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The purpose of this chapter is to carry out a theoretical review of the state of the art in relation to Latin American Small and Medium Enterprises' (SMEs) communication practices and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from 2009 to 2016. A range of recently published papers (2009–2016) is retrieved in a literature search of the Web of Science and Google Scholar under keywords such as ‘CSR’, ‘SME’, ‘Communication’, and ‘CSR in Latin America’. This chapter provides information about CSR in SMEs, indicating what can be found on this topic and how the management of CSR communication can help those firms. It also recognizes the lack of any real formation in SMEs to solve their problems in this area. This chapter emphasizes that, in general terms, SMEs are aware of CSR management opportunities but, because of the aforementioned constraints, their current CSR communications practices are absolutely basic and their management is still limited and short-term. Instead of a generalized exhaustive study, this is an approach to develop new studies in the future. It does not contain empirical results but rather practical information for reflections on CSR and communication in Latin American SMEs. A useful source of information for SME managers. CSR communications policies generate no value unless they have been taken into account in the overall design of corporate CSR policy, particularly if there is no clear vision of how new stakeholders may be more valuable strategically than operationally. This chapter fulfils an identified information/resources need and offers indications for future lines of research.

This chapter is to introduce to the reader the background, purpose, core themes and structure of the volume. Brief summaries of all the following chapters in the book are provided.

Literature review and desk research.

This chapter suggests that CSR communication as a cross-section of communication studies and CSR research should be highlighted as an important subject of inquiry to bridge the communicative gap between businesses and their stakeholders as well as the public at large. An initial theoretical framework on CSR communication is presented.

A general research direction is provided for CSR communication. It encourages more future scholarly studies in this emerging and fascinating field.

The overall purpose is to help grow knowledge and develop understanding of the ways in which businesses communicate CSR.

It is the first time in the field of CSR communication that a relatively comprehensive and systematic framework is presented. The chapters that follow in the book cover many contents of the framework.

The chapter develops a phase model of strategic planning in integrated corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication by presenting CSR as a mindset in communication processes.

The chapter provides rationales for establishing a new phase model of strategic planning in CSR communication by adapting existing models of strategic communications. In this context, the main focus is on the need to involve stakeholders in CSR communication processes (Morsing & Schultz, 2006).

The chapter argues that in the sense of CSR communication, stakeholders should be involved in the strategic planning process from the beginning, with respect to the issues that the corporation and targeted stakeholder groups have in common.

The chapter concentrates on selected key aspects of CSR and CSR communication. In particular the aspects such as reputation, credibility, ethical alignment and stakeholder involvement are considered as prerequisites for understanding the construction of the phase model.

This chapter provides practical implications for developing communication concepts in CSR communication in daily business practice.

This chapter facilitates a comprehensive understanding of strategic CSR communication as part of CSR reflected in the development processes of communication concepts.

The current study examines the role of social media for designing effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategy for modern business organisation to engage their stakeholders.

A structured survey questionnaire is used to collect data from multiple stakeholders through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. The data is collected from employees, customers and investors of different companies in Pakistan. The data is analysed to examine the perceptions of different stakeholders towards effectiveness of social media for CSR communication.

The results indicate that the majority of respondents think that social media is very important platform to communicate CSR activities. Overall, respondents believe that social media is a trustworthy tool to communicate CSR activities and engage stakeholders. Customers believe that communication of CSR activities through social media influence their buying behaviour positively. We found strong intentions among employees to work for socially responsible corporations who are successful in communicating their CSR initiatives to their employees through social media.

The study collected data from Pakistan only, a larger sample from different countries can provide more interesting results. The study didn’t used sophisticated statistical tests; the future studies can develop a rigorous theoretical model explaining how use of social media as communication strategy can influence the behaviour of diverse stakeholders.

Since social media is becoming an effective communication platform, corporations should pay more focus on using social media. The corporations should encourage stakeholders’ views related to CSR communication on social media and carefully address their suspicions in order to engage them.

