In recent years, companies receive pressure to release environmental, social, and governance disclosure, since these are perceived as critical issues by society. Despite this pressure, ESG disclosure practices considerably vary by firm. Prior academic literature investigated country- and firm-level factors determining such variation, alternatively adopting the institutional and legitimacy theory. By combining these theories in a unique framework, this study investigates the extent to which social structures and social legitimization influence ESG disclosure practices and each pillar. Results obtained using a (...) cross-country sample of 14,174 firm-year observations during 2005–2012 provide evidence that country-level characteristics such as a political system, labor system, and cultural system significantly affect firms’ ESG disclosure practices. However, their impact is heterogeneous in that they either reduce or enhance disclosure levels and may differ by pillar. Results for firm-level characteristics related to a firm’s visibility demonstrate a positive and homogeneous effect on ESG disclosure and each pillar. These results inform policy makers and regulators aiming to enhance ESG disclosure levels of the risk they incur when managing variables related to social structure and the benefits of exposing firms to higher visibility. (shrink)

This study explores why and how firms respond to social demands through philanthropic giving in the context of a severe natural disaster. Drawing on Marquis and Qian's organizational response model to government signals, we integrate resource dependence theory and institutional theory to build a two-step model of organizational response to social needs, in situations of disaster relief. We argue that firms depending more on the government for support are more likely to donate in disaster relief, while firms who receive more (...) scrutiny from the government and the general public and firms having more slack resources are likely to donate more. Evidence from Chinese listed companies' donations to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake largely supports our predictions. This study provides a more precise understanding of the corporate philanthropic decision process, decoupling the drivers of philanthropic giving, and those determining the amount given. Theoretical and practical implications are suggested. (shrink)

This article proposes a way to zoom in on the concept of the social license to operate from the broader normative perspective of contractarianism. An SLO can be defined as a contractarian basis for the legitimacy of a company’s specific activity or project. “SLO”, as a fashionable expression, has its origins in business practice. From a normative viewpoint, the concept is closely related to social contract theory, and, as such, it has a political dimension. After outlining the contractarian normative background (...) to the SLO, we will show how academic concepts such as legitimacy and stakeholder management have a tendency to provide the intellectual underpinning for the business case for securing an SLO. While business case perspectives on the SLO may well be in line with the use of the term in business practice, we will highlight certain difficulties and ambiguities related to the instrumental use of the expression. In the final section, we briefly introduce the articles of this Special Issue to the reader and explain how they relate to the topic. (shrink)

The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that a higher (...) CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence, a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity, and a stronger virality of the messages. Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation without investing more resources. As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media. (shrink)

The design and development of appropriate regulatory mechanisms have attracted renewed attention in recent years. In particular, a shift towards voluntary self-regulatory mechanisms has been witnessed within many industries, such as the Australian mining and petroleum industries which have developed voluntary codes of conduct. This paper analyses the development of different regulatory forms and provides a brief comparative analysis of the two main voluntary codes of conduct used by the Australian mining and petroleum industries. In particular, the study focuses on (...) the integration of social sustainability elements within these frameworks that help contribute to solving issues such as coverage of human rights, approaches to employee and community relations, systems of stakeholder engagement, community consultation and public reporting. The study concludes that stakeholders have an important role to play in driving the introduction of voluntary regulation. This phenomenon can be traced back to how a company’s need to maintain its legitimacy, or social licence to operate, often motivates it to go beyond compliance. By providing a fuller understanding of factors driving the evolution of different regulatory mechanisms, this study has important implications for policy makers and practitioners interested in developing effective regulation. (shrink)

