Purpose -The purpose of the paper is to develop a new framework depicting the incorporation of concepts such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) within corporate communication as a process that called "institutionalization by translation". The paper aims to develop a micro-meso-macroperspective to analyze why and how organizations institutionalize CSR with which effects. Design/methodology/approach -The paper brings together institutional, sensemaking and communication theories. The paper builds on neo-institutionalism to frame the external conditions that foster or hinder the institutionalization of CSR on the macro-and meso-level. And the paper uses sensemaking and communication theories to describe this process on the meso-and micro-level. The paper illustrates the analysis by describing the CSR strategies of a large European energy company. Findings -CSR can be regarded as an empty concept that is based on moral communication and filled with different meanings. The analysis describes how CSR is internally translated (moralization and amoralization), which communication strategies are developed here (symbolic, dialogic, etc.) and that CSR communications are publicly negotiated. The analysis shows that the institutionalization of CSR bears not only opportunities, but also risks for corporations and can, therefore, be described as a "downward spirale of legitimacy and upward spiral of CSR institutionalization". Finally, alternative ways of coping with external demands are developed ("management by hypocrisis" and "defaulted communication"). Practical implications -The paper shows risk and explains more effective ways of building organizational legitimacy. Originality/value -The originality lays in the macro-meso-micro-perspective on the institutionalization of CSR. It allows the description of this process and its effects from the background of constraints and sensemaking and offers a new perspective on organizational legitimacy building.

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Although transparency is currently a buzzword in the public discourse, public relations (PR) theory has not yet produced a theory of transparency. Instead, its body of knowledge lacks theoretical depth and critical perspectives. Taking this as a point of departure, the article searches for alternative accounts on transparency, which could stimulate PR discourse and help to overcome the theoretical and normative deficits. Therefore it aims to discern whether or not the discourse in related disciplines such as business studies is more reflective and complex than in the PR domain. To determine this, we analysed 105 articles taken from Business Source Premier, one of the leading databases in the business field. Relying on a combined qualitative and quantitative analysis, our main findings are: (1) more than half of the articles set transparency in a positive frame; (2) a definition of transparency was given in only 13 articles; and (3) like in the public relations discourse, a theory-driven analysis of transparency is a desideratum. Only two articles set transparency within the context of a broader theoretical perspective. Both articles embed transparency in the paradigm of self-organizing systems. This paradigm looks to be a promising way forward for theory-oriented research on transparency in PR. One article provides the reader with a systematization of transparency which may provide a basis for a theory of transparency in PR.

This special section seeks to enrich research on the field by using neo-institutional theory to describe, explain and understand the activities, processes and dynamics of public relations. By this we open up for a wider understanding of public relations, its preconditions, its performances and its consequences for shaping the social. We argue that public relations could be analyzed as an institutionalized practice with certain set of governing mechanisms including taken-for-granted activities, rules, norms and ideas. Here neo-institutional theory is well situated as it is a tradition where communication is put at fore in the understanding of organizations, institutions and society. Another argument for this is recent developments where public relations and other forms of organizational communication have been examined as a major dimension of organizing in some of the more profound works among neoinstitutional theorists.The article starts with a discussion of earlier work in the tradition of neo-institutional theory were a lot of attention was paid to the governing mechanisms of institutions and how they control the behaviour of actors. A perspective leading to some fundamental challenges where the primary objections were raised against the over-determinism neo-institutional researchers ascribed institutions. Taking these objectives seriously has served as a source of extensive theoretical and empirical puzzles characterizing many of the contemporary effortsmost of them explicitly emphasizing the role of communication and symbolical/rethorical means as essential in all institutional processes. Among these we find three streams we find relevant and fruitful for analyses of public relations: institutional logics, translation and PUBLIC RELATIONS AND NEO-INSTITUTIONAL THEORY 3How public relations is used to challenge and re-shape the foundations on which social actors interact with each other.

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