There is sparse research in literature that examine the use of social media to engage organisational stakeholders. The current study provides a direction to future researchers to explore this area and explain the use of social media as CSR communication strategy in better way.

With the growing concern for environmental and sustainability issues, especially in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, organizations feel compelled to pursue green sustainability in their operations. In this regard, the active involvement of employees in pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is crucial for achieving organizational environmental sustainability goals (Saeed et al., 2019). To shed light on this important issue, this study aims to investigate the impact of interacting/engaging environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategy on employees' PEBs through the mediating effects of communal relationship and employee empowerment.

A total of 443 full-time USA employees working across various industries participated in an online survey.

The interacting/engaging environmental CSR communication strategy fosters employees' perceived communal relationship with their organizations and empowers them to support their organization's environmental initiatives, which, in turn, positively influences employees' PEBs at work.

This study advances CSR and internal communication literature through the lens of relationship management and self-determination theories. The findings theoretically suggest the effectiveness of the interacting/engaging environmental CSR communication strategy in nurturing favorable employee–organization relationships (EORs), employee empowerment and PEBs at work. The practical implications of CSR communication are also elaborated.

The aim of this research work is to consider the relevance of corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related social media communication in franchise networks, with a focus on the perceptions and expectations of franchisors and franchisees and franchisors and franchisees' customers.

Three studies were conducted as part of this research: two qualitative studies with franchisors and franchisees in the first instance (N = 39) and franchisors and franchisees' customers in the second instance (N = 13), as well as an online ethnographic study of customer reactions (N = 871) to different CSR communications from the networks already interviewed.

The results show that CSR communication remains very important in a context characterised by a growing interest in CSR commitment in companies in general and in franchise networks in particular. However, different conditions of effectiveness of this CSR communication have been identified. The different conditions can avoid CSR's detrimental effects and increase CSR's credibility.

In franchise networks, the task of communicating about CSR is complex. This requires the integration of franchisees, which are very important to CSR's success. CSR communication also requires integrating customers by studying their expectations at this level. This study gives the basic keys to the success of CSR communication in franchise networks, from the point of view of franchisors, franchisees and the customers of franchisors and franchisees.

This study focusses on a topic that has received very little attention, particularly in franchise networks. The various studies conducted allow us to better understand the particularities of CSR communication, particularly in the context of tripartite franchisor–franchisee–customer relations.

Retailers recently have started communicating their corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments to their consumers directly on social media. That is to say, CSR communication has expanded to social media that allow two-way communication, distinct from traditional CSR communication channels. As transparency has been recognised as a crucial factor influencing the effectiveness of traditional CSR communication, this study investigated its role in the social media context.

A two-level, single-factor (i.e. transparency of a mock retail company's CSR communication) between-subjects experimental design was employed, and 237 responses from an online survey were used for PROCESS macroanalysis.

Transparent CSR communication was found to increase the consumers' perceived CSR credibility and attitude toward the company, which influenced consumers' subsequent purchase intention (functionalistic outcome) and intention to respond to the CSR communication (constitutive outcome). The results of the study also corroborated that consumers' level of elaboration when processing CSR communication on social media depends upon their level of concern over the social issue.

The study extends the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to CSR communication in the social media context by validating that consumers' level of information elaboration is determined by their level of concern over the social issue. In addition, it provides the first empirical support for the significance of transparent CSR communication on social media and explains the mechanism of transparency's influence. Transparency indirectly affects consumers' behavioural intentions by forming a favourable attitude toward a retailer. The findings can help retail practitioners communicate CSR commitments persuasively on social media. The study also integrates functionalistic and constitutive perspectives of social media CSR communication, which is notable and discussed in depth.

A model on the cognitive elements of engagement is adopted and content analysis, along with sentiment analysis, has been used to explore the post characteristics and the levels of stakeholders' interactions in controversial and non-controversial European industries through three Poisson regressions. At last, an ANOVA test has been used to check the level of interaction regarding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related aspects.