We conceptualise CSR communication as a process of reciprocal influence between organisations and their audiences. We use an illustrative case study in the form of a conflict between firms and a powerful stakeholder which is played out in a series of 20 press releases over a 2-month period to develop a framework of analysis based on insights from linguistics. It focuses on three aspects of dialogism, namely (i) turn-taking (co-operating in a conversation by responding to the other party), (ii) inter-party (...) moves (the nature and type of interaction characterising a turn, i.e. denial, apology or excuse) and (iii) intertextuality (the intensity and quality of verbal interaction between the parties). We address the question: What is the nature and type of verbal interactions between the parties? First we examine (a) whether the parties verbally interact and then (b) whether the parties listen to each other. We find evidence of dialogism suggesting that CSR communication is an interactive process which has to be understood as a function of the power relations between a firm and a specific stakeholder. Also, we find evidence of intertextuality in press releases by six firms which engage in verbal interaction with the stakeholder. We interpret this as linguistic evidence of isomorphic processes relating to CSR practices resulting from the pressure exerted by a powerful stakeholder. The lack of response by ten firms that fail to issue press releases suggests a strategy of ‘watch-and-wait’ with respect to the outcome of the conflict. (shrink)

We examine over 100 top performing Canadian firms in visibly polluting industries as we seek to answer four research questions: What specific environmental issues are firms addressing? How do these issues differ between industries? Are both symbolic and substantive actions financially beneficial? Does green-washing, measured as the difference between symbolic and substantive action, and/or green-highlighting, measured as the combined effect of symbolic and substantive actions, pay? We find that substantive actions of environmental issues (green walk) neither harm nor benefit firms (...) financially, but symbolic actions (green talk) are negatively related to financial performance. We also find that green-washing (discrepancy between green talk and green walk) has a negative effect on financial performance and green-highlighting (concentrated efforts of the talk and walk) has no effect on financial performance. In this article, we provide explanations of our findings and put forth future research directions. (shrink)

Recent reviews show a rapid increase in the corporate social responsibility communication literature. However, while mapping the literature and the field of CSR communication, they do not fully capture the evolutionary character of this emerging interdisciplinary endeavour. This paper seeks to fill this gap by presenting a follow-up study of the CSR communication literature from a dynamic perspective, which focuses on micro-discursive changes in the field. A bibliometric approach and frame theory are used to examine continuities in the development of (...) field ‘frames’ in three consecutive periods between 2002 and 2016. The article highlights the growing fragmentation of the CSR communication field over time and the existence of 11 distinct frames during the field’s emergence, whereby the two most prominent in the three time periods are the reporting and business case frames. Regardless, they are subjected to discursive changes as well. For example, they become split into stakeholder-focused, business case and institutionalisation frame and contested by the constitutive logic, respectively. The paper argues that interdisciplinary fields like CSR communication can rarely exist without contestation. It also shows that micro-framing processes such as fragmentation, merging and extension visibly shape the identified field frames and the overall discursive dynamic of the CSR communication field while investigating their value for sustaining the field’s polyphonic state and further development. The study findings suggest that additional cross-fertilisation processes between the CSR communication literature and sustainability and digital communication research hold the potential to influence the next stage of the field’s discursive evolution. (shrink)

Arguably, the corporate social responsibility practices of multinational enterprises are influenced by a wide range of both internal and external factors. Perhaps, most critical among the exogenous forces operating on MNEs are those exerted by state and other key institutional actors in host countries. Crucially, academic research conducted to date offers little data about how MNEs use their CSR activities to strategically manage their relationship with those actors in order to gain legitimisation advantages in host countries. This paper addresses that (...) gap by exploring interactions between external institutional pressures and firm-level CSR activities, which take the form of community initiatives, to examine how MNEs develop their legitimacy-seeking policies and practices. In focusing on a developing country, Sri Lanka, this paper provides valuable insights into how MNEs instrumentally utilise community initiatives in a country where relationship-building with governmental and other powerful non-governmental actors can be vitally important for the long-term viability of the business. Drawing on neo-institutional theory and CSR literature, this paper examines and contributes to the embryonic but emerging debate about the instrumental and political implications of CSR. The evidence presented and discussed here reveals the extent to which, and the reasons why, MNEs engage in complex legitimacy-seeking relationships with Sri Lankan host institutions. (shrink)

