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The purpose of this study is to investigate how the social licence to operate (SLO) concept is currently perceived and communicated during stakeholder engagement, as an extension of corporate social responsibility (CSR). To ensure an applied exploration of SLO, this paper focused on the wind industry.

Telephone interviews were conducted with 18 wind industry representatives responsible for stakeholder engagement in Australia. Questions focused upon understanding of consultation and SLO, perceptions of SLO in practice, and experiences regarding community engagement.

SLO is broadly understood by the case study wind industry representatives as majority acceptance held by community and other stakeholders, although no common definition was expressed. This indicates that the concept has not transferred clearly or directly to the wind industry. Despite this, the benefits of seeking an SLO through consultative and ongoing communication practices were recognised across the wind industry as a positive risk mitigation strategy.

Future research could examine the understanding and communication approaches of SLO in other industries, cultures and geographic locations.

It appears the wind industry intends to seek an SLO more broadly from the Australian public, beyond specific projects. This is likely to occur within the context of increased scrutiny on the performance of many industries and by the changing expectations and demands of communities.

Some wind corporations were considered to have previously conducted poor or shallow consultation, and this was perceived to have negatively affected the reputation of the wider industry. Mismanagement of expectations prior to the development phase was of particular concern to interviewees. Given this, an SLO could be put at risk by the poor or insufficient engagement and communication processes and reputation of their predecessors.

The key contribution of this study is to inform CSR practices that seek to engage and maintain high stakeholder support through an SLO approach, where corporate communication is vital.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) transparency claims are propagating a belief in a modern panopticon for ensuring responsible corporate behavior. Corporations use transparency claims to cultivate the impression of full disclosure. The paper aims to explore why people believe transparency ensures responsible behavior from corporations as well as the negative effects of this pseudo‐panopticon.

The paper explores transparency in relation to CSR, CSR reporting, the internet, and activism and describes how their confluence produces pseudo‐panopticon.

The paper finds that the pseudo‐panopticon allows corporations to claim transparency in CSR communication and for stakeholders to accept that claim. The reality is that a minority of activist stakeholders bear the burden of ensuring true transparency by questioning disclosure.

Transparency should be seen as a process, and it fails if activists cannot create public awareness of CSR shortcomings. The challenge is to find ways to make transparency as a process work in a world where apathy and self‐deception, in part facilitated by the pseudo‐panopticon, work against the process.

The paper builds on the process view of transparency by developing its implications for CSR communication. The result is a novel approach to CSR reporting and transparency that contributes to other critical voices concerned about the value and effects of CSR communication.

Corporations communicate CSR policies through a variety of methods, and the goal of the study is to explore young adult consumers’ communication preferences and the implications for managers to effectively communicate CSR to boost their corporate brand image and reputation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Set within the context of the UK supermarket industry, the study adopts a qualitative research approach and a purposeful sampling method, collecting data from 30 young adult consumers in the south-east of the UK. The data collection method used was online bulletin board focus groups, face-to-face focus groups, face-to-face interviews and an online questionnaire. Research propositions are developed, evaluated and synthesized into a conceptual framework.

The findings show that interactive CSR communication functions as an effective method of improving consumers’ emotional brand value, knowledge and memory of supermarket CSR. The findings have the potential to induce a more positive perception by young adults of supermarket CSR corporate brand image and reputation.

The implications for theory development are in the under-researched area of interactive CSR communication.

The research provides practical strategic recommendations regarding effective communications to help guide managers in their planning and execution of their CSR endeavours.

The research provides new empirical insights into theory and knowledge of interactive CSR communication and how supermarkets can communicate CSR in a manner, which is appealing and engaging for young adult consumers, therefore more likely to strengthen their perception of a supermarket corporate brand image and reputation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of non-financial reporting according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 3.1 A+ standard. By examining the comprehensiveness of the GRI performance in corporate non-financial reports classified as A+ the authors challenge the external assurance system imposed by GRI 3.1 A+ and discuss future directions for the application of GRI 4.0, particularly with regard to the standardized corporate reporting software language XBRL.

The authors applied a three-step-research design based on four literature-derived hypothesis and examined all 177 GRI 3.1 A+ reports (2012-13) by coding along 41 variables plus the 84 performance indicators of GRI 3.1 to test accessibility, ability to download, achievability, and the possibility to compare them to older reports.