The intrinsic characteristics of controversial industries cause the stakeholders’ skepticism about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. This results in the need to elaborate proper involvement strategies to approach industries' stakeholders. Such need has assumed relevance during the COVID-19 crisis and has traced a certain border between the companies that are more sensitive to the social side of the surrounding environment and the ones that are less involved in risky sectors. The present paper aims to understand the role of social media in stakeholder engagement, and social media's characteristics, and tries to elaborate on companies' CSR communication readiness to the challenges shown by the pandemic.

The study reveals how the success of stakeholder engagement in CSR communication is affected by both controversial sector membership and the characteristics of the posts such as the inclusion of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). In addition, the study emerges how the European companies have focused on social aspects in companies' communication, revealing a certain readiness for the COVID-19 challenges.

Building on a model of cognitive elements of engagement, the present study provides useful insights for companies' next engagement strategies on social media. Moreover, the thematic analysis provides a benchmark for the improvement of current corporations' communication strategies in light of the pandemic effects.

This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the role of Twitter as a stakeholder engagement tool and identifies the drivers for an effective Twitter content strategy. Moreover, the paper provides a useful proxy for current and future research on the COVID-19-related CSR communication.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important issue for service brands in fast fashion retailing, as consumers' negative impressions about retailers' CSR activities influence brand experience. Consumers' impressions of CSR efforts arise based on agendas communicated through many channels from different sources. The paper unravels the ‘wrinkles’, i.e. possible mismatches in CSR communication around service brands by studying differences between the three main sources of fast fashion brand-related CSR agendas: Autonomous company communication, news media and social media postings by consumers.

The authors use structural topic modeling (STM) to analyze a corpus of texts focusing on the CSR efforts of three major fast fashion service brands over three years. The texts included 89 items of company communication (CSR reports and press releases), 5,351 news media articles about the brands' CSR efforts and 57,377 consumer generated tweets about the brands.

The STM analysis extracted 26 different CRS-related topics from the texts. Results showed differences in how much the three sources emphasized topics. The brands' own communication puts emphasis on environmental responsibility. News media tended to report on economic issues, treatment of employees and specific CSR-related events. Twitter showed more activity in discussing incident-based and emotionally charged topics.

The results feed into the ongoing discussion about how companies' CSR communication relates to communication in the press and among consumers. The authors highlight themes in the individual topics that are emphasized by the three sources, and discuss how CSR themes emerge in the overall transformative agenda.

The paper highlights how fast fashion service brands can identify and understand different CSR agendas arising around their brand. Insight into such agendas can be used to tailor the brands' communication strategies.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the factors behind fashion service brands' CSR reputation, highlighting how the three main sources of CSR reputation (company reports, news and social media) emphasize different types of agendas.

This paper aims to posit the central argument that traditional media of old presented a clear, ordered world of communication management for organisations to extol their corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials. In contrast to this, new Web 2.0 social media is increasingly being used by activists and hactivists to challenge corporate communication CSR messages and does so by highlighting instances and examples of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) (Jones et al., 2009; Tench et al., 2012).

The paper reports on research data from the European Communication Monitor, 2010, 2011 and 2012 (www.communicationmonitor.eu/) and draws on work already published in this area (Tench et al., 2009; Verhoeven et al., 2012; Zerfass et al., 2010, 2011) to illustrate the unruly, unregulated Web 2.0 social media communication landscape in Europe. A range of literature is drawn on to provide the theoretical context for an exploration of issues that surround social media.

In late modernity (Giddens, 1990), communication comes in many guises. Social media is one guise and it has re-shaped as well as transformed the nature of communications and the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders.

Communicating CSR in the Wild West of social media requires diplomatic and political nous, as well as awareness and knowledge of the dangers and pitfalls of CSI. The data reported on in this paper well illustrate the above points and set out scenarios for future development of corporate communication of CSR through and with social media.