The paper introduces the communication view on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which regards CSR as communicatively constructed in dynamic interaction processes in today’s networked societies. Building on the idea that communication constitutes organizations we discuss the potentially indeterminate, disintegrative, and conflictual character of CSR. We hereby challenge established mainstream views on CSR such as the instrumental view, which regards CSR as an organizational instrument to reach organizational aims such as improved reputation and financial performance, and the political-normative view on CSR, (...) which highlights the societal conditions and role of corporations in creating norms. We argue that both the established views, by not sufficiently acknowledging communication dynamics in networked societies, remain biased in three ways: control-biased, consistency-biased, and consensus-biased. We discuss implications of these biases and propose a future research agenda for the communication view on CSR. (shrink)

This article investigates the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and the reasons for which legitimacy is ascribed or denied. It fills a gap in the literature on CSR and legitimacy that lacks empirical studies regarding the question whether CSR contributes to organisational legitimacy. The problem is discussed by referring to the case of De Beers’s diamond mining partnership with the Government of Namibia. A total of 42 interviews were conducted—41 with stakeholders and one with the focal organisation Namdeb. (...) The 41 stakeholder interviews are analysed with regard to cognitive, pragmatic and moral legitimacy as defined by Suchman (Acad Manage Rev 20(3):571–610, 1995 ). The main finding is that the majority of statements on organisational legitimacy refer to moral legitimacy and most issues raised in this context challenge the company’s legitimacy despite its comprehensive CSR engagement. The study demonstrates that legitimacy gaps can be a result of communication practices that raise unrealistic stakeholder expectations and that the legitimacy gained by CSR engagement in one area cannot substitute legitimacy losses caused by failures in another. (shrink)

The academic debate why and how companies are dealing with sustainability is dominated by two main arguments—the profit-seeking and the legitimacy-seeking view. While the first argues that companies establish sustainability management measures if this helps to increase their economic success, others emphasize that companies predominantly react on societal pressure dealing with sustainability to secure legitimacy. Whereas both lines of argument have gained a lot of attention in academia, little is known about their relative importance in shaping corporate practice. This papers (...) aims to fill this gap with an empirical analysis of corporate practices of large companies in ten countries worldwide. To capture the organizations’ rationale in sustainability management practice, we systematically applied various measures related to actors and operational activities focusing on the companies’ intention to pursue sustainability management, the integration of sustainability management to the core business, and the actual implementation of related measures. Overall the findings indicate that seeking legitimacy dominates corporate sustainability management practices. (shrink)

Although there is a vast body of work on legitimacy, we still have a limited understanding of the discursive aspects of moral legitimation. This is surprising considering the increase in morally laden societal discussions, for example related to understanding gender, rights and regulations during a pandemic, political scandals and ethics of global business amongst others. In particular, from an organization studies perspective, we lack knowledge on how journalists negotiate moral legitimation of controversial organizational decisions such as closures or shutdown decisions (...) related to global industrial restructuring. Therefore, drawing on the critical discourse studies tradition, we examine the media coverage of controversial shutdowns in Finland over the past 2 decades. Our analysis suggests three moral legitimation types: moral engaging, moral distancing and moral surrendering. These types involve specific discursive moralization practices and strategies, and they each paint a different picture of the moral options, responsibility, and inevitability in these decisions. These types can be found in the same texts supporting each other, but they also help us understand how legitimation may involve a pattern where the most explicit reflections (moral engagement) are followed by more indirect (moral distancing) and less apparent but very powerful (moral surrendering) forms of legitimation. By so doing, we also offer a heuristic that can, with due caution, be used for analyzing other texts on adverse effects of globalization or events that might include moral and ideological conflicts. (shrink)

