The Construction of Corporate Social Responsibility in Network Societies: A Communication View

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 in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2013-07, Vol.115 (4), p.681-692
Main Authors: Schultz, Friederike, Castelló, Itziar, Morsing, Mette
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business and Management
Business communications
Business Ethics
Business structures
Communication
Communications media
Corporate communications
Corporate responsibility
Corporate social responsibility
Corporations
Education
Ethics
Financial performance
Legitimacy
Management
Network analysis
Organizational communication
Philosophy
Quality of Life Research
Reputation management
Social change
Social communication
Social interaction
Social networks
Social responsibility
Social responsibility of business
Society
Stakeholders
Stockholders
Studies
Symbolic communication
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-013-1826-8