Social responsibility to social advocacy: A multicultural analysis of CSR communication effects

By Kelly Page Werder, associate professor at the University of South Florida, and Diana Ingenhoff, professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland

Organizations are increasingly taking a public stance on social issues. Whether voluntarily or by force, planned or by accident, business is moving beyond classic bottom-line driven corporate social responsibility (CSR) to social advocacy that promotes the political and social agendas of corporations and their dominant coalitions.

As corporate activism grows, an accurate assessment of public perceptions of social issues—and how these perceptions are influenced through strategic messaging—is central to ethical and effective communication management. However, few studies have examined CSR messages as the unit of analysis, and no studies have examined the effects of CSR messaging on the perceptual, cognitive and motivational antecedents to communication behavior in publics.

In our study, we will attempt to better understand the effects of CSR messages on the attitudes and behaviors of corporate stakeholders. The focus of the study is on two unique aspects of CSR messages: extent of disclosure and degree of social advocacy. Extent of disclosure is the amount of information provided to the public about a company’s CSR activities. Previous research suggests that extent of disclosure influences perceptions of corporate credibility and legitimacy (Bachman & Ingenhoff, 2015). Degree of social advocacy, which has not been previously examined, is the extent to which organizations advocate for social and political causes in CSR messages.

We will use experimental methods to illustrate how the amount of information disclosed by a corporation about its CSR activities impacts consumer perceptions of the corporation, and how CSR messages that include social advocacy differ from messages that do not contain advocacy. In addition, the study will provide comparative data about the effects of CSR messages on consumers in the United States and Switzerland. These countries are both resource-rich, with healthy economies and high GNPs, but they contrast in size, allowing comparative analysis that may further inform understanding of CSR communication across cultures.

Our research highlights the importance of organizational transparency through its focus on information disclosure in CSR communication. The results of this study will demonstrate how the degree of social advocacy contained in CSR communication impacts perceptions of a corporation and its stance, allowing communication professionals to be more strategic in their CSR activities and messaging efforts. It will also provide ethical CSR and social advocacy communication guidelines for practitioners.

This project is supported by a Page Legacy Scholar Grant from The Arthur W. Page Center.

For further information on this study please email us at kgpage@usf.edu, Kelly Page Werder, and diana.ingenhoff@unifr.ch, Diana Ingenhoff.