Purpose Corporate social responsibility communication on corporate websites have become an emerging trend by firms. Similarly, corporate websites have been used to manage stakeholders’ impressions about the organization. Meanwhile, CSR by firms have been criticized for been a manipulative tactics used by firms. The purpose of this paper therefore is to ascertain how telecommunication companies operating in Ghana communicate CSR on their corporate websites. Design/methodology/approach This study used a qualitative content analysis technique. It also used Bolino et al.’s impression management (...) framework as the conceptual framework. Data were extracted from the websites of four telecommunication companies operating in Ghana. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis techniques. Findings The results show that the companies use impression management in communicating CSR on their corporate websites. Account, assertive impression management; blaring, boasting, defensive impression management; demonstrative impression management; exemplification, favor-rendering, illustrative impression management; ingratiation, other-enhancement, other-focused impression management; self-enhancement, self-focused impression management; and self-promotion tactics are tactics prevalent in the CSR communication of the companies. Actor-to-actor link impression management and other emotional appeal also emerged as some of the impression management tactics used by the companies. Originality/value This provides insights into how organizations use impression management in their CSR communication on their corporate websites. Studies of this nature are limited. Again, studies specifically adapting Bolino et al.’s impression management to study CSR communication on corporate websites are rare. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to explore, through a qualitative study of small regional airports, how sustainability issues are taken into account in remote small- and medium-sized enterprises. Based on 42 semi-structured interviews conducted with managers of small regional Canadian airports and experts in this area, this study shows the quasi-absence of specific measures for sustainability, despite the seriousness of environmental issues, which tend to be subordinated to economic priorities and operational activities. The paper contributes to the literature on (...) sustainability in SMEs by focusing on passive organizations located in remote areas and the complex reasons underlying their lack or absence of environmental commitment. The paper sheds more light on the essential role of stakeholders in providing the resources and skills necessary for the development of sustainability initiatives in passive SMEs. The study’s managerial contributions and implications for stakeholders are also discussed. (shrink)

Even though the link between perceived corporate social responsibility fit and corporate reputation has received much attention from scholars, this tradition has ignored that the underpinnings of this association vary depending on the particular characteristics of each industry under study. To delve into this matter, we investigate in the increasingly relevant context of controversial industries how PCSR-fit could enhance corporate reputation and which are the mediating mechanisms of this association. Our academic contribution is twofold. First, we find that controversial sectors (...) indeed can increase corporate reputation through CSR activities. However, we find that to achieve this goal, the nature of PCSR-fit should be different than what extant literature indicates, because companies in these settings should directly focus on avoiding or reducing their inherent controversial harm or impact. Second, we evidence that “CSR initiatives' legitimacy” and “situational skepticism” mediate the PCSR-fit and corporate reputation relationship in CIs. Therefore, we further unravel the underpinnings of this association to advance what we know on the matter and aid practitioners in this particular context. (shrink)

In this article we explore the conceptual relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientation and real option reasoning. We argue that the firm's attitude, communication, and behavior toward CSR will act as significant determinants to the firm's sensemaking approach to real options; that is, if and how it (the firm) acknowledges, receives, and manages strategic real options. Integrating the previous work of Basu and Palazzo with Barnett, we propose a new model that extends the influence of CSR orientation/character to general (...) strategic decision making while simultaneously developing the attention‐based view to real options. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability reports are supposed to provide a complete and balanced picture of corporate sustainability performance. They are, however, usually voluntary and thus prone to interpretation and even greenwashing tendencies. To overcome this problem, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) provides standardized reporting guidelines challenging companies to report positive and negative aspects of an organization’s sustainability performance. However, the reporting of “negative aspects” in particular can endanger corporate legitimacy if perceived by the stakeholders as not being in line with societal norms (...) and values. Starting from the theoretical lenses of economics-based disclosure theories and socio-political theories of disclosure, the focus of this study therefore was to analyze the communicative legitimation strategies companies use to report “negative aspects,” i.e., negative ecological and social impact caused by corporate activity. Using qualitative content analysis of GRI-oriented sustainability reports from companies listed on the US Dow Jones Industrial Average Index and on the German DAX Index, we identified six legitimation strategies. We discuss these strategies regarding to symbolic and substantial management of legitimacy. We show that symbolic legitimation strategies aiming at modifying the perception of legitimizing stakeholders dominate in the reports at hand. Such persuasion, however, does not meet the requirement of impartiality as postulated by the GRI guidelines. Building upon this conclusion we propose a concise characterization of “negative aspects” and develop a GRI-compliant schema of reporting about them. In doing so, we offer a way to improve the overall “balance” of sustainability reporting contributing to a true and fair view in sustainability disclosure. (shrink)

