Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Management and Marketing Communication: Research Streams and Themes

Abstract

This article maps the rapidly growing body of research in the fi eld of corporate social responsibility (CSR) management and marketing communication, the focus being on research streams and themes. It evaluates this research from a corporate communication perspective. First, the article examines the concept of CSR communication. A typology of a number of possible domains for CSR communication research is developed, based on the way the different studies conceptualize CSR. Second, the article reviews the concepts of strategic and operative CSR communication which have been adopted widely within the CSR communication literature, relating these to research streams within management and marketing/public relations. Being framed within a corporate communication perspective, the review answers the call for CSR communication research to develop and substantiate outcomes that may better explain or inform CSR communication strategies and practices. A number of categories of outcomes are found within existing empirical studies, and an agenda for building upon this evidence is advanced to allow greater consistency and mutual understanding among CSR communication researchers. IntroductionOver the last decade, CSR management and marketing communication research has evolved from a small-scale activity in a limited number of industrialized countries to a major global industry (e.g. Global Leaders 2010; Bendell 2011). To judge from the increasing number of websites on CSR, annual or social and environmental reports, codes of conduct or ethics, corporate advertisements on CSR, social partnerships etc., CSR management and marketing communication is clearly understood as a new sub-fi eld within corporate communication (Cornelissen 2011; Pollach et al. 2011), and is therefore considered a commercial investment. On the research side, the growth of CSR management and marketing communication has been accompanied by a number of studies, examining its various practical and theoretical aspects. While this paper is framed within a corporate communication perspective (Van Riel 1995;Cornelissen 2011), allowing us to synthesize the means by which CSR communication activities can add value for stakeholders, other perspectives also contribute insights within the fi eld of CSR communication, e.g. the co-creation perspective on CSR, which is a perspective still in embryo (Crane 2011).There have been some reviews within specifi c sub-fi elds of CSR and CSR communicationrelated literature, e.g. a review of marketing research and CSR from 1958(Chabowski et al. 2011. The review by Chabowski et al. is based on citations in sustainability-focused articles from selected journals over a period of 51 years, and points out fi ve critical sustainability topics to examine from a marketing perspective: external-internal focus, social-environmental emphasis, legal-ethical-discretionary intent, marketing assets and fi nancial performance. There are a small number of textbooks or anthologies that are devoted to CSR communication. Until now the most comp...

Research on Corporate Social Responsibility in Ghana

“…al. (2011) and Nielsen and Thomsen (2012) that, generally, literature on the communication aspect of CSR is minimal. From the forty-seven papers analysed thirty-nine (82.98%) focused on CSR while the remaining eight (17.02%) focused on CSR communication.…”

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“…Some works of literature, indeed, state that CSR is two-way communication, and a community should invite the corporate world to building a community. Networking and co-creating CSR need a response from all its stakeholders to bridge the relational gap between business and society (Crane & Glozer, 2016; Nielsen & Thomsen, 2012). CSR-driven innovation has been highlighted in Nordic studies as a way of strengthening the unique co-operation between the five Nordic countries that can transform society and achieve economic success (Norden, 2010).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility

“…Scholarly reviews and overviews of CSR communication have thus emerged that divide the field into a variety of clusters aligned to different criteria of structuration (Crane & Glozer, 2016). Some scholars group CSR communication according to ontological and epistemological paradigms very similar to Gond and Mattens' grouping of CSR theory, for instance as constructionism versus functionalism (see, e.g., Golob et al, 2013 (Nielsen & Thomsen, 2012). Others again suggest dividing the field in terms of constituent audiences (e.g., internal versus external stakeholders), communicative purposes of CSR communication (e.g., persuasion versus information (Podnar 2008), sense giving versus sense making (Morsing & Schultz, 2006) (see Table 1).…”