The results indicate a lack of completeness of GRI’s 3.1 key performance indicators in A+ assured reports, that is made possible due to the reporting flexibility and voluntariness of the guideline. The authors find that the average of disclosed core indicators is 77.66 percent. Single A+ reports disclose even fewer GRI core indicators that B+ reports, which challenges the validity of the assurance system of GRI 3.1.

In this study the (core) indicators were taken as given by GRI 3.1; the quality of the indicators was not measured or weighted.

Implications may emerge for redesigning non-financial reporting guidelines.

By critically indicating possible weaknesses of the GRI 3.1 guidelines the authors aim to contribute to a more transparent and effective non-financial reporting.

As an increasing number of contributions criticize the credibility of non-financial reporting and also GRI’s role, the research for the first time provides empirical evidence of the shortcomings of CSR and sustainability reporting regarding comprehensiveness, accessibility, and comparability.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the construction of discourses in current popular management models described in the field of management coaching in order to examine the disciplining forms and the type of authority appeal drawn upon in these models.

The authors apply a discourse analysis to two selected works on management coaching in order to investigate the rhetorical articulation of the coaching concept in terms of established discourses of management.

It seems that the analysed works draw on both a rationalistic and a spiritual paradigm of disciplining. Self‐realisation is mainly a superficial change. The discourse pattern thus fits into a wider social postmodern context in which social order seems to be constituted through a blending of rational and spiritual discourse order.

The analysis provides insight into the extent to which management coaching practices are likely to facilitate intrinsic employee involvement and hence organisational innovation and learning.

Since there are only sparse studies of discourse analysis within management coaching, the study provides new insight into how a rather new emerging management technique constructs and disciplines the employee's project of self‐realisation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) appears and is communicated in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

The paper is based on theory and research on CSR communication in general and in SMEs and a qualitative case study of the attitudes and beliefs of Danish SME managers regarding CSR and CSR communication.

The case study demonstrates that CSR is primarily considered to be an ethical and moral issue which is isolated from strategic communication including public relations and reputation management. Rather than being a strategic instrument, CSR seems to be rooted in practice and regulated by the personal values and beliefs of managers. It is argued that in principle, SMEs like the ones in the case study which are based on employee commitment and the use of indirect word‐of‐mouth communication with internal and local stakeholders have a fruitful platform for adopting strategic CSR communication. The problem is how they should communicate CSR to their external stakeholders.

This paper provides insights into the social and societal commitment of SMEs and ways in which SMEs can respond to the challenges of communicating CSR more explicitly to external stakeholders.

Attention is paid to the rather complicated balance between CSR communication as window‐dressing and CSR communication as a strategic instrument.

Organization legitimacy is a general reflection of the relationship between an organization and its environment. By adopting an institutional approach and defining moral legitimacy as “a positive normative evaluation of the organization and its activities”, the goal of this paper is to investigate which corporate communication strategy adopted in online social media is more effective to create convergence between corporations' corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda and stakeholders' social expectations, and thereby, to increase corporate legitimacy.

Using the entire Twitter social graph, a network analysis was carried out to study the structural properties of the CSR community, such as the level of reciprocity, and advanced data mining techniques, i.e. topic and sentiment analysis, were carried out to investigate the communication dynamics.

Evidence was found that neither the engaging nor the information strategies lead to alignment. The assumption of the more the dialog, the more the communality seems to fail to portray the complexity of the communicational dynamics, such as the persistence of different, or simply a dialog without alignment. Empirical findings show that, even when engaging in a dialogue, communication in social media is still conceived as a marketing practice to convey messages about companies.

This paper originally investigates organizational legitimacy in the context of social media by applying advanced data‐mining techniques that allow the analysis of large amounts of information available online.

The purpose of this paper is to address corporte social responsibility (CSR) as a form of corporate self‐storying that highlights isomorphic processes influencing legitimacy as a key organisational concern.

Having constructed a theoretical framework incorporating CSR and corporate identity literature, the paper draws on a discourse perspective to analyse the legitimation strategies applied by a single organisation storying its CSR involvement. The strategies are subsequently addressed in relation to isomorphic discourses of legitimacy.