We theorize that social media will reduce the incidence of corporate greenwash. Drawing on the management literature on decoupling and the economic literature on information disclosure, we characterize specifically where this effect is likely to be most pronounced. We identify important differences between social media and traditional media, and present a theoretical framework for understanding greenwash in which corporate environmental communications may backfire if citizens and activists feel a company is engaging in excessive self-promotion. The framework allows us to draw (...) out a series of propositions regarding the impact of social media on corporate decisions whether to greenwash, and what channels to use for environmental communication. We conclude with a number of suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the ways through which companies gain legitimacy. However, CSR actions themselves are subject to public skepticism because of increased public awareness of greenwashing and scandalous corporate behavior. Legitimacy of CSR actions is indeed influenced by the actions of the company but also is rooted in the basic cultural values of a society and in the ideologies of evaluators. This study examines the legitimacy of CSR actions of publicly traded forest products companies as compared (...) to family-owned forest products companies. Results indicate a lower legitimacy for CSR actions of publicly traded companies than for family-owned companies. The study also examines the effect of social responsibility orientation (SRO) of evaluators on the legitimacy accorded to companies' CSR actions. We found that SRO was negatively associated with legitimacy, especially for women. Perceived profitability of companies was negatively associated with legitimacy of CSR actions for publicly traded but not for family-owned companies. (shrink)

Few industries have been pressured to develop corporate social responsibility standards and policies like oil and gas. This has translated into the creation of non-governmental organizations and branches of the oil and gas firms focused on CSR. However, given the intrinsic complex characteristics of this industry, its global reach, and the fact that its operations affect and involve a wide variety of stakeholders, CSR issues cannot be defined and implemented exclusively at the industry or firm levels, but require the participation (...) of other actors affected directly or indirectly by oil and gas activities. In this paper we argue, first, that oil and gas CSR issues are collectively constructed through meta-organizations, and, second, that the complexity and variety of CSR issues require companies to build industry-specific and non-industry-specific collective actions. Based on how oil and gas firms participate in this multi-level co-construction of CSR issues, we created a typology of meta-organizations as infra-sectoral, sectoral, cross-sectoral, and supra-sectoral meta-organizations. (shrink)

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ “CEO-speak” about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and projecting, (...) or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change. (shrink)

This paper takes a critical perspective on corporate social responsibility and examines the ways in which an industry organization discursively manages the relationship between the industry and its stakeholders in a situation where the legitimacy of the industry is called into question. Drawing on the literature on organizational narcissism and sensemaking the paper develops the construct of narcissistic CSR orientation and empirically elaborates on three defensive rhetorical strategies through which the organization makes sense of the accountability and responsibility of the (...) industry for the negative societal effects of their business. The paper advances knowledge in the field of critical CSR by proposing a new framework for critically examining organization-stakeholder relationships and organizational responses to stakeholder demands in contexts where the interests of organizations are in conflict with the public good. (shrink)

This study starts from the observation that there are relatively few controversial issues in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Given its strong normative background, CSR is rather an atypical discipline, especially in comparison with moral philosophy or applied ethics. Exploring the mainstream CSR agenda, this situation was echoed by widespread consensus on what was considered to be "good practice": reducing pollution, shutting down sweatshops, discouraging tax evasion, and so on. However, interpretation of these issues through the lens of moral pluralism unveils (...) latent controversies. The moral appraisal of good practices within CSR depends on key moral concepts (such as harm, responsibility, intention, and consequences), which have various—and often incompatible—interpretations. In a nutshell, this article argues that from a moral pluralist standpoint, all CSR topics are potentially controversial. (shrink)

