Social media are increasingly the vehicle of choice for nonprofit organizations in their efforts to mobilize, educate, and engage large, often geographically dispersed audiences of current and pote...

Speaking and Being Heard: How Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations Gain Attention on Social Media

The global coronavirus pandemic has reignited a strategic debate among the business community of the necessity for corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement in the ever-dynamic social media. Considering the global economic downturn introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the present research is devoted to investigating whether CSR engagement in social media can help DiDi (a Chinese shared brand) at stake survive this overwhelming crisis. A theoretical model proposed to describe the hypothesized relationships was tested by a Structural Equation Modeling technique through the empirical online questionnaire. Through findings, we demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between CSR engagement of DiDi on WeChat, customer-company identification (C-C identification), and behavioral intention [purchase intention, brand loyalty, and e-word-of-mouth (eWOM)] of customers. With attention to psychological influence, our empirical statistics also evidenced the mediating role of C-C identification between CSR engagement and behavioral intention of customers. This study highlights the significant role of CSR engagement in a critical period theoretically and offers businesses more open innovation strategies to compete against the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market downturn.

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The Role of CSR Engagement in Customer-Company Identification and Behavioral Intention During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Prior literature in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has largely focused on investigating its relationship with organizational-related outcomes, whereas the impact of CSR on consumer behavior is largely ignored in the recent literature. Further, most of the prior studies have investigated CSR with a philanthropic viewpoint, but its importance in achieving marketing-related outcomes is something that is to date, underexplored. Hence, the aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of CSR communication through social media on consumer loyalty with the mediating effect of consumers’ brand admiration in the banking sector of Pakistan. The banking sector was selected due to the reason that this sector is homogenized in nature and creating consumers’ loyalty due to this homogenized character of this sector is challenging. The data of the present study were collected from different banking consumers through an adapted questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale. A total of 448 fully filled questionnaires were received which included 289 male and 159 female banking consumers. The results of the present study revealed that CSR communications through social media have a positive impact on consumer loyalty, and consumers’ brand admiration partially mediates this relationship. The findings of the present study would help policymakers from banking institutions to use CSR strategy from the perspective of marketing which is undoubtedly very important for every organization in the current digital age.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2319/pdf

CSR Communication through Social Media: A Litmus Test for Banking Consumers’ Loyalty

This study discusses the current state of the art and future directions of research on digitalization, accountability and accounting in public services. Through a systematic literature review, we investigate 232 articles published between 1998 and the first quarter of 2020. These studies are analysed looking at the implications of the increasing digitalization of the public realm for the i) production of data, ii) consumption of data, and iii) their subsequent effects. Based upon this analysis we identify the following emerging critical digital accountability issues and related future research avenues: the potential for dialogic and horizontal, multi-centric accountability; the blurring of accountability roles and boundaries; the increasing relevance of translation processes and translators’ roles - and the need to ensure accountability in such translations; the need to pay stronger attention to social equity and inclusivity implications of digitalization.

Digitalization, accounting and accountability: A literature review and reflections on future research in public services

Can sustainability disclosures be a tool for executing image restoration strategies after corporate manslaughter? This is the question explored in this study of Costa Crociere's sustainability reports after the Concordia disaster.,Merging traditional textual content analysis with visual analysis and supported by machine learning tools, this is a predominantly qualitative study framed by legitimacy theory, image restoration theory and impression management.,Costa Crociere's voluntary sustainability reporting is strongly influenced by a mix of text and visual signals that distract readers' attention from the disaster. A “nothing really happened” communication strategy pervades the disclosures, with the only rational motivation being to change perceptions and erase memories of this tragic and avoidable event.,Although the analysis covered multiple sources of corporate information, media coverage was not one of them. A more in-depth exploration of sustainability reporting in the cruise industry, including evidence of similar cases, to test impression management theory would be a worthwhile avenue for future research.,While Costa Crociere technically followed the customary guidelines of disclosing human resource impacts, there was almost no acknowledgement of the people involved in the accident. Costa Concierevastly understated their responsibility for the accident, did not apologize, and conveyed very little remorse. The majority of disclosures centred on disaster recovery management.,The authors discuss why and how a company can overcome a legitimacy threat by completely freezing its voluntary sustainability reporting, and the authors show how a company can restore its image by minimizing specific aspects of an accident and shifting attention from the human victims to corporate operations. Incorporating image recognition driven by AI models and combining the results with narrative disclosures contributes an innovative and original analysis technique to the field of impression management. In addition, this research also contributes to our knowledge on the cruise industry – a sector currently under scrutiny for its ethical, social and environmental practices.

Sustainability reporting after the Costa Concordia disaster: a multi-theory study on legitimacy, impression management and image restoration

Managing stakeholder perceptions: Organized hypocrisy in CSR disclosures on Facebook

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01559982.2021.2019524?needAccess=true

Social media dissemination of counter accounts and stakeholder support – evidence from greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign on Facebook

This study explores firm responses to stakeholder-initiated involuntary disclosures, which are disclosures made by stakeholders about an organization but are against the will of managers, and subsequent stakeholder reactions. We analyzed 134,977 firm Twitter replies from seven companies to identify their responses to involuntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures and find that companies demonstrate different attitudes toward engagement in the exchange about involuntary disclosures. Whereas some companies communicate with stakeholders, others are almost silent. When a company engages in communication with its stakeholders, the communication is mostly one-way, and mortification or dissent is the likely response strategy. We also find that while stakeholders generally do not continue to engage with corporate communications, they are likely to respond when companies deny the information revealed by involuntary disclosure. Our results suggest that involuntary disclosures on social media are not able to improve communication between stakeholders and companies.

https://doi.org/10.1177/10860266221108711

Involuntary Disclosures and Stakeholder-Initiated Communication on Social Media

Sustainable enterprises face a risk for which the pressure over financial sustainability “crowds out” their impact mission. Corporate governance mechanisms can play an important role in managing the tensions between the two objectives, by steering and driving stakeholder engagement processes. At the same time, the rise of social media has provided firms with a platform for undertaking stakeholder engagement on a large scale. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine how the governance mechanisms of sustainable enterprises affect engagement with stakeholders on social media. Specifically, we identify three distinctive mechanisms for a governance approach to stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises: The legal purpose beyond profit maximization, directors' commitment to purpose, and the adoption of purpose-specific accountability mechanisms. We argue that each of them matters for the extent to which sustainable enterprises engage with stakeholders on social media, as well as the quality of this engagement. By scraping and classifying nonfinancial tweets posted by 1074 U.S. B Corps between 2014 and 2018 and those posted by stakeholders towards the firm, we find that the legal and ethical mechanisms are positively related to the quality of engagement while the accountability mechanism is related to both the extent and quality of engagement. Our study sheds light on the implications of governance mechanisms in steering social media stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/bse.3432

Chaoyuan She

Papers

Managing stakeholder perceptions: Organized hypocrisy in CSR disclosures on Facebook

Social media dissemination of counter accounts and stakeholder support – evidence from greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign on Facebook

Involuntary Disclosures and Stakeholder-Initiated Communication on Social Media

A governance approach to stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises—Evidence from B Corps

Market Valuation Implications of Scope 2 Carbon Emissions: Measurement Effects of Dual Reporting