The analysis supports the view that corporate self‐storying of CSR balances between the needs for differentiation and conformity. Organisations thus navigate between the value associated with compliance with societal norms and expectations and the value of promoting organisational uniqueness.

Institutional processes result in isomorphic organisational practices also in relation to legitimacy reflected in the storying of CSR involvement. However, this study implies that isomorphism also offers organisations opportunities to stand out.

The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it articulates a framework for addressing CSR communication as a form of corporate self‐storying that is embedded in a differentiation/conformity paradox. Second, it explores how an organisation's extended responsibility – i.e. responsibility for supplier practices – is storied in a way that suggests that addressing legitimacy is a question of navigating the paradox.

The purpose of this paper is to account for the genre characteristics of non‐linear, multi‐modal, web‐mediated documents. It involves a two‐dimensional view on genres that allows one to account for the fact that digital genres act not only as text but also as medium.

The theoretical framework of the article is the Swalesian genre theory used in academic settings all over the world to investigate the relationship between discourse and social practice and to teach genre conventions to students of language and communication. Up till now most genre research has focused on the characteristics of “printed” texts, whereas less has been done to apply the genre theory to digital genres.

The article discusses the characteristics of digital genres, notably the media constraints that have a significant effect on the production and reception of digital genres and suggests an extension of the Swalesian genre model that takes the digital characteristics into account.

The suggestion for a revised genre model is not based on an extensive empirical study of various types of web sites. The observation is restricted to a limited number of commercial web sites.

The article proposes new insights into the concept of genre adapting traditional models of genre theory to web‐mediated texts. A revised two‐dimensional genre model incorporating media elements into the concept of genre thus takes account of the particular characteristics of the navigation and reading elements of web‐mediated genres.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a crisis risk. The bulk of the current research on CSR and crisis examined the role of CSR as an asset in a crisis. CSR as crisis risk is a direct function of CSR’s increasingly important role in reputation management. CSR has become an important aspect of corporate reputations – it is one of the dimensions used to assess a corporation’s crisis. The value of CSR to reputations is illustrated in the RepTrak reputation measure from the Reputation Institute and the value it places upon CSR. If stakeholders can challenge CSR claims by arguing a corporation is acting irresponsibly, the stakeholders can erode the corporation’s reputational assets by creating a challenge crisis. A CSR-based challenge occurs when stakeholders redefine a corporation’s current practices as irresponsible. The CSR-based challenge can be risk because it can damage reputational assets and potentially escalate into a crisis. CSR becomes a leverage point for stakeholders seeking to engage in a challenge crisis. As corporations place more value on the CSR dimension of reputation, CSR-based challenge becomes an increasingly powerful leverage point.

The paper is conceptual with an emphasis on theory building.

The manuscript details the CSR-based challenge process. It examines the nature of CSR-based challenges, how they can become threats to corporations, and how corporations can respond to the threats. There is also an explanation of how CSR-based challenges indicate the shift to private politics/social issues management and the implications of this shift for advancing a neoliberal perspective.

CSR and crises have a much more complex relationship than current research has identified. CSR can be a crisis risk, not just an asset used to protect a reputation during a crisis. CSR can be the reason a crisis exists and threats a corporation – it is a crisis risk. The primary manifestation of CSR as a crisis risk is the challenge crisis premised on social irresponsibility, what the authors term the CSR-based challenge crisis. This paper will detail the process whereby CSR is transformed from a crisis resource to a crisis threat. The end result of this analysis will be set of insights into CSR-based challenge crises. These insights can help stakeholders seeking to create social change through a challenge and corporate managers seeking to address a challenge crisis.

Challenge crises are an example of private politics/social issues management, when stakeholders seek to create changes in corporate behavior by engaging the organization directly rather than through public policy efforts. The paper offers insights into how social issues management can work to create social change by altering problematic corporate behaviors.

There is limited research into CSR as a crisis risk and in understanding how challenge crises help to create social change. This paper will provide new insights into CSR as a crisis risk, challenge crises, and private politics. Ideas from public relations, corporate communication, and political communication will be fused to create a novel framework for illuminating these related topics.