This paper enquires into the possibility of establishing a causal link between social performance (SP) and financial performance (FP) in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It shows that this endeavour is limited by several biasing factors (such as time horizons, sample choices and the tools chosen to measure SP and FP) and faces the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this), which indicates that a sequence of events does not necessarily establish a causal link. The (...) paper contributes to the methodological literature in CSR currently focused on empirical tests aiming to discern the linkages between SP and FP, both by emphasising the interest in interpreting and justifying SP and by suggesting a redirection of empirical efforts towards the understanding of entrepreneurial preference for a specific type of SP. (shrink)

The rise of Internet-mediated communication poses possibilities and challenges for organisation studies, also in the area of corporate social responsibility and business and society interactions. Although social media are attracting more and more attention in this domain, websites also remain an important channel for CSR debate. In this paper, we present an explorative study of activist groups’ online presence via their websites and propose a combination of methods to study both the structural positioning of websites and the meanings in these (...) websites. We focus on the websites of SOMO, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, and of one of its campaigns, makeITfair, concerned with labour conditions in the IT industry worldwide. This allows us to show how this combination of methods can further our understanding of the way activist networks’ online presence can provide insights into the tactics these networks apply to achieve institutional change on CSR issues. Meanwhile, we identify some notable differences between styles and word use in the two organisations’ websites. We conclude with a set of suggestions for future research. (shrink)

There is a large body of literature that examines different dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Africa, with many focusing on the false promises of these corporate initiatives. Contrary to simplistic claims of CSR being merely window-dressing, however, this paper reveals that although several rhetorical proclamations underpin the idea, such statements are often given instrumental meaning through diverse mechanisms (e.g., interpretation of cues toward the proactive (re)construction of identity, (inter)subjective discourses on social legitimacy, and acts of “issue selling”) that (...) help to enact particular characteristics of the corporation. The paper specifically employs the organizational concepts of sensemaking and sensegiving to explain how, through CSR activities, hydrocarbon companies in Ghana construct and (re)affirm a particular reality for its stakeholders. The findings suggest that by having significant leverage over the (re)construction of its identity and claims around social legitimacy and performance, the corporation gives sense to and further sustains its authority over societal norms and expectations around what social responsibility entails. The evidence presented contributes to scholarship that considers the corporation as a complex nexus of multiple relations, contested narratives, and practices. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate whether, and how, corporate management strategically uses disclosure to manage the perceptions of different organizational audiences. In particular, we examine the interactions between the FIAT Group and three of its key organizational audiences—the local press, the international press, and the financial analysts, which are characterized by different levels of salience for the company. We focus on both how management reacts to the optimism level existing within each audience and how the narrative disclosure tone adopted by (...) FIAT influences the ex-post optimism in the local and international press or in the financial analyst community. We investigate the disclosure of the FIAT Group over a 6-year period , during which 70 price-sensitive press releases were published. On the basis of 1,887 news articles published in Italian newspapers and 411 analyst reports, we report evidence of different strategic patterns in the interaction processes between FIAT and its audiences. Our findings also indicate some differences in the way FIAT is affected by, and in turn, affects the sentiment of each audience, thus highlighting that the salience of the stakeholder is an important driver of the adoption of impression management techniques. Taken together, our findings point to issues related to setting the “tone at the top” and potential ethical matters. (shrink)

This paper develops a media theoretical extension of the communicative view on corporate social responsibility by elaborating on the characteristics of network societies, arguing that new media increase the speed and connectivity, and lead to higher plurality and the potential polarization of reality constructions. We discuss the implications for corporate social responsibility of becoming more polyphonic and sketch the contours of “communicative legitimacy.” Finally, we present this special issue and develop some questions for future research.

