Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a relatively new area of academic research firmly established in the early 1990s, although the idea behind CSR can be traced even as far back as the late 19th century. At first, skeptics among scholars and professionals tended to dismiss the idea of CSR as a mere fad. Even recently, several critical perspectives can be found in the literature. However, due to the changes in the globalized world that have been reflected in changing social values and rising stakeholder expectations, CSR has become an idea that has gained overall recognition and value. This is reflected by the fact that CSR (and its complementary variations such as corporate performance, citizenship, and sustainability) has been widely recognized and promoted by such institutions as the European Commission, the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and others. CSR represents a stream of thought, activities, and research related to the notion that companies play a significant role in society. CSR, as an umbrella term, thus concerns itself with the relationships between businesses and society in general and different stakeholders in particular. The basic notion that guides CSR and is most often expressed in the literature can be explained using the analogy of the famous line by the English poet John Donne “no man is an island,” which reflects the idea that no organization can operate in isolation from or in opposition to the society. In their research, scholars, coming from such different academic fields as business, management, sociology, political science, and communication, are studying CSR from various perspectives and traditions, and they use a plethora of theories and approaches aimed at explaining the notion of CSR. Thus, there is neither a common definition nor a set of core principles for CSR. Increasingly, scholars are arguing that CSR is a concept that is highly contextual and dependent on the institutional environment, which also affects how it is practiced and implemented in practice. One of the most important groups of stakeholders concerned with CSR are, according to various research studies, consumers, who tend to express their expectations about CSR through their purchasing behavior and activism. To find ways to engage them (and other stakeholders too), practice and academia are more and more interested in communication aspects related to CSR.