 33, 43, 52, 57, 66, 69 70, 75 76, 80, 89, 93, 103, 109, 121, 130, 147 148, 151, 190 191, 193, 199, 224, 228, 243 244, 248 Marketing, 29 30, 40, 43 45, 70 73, 75 76, 79, 100, 107, 109 110, 140, 143, 145 147, 150, 168, 172, 187 190, 193,

271

Index

195, 203, 210, 223, 229, 234, 258, 261 Network, 4, 22, 31, 138, 200 202, 207, 210, 215, 230 Networking, 2, 47, 99, 101, 112, 121, 138, 146, 201, 210, 215 New media, 39, 42, 100, 206, 208, 229 Online, 44 45, 47 48, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 90, 94, 99 101, 103, 105, 107 109, 111 113, 115, 117, 119, 121 122, 137, 139 140, 143, 149 151, 153, 173, 197 200, 203, 206 207, 210, 215, 222, 228, 236, 241 249, 251 261 Pfizer, 143 145, 147, 149 161, 221 222, 224 226, 230 232, 234 236 Pharmaceutical, 145, 147, 149 150, 161, 221 229, 231, 233, 235 236 Pinterest, 145, 153 154 Political, 17 26, 31, 33, 46, 48 49, 51, 55, 65, 72, 100, 102, 105, 108, 171, 190, 192, 199 Psychoanalysis, 3 4, 7 8, 12 Public relations, 21, 27, 40, 43 44, 52, 70, 73, 85, 87, 100 104, 109 111, 119, 121 122, 132, 143, 147 149, 151, 187, 189, 198, 205, 252, 259 Regulations, 28, 69, 204, 226 227, 243, 248, 253 254 Reputation, 27, 32, 40 41, 43, 47, 60, 69 70, 76, 86, 89, 93,

101, 103 104, 110 111, 121, 130 132, 134, 146, 148, 167, 191, 193, 195, 199, 203, 208 210, 222, 229, 236, 246, 259 Reputation management, 103, 121 Rhetoric, 19, 23 25, 27 29, 31, 33, 100, 106, 120, 229, 235, 242, 246 247, 261 Sanofi, 221 222, 224 225, 230 236 Self-interest, 21, 25, 32 Shell, 99 106, 110 122 Slideshare, 153 154 Social capital, 26 27, 32, 34 Social marketing, 75 Social media, 2, 13 14, 18 19, 29, 31 32, 39 49, 51, 53 55, 57, 59, 85, 87, 89 90, 96, 99 101, 103, 112, 116, 122, 127 129, 131, 133, 135 137, 139 140, 143 147, 149 155, 157 161, 165 183, 197, 199 211, 213, 215, 235, 241 243, 245 246, 252, 258, 260 261 Social networking, 2, 47, 99, 101, 112, 121, 138, 210, 215 Stakeholder, 20, 23, 40 42, 48, 51 54, 60, 68 70, 85 96, 103, 119, 129 132, 134 135, 148, 167 168, 171 173, 199, 204, 208, 224 229, 231, 233, 244, 246 247, 251, 255 256, 258 259, 261 Sustainability, 40, 53, 68, 74, 77, 86, 111, 167, 204, 226, 229, 246, 251 253, 255 256, 258

272

Theory, 2 4, 6 8, 11 12, 14, 22, 39, 42, 50, 52, 56, 60, 65, 72, 85 87, 90 91, 96, 132, 168, 192, 199, 201 202, 245, 247 Transparency, 134, 178 179, 204, 208, 210, 226, 229, 252 Twitter, 44, 46 47, 94, 112 113, 129, 136, 144 146, 150, 153 161, 165 167, 172 173, 181 182, 202, 208, 215 United Nations, ix

INDEX

Volunteering, 75, 203 Website, 67, 73, 108, 111 114, 119, 144, 149 150, 152 153, 155 158, 160, 197, 207, 212 214, 222, 230, 249, 251, 253 255, 257 World Bank, ix YouTube, 44, 46 47, 88, 114, 117, 121, 144 145, 151, 153 154, 156 161, 165, 167, 172 173