The globally generated concepts of environment and sustainability are fast gaining currency in international business discourse. Sustainability concerns are concurrently becoming significant to business planning around corporate social responsibility and integral to organizational strategies toward enhancing shareholder value. The mindset of corporate managers is a key factor in determining company approaches to sustainability. But what do corporate managers understand by sustainability? Our study explores discursive meaning negotiation surrounding the concepts of environment and sustainability within business discourse. The study is based (...) on qualitative interpretive research drawing from symbolic interactionism which postulates that meaning in discourse is an essentially contested domain dependent upon negotiation in the Habermasian tradition of mutually respectful dialogue. Data from semi-structured intensive interviews of a small sample of senior corporate managers was analyzed to examine how corporate elites in India frame their approach to sustainability issues and respond to external pressures for deeper corporate responsibility. The findings point to the existence of a distinctively local narrative with strong potential for the discursive negotiation of personal and collective understanding of ethical and socio-cultural values that may help internalize broader sustainability considerations into corporate decision-making processes. (shrink)

How is the (il)legitimacy of manager compensation constructed in social interaction? This study investigated discursive processes through which heavily contested executive pay schemes of the Finnish energy giant Fortum were constructed as (il)legitimate in public during 2005–2009. The critical discursive analysis of media texts identified five legitimation strategies through which politicians, journalists, and other social actors contested these schemes and, at the same time, constructed subject positions for managers, politicians, and citizens. The comparison of two debate periods surrounding the 2007–2008 (...) financial crisis revealed significant differences in the discursive strategies and the corresponding moral struggles linked to legitimation of executive compensation. The analysis highlights a change in moral reasoning by social actors as they adapt their justifications to a changing social context. This study has important implications for our understanding of the ethical aspects and socio-political embeddedness of manager compensation. In particular, it adds to our knowledge of organizational legitimacy by showing how discursive strategies and the corresponding morality constructions used to (de)legitimate business activities can shift quickly as a result of a change in the social and political climate surrounding the legitimation struggle. (shrink)

Grounded in institutional theory, this study provides an overview of the corporate social responsibility initiatives of Turkey's 30 largest corporations through a thematic content analysis. The study focuses on the G-20 member Turkey and investigates the influence of isomorphism mechanisms on the adoption of CSR initiatives in a developing country context. The aim of this study is to integrate Carroll's CSR dimensions, the type of CSR engagement and coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism mechanisms proposed by institutional theory. Through this integration (...) the study makes a unique contribution to the literature by providing a different perspective. Findings reveal industry characteristics do not influence the selection of CSR initiatives. While business-to-business companies focus on CSR activities linked to their core business functions, business-to-consumer companies focus on CSR initiatives that are more discretionary, varied and philanthropic. In addition, findings show that multinational corporations implement CSR initiatives at the global level rather than focusing on local needs. (shrink)

Drawing upon case study research investigating the Irish Health Service Executive’s (HSE) response to a fake news attack on their human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination campaign, we argue that responses to fake news should be analyzed from a legitimacy perspective. A model for emotional legitimacy management is proposed in which the HSE and a third-party collaborate to (a) connect with the emotional aspects of the issue; (b) leverage emotions to build vicarious legitimacy; (c) transfer the third-party’s legitimacy to the HSE; and (...) (d) emotionally activate the public. This study contributes to fake news and legitimacy management by moving beyond fact-checking and debunking strategies. We suggest a framework centered on legitimacy in which emotions are used to counteract fake news. Finally, we emphasize the importance of third-party vicarious legitimacy building and the transfer of this legitimacy to the organization. (shrink)

This study examines corporate stakeholder orientation across industries and over time prior to the introduction of mandatory CSR. We argue that CSO is a legitimacy signal consciously employed by firms to demonstrate their shareholder and specific non-shareholder orientations in the midst of institutional pressures emerging from country and industry contexts. Using a 7-code index of CSO on CEO–shareholder communications from India, we find that in general large firms in India exhibit a pre-dominant, significant and rising trend of pro-shareholder orientation in (...) the six-year period immediately preceding the CSR law. Yet, we uncover significant industry differences in CSO potentially driven by four key factors: the degree of competitive dynamics, nature of products and services, extent of negative externalities and social activism, and exposure to international markets. Our findings support the view that while some minimum threshold of regulatory intervention is required to balance the interests of business with society, legislation raises questions in relation to the usefulness of a uniform one-size-fits-all CSR across all industries. (shrink)