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When a crisis occurs, do corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities protect organizational reputation by buffering negative effects or do CSR activities intensify negative effects, potentially leading to a worse reputation compared to if the organization had no prior CSR engagement? The authors hypothesize that if a crisis emerges in a domain aligned with an organization’s CSR initiatives (crisis-congruent CSR) backfire effects would arise, adversely affecting the organization’s reputation. Conversely, in cases of incongruence, where the crisis emerges in a domain not aligned with an organization’s previous CSR involvement, a buffering effect would manifest, protecting the organization’s reputation.

The authors conducted an experiment with a 3 (crisis-congruent, crisis-incongruent, and no CSR activities) × 2 (repeated measures) mixed factorial design. In the first scenario, no information was provided concerning a company’s social commitment. Alternatively, participants were exposed to an article illustrating the company’s dedication either to healthcare (crisis-incongruent commitment) or to combating sexism (crisis-congruent commitment). Afterward, participants were presented with a newspaper article addressing allegations of sexism against the company’s CEO.

The findings demonstrate that prior CSR activities have the potential both to serve as a buffer and to cause backfire effects in times of crisis. Domain congruence is the decisive moderator of these effects: Crisis-incongruent CSR activities acted as a buffer, crisis-congruent CSR activities “backfired” and led to more negative perceptions of the company’s reputation.

The study directly contributes to the understanding of CSR effects in crisis communication, while also addressing the often paradoxical and contradictory findings of prior studies.

Corporate reputation is one of the key intangible assets of a company and is commonly influenced by negative posts on social media, such as customer complaints. Up to date, no known research investigates the pre- and post-social media crisis corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on corporate reputation in the tourism context. This study addresses this research gap. The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of CSR practices on corporate reputation in social media crises. The congruence of CSR practices was examined in this study in relation to social media crises using the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) theory.

An experimental vignette method was used. Respondents were randomly divided into four experimental groups and a control group. Data was collected from 435 respondents in Hong Kong through quota sampling, in which age and gender are control variables.

The findings indicated that social media crisis recovery needs CSR practices to restore the corporate image. CSR practices are more impactful immediately after, rather than before, a social media crisis. Furthermore, the business scope of the company should be taken in the planning and enforcement of CSR practices.

This study extends the situational crisis communication theory in social media crises by using CSR practices. The CSR practice provides a unique role in crisis management. It could belong to a bolstering category that can be used together with other corporate crisis responses. Corporations in the tourism industry increase their exposure to sustainability both within and beyond social media. This research shows that this can be effectively accomplished through CSR practices that are congruent with the tourism industry.

企业社会责任实践的时机和一致性对旅游业社交媒体危机的影响

企业声誉是公司的关键无形资产之一, 通常会受到社交媒体上负面帖子的影响, 例如客户投诉。迄今为止, 尚无已知研究调查社交媒体危机前和社交媒体危机后的企业社会责任实践对旅游企业声誉的影响。本研究解决了这一研究缺口。该研究的目的是调查企业社会责任实践对社交媒体危机中企业声誉的影响。本研究使用刺激-有机体-反应 (SOR) 理论检验了与社交媒体危机相关的企业社会责任实践的一致性。

使用实验性小插图方法。受访者被随机分为四个实验组和一个对照组。通过配额抽样从香港的 435 名受访者那里收集数据是, 其中年龄和性别是控制变量。

调查结果表明, 社交媒体危机恢复需要企业社会责任实践来恢复企业形象。企业社会责任实践在社交媒体危机之后立即产生影响, 而不是之前。此外, 在企业社会责任实践的规划和实施中应考虑公司的业务范围。

这项研究通过使用企业社会责任实践扩展了社交媒体危机中的情境危机传播理论。 CSR 实践在危机管理中发挥着独特的作用。它可能属于可以与其他企业危机应对措施一起使用的支持类别。旅游业公司在社交媒体对内和对外增加了对可持续性的曝光。我们的研究表明, 这可以通过与旅游业一致的企业社会责任实践有效地实现。

The purpose of this study is to analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication of the Fortune top-100 companies during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Specifically, the authors examine the messages of international companies' CSR communication to customers during the pandemic, focusing particularly on the companies' posts on Twitter. In addition to identifying what international companies communicate, the authors determine the motives of companies' COVID-19-related CSR communication as well as how companies strategically approach CSR communication.

Using Nvivo, the authors carried out content analysis of the COVID-19-related tweets of the Fortune top-100 companies using Twitter's ‘advanced search’ tool. The analysis included tweets posted between 1 February 2020 and September 2021, a period that represents the peak of the pandemic.

Study findings indicate that COVID-19-related CSR responses of international companies are driven by commitment to organizational values, attainment of recognition for timely response to COVID-19, altruistic motives to combat COVID-19 and congruence with social movements that create expectations from customers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most companies adopt a response strategy to CSR communication, by informing customers of their COVID-19 responses in relation to several issues such as alterations in companies' processes and the impacts of the pandemic on health.

The study suggests that the CSR practices of companies should be strategically embedded in organizations' international marketing plans and not remain just on-off responses to crises should marketing-related benefits be obtained. Several recommendations are made to strengthen companies' adoption of a proactive, engagement-oriented approach to CSR communication.

The CSR communication of international companies during external crises has not been sufficiently studied in relation to international marketing, as most studies considered internal corporate crises. Focusing on an external crisis (COVID-19 pandemic) with global impacts, this study advances existing knowledge on international companies' CSR communication to their customers. Additionally, this study offers new insights on the role of integrated, coordinated and consistent CSR messages and strategies, which are targeted to the needs and expectations of domestic and international customers in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to investigate consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to brand crisis and examine an empirical model to explain consumer’s internal process in the context of negative information about a brand, analyzing the relationships between the brand association types, brand-customer relationship strength and consumers’ responses depending on the types of brand crises.

This study uses an integrative approach based on qualitative and quantitative methods: a focus-group interview and an experiment.

The results indicated that consumers’ responses were more favorable in the corporate ability (CA) crisis than in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis. In addition, consumers with high brand-customer relationship strength and brand associations for CA (CSR) showed more favorable responses to a brand crisis related to CA (CSR) than to that related to CSR (CA).

Managerially, firms should improve their marketing activity to reinforce particular brand association type that strongly related customers mainly have. In addition, firms should carefully find the best timing and channel that strongly related customers usually access, to present corporate corresponding statements in brand crisis and information of their corporate crisis-coping process.

Theoretically, this study will contribute to the literature on brand crises by providing critical insights into the mechanism underlying consumers’ responses to brand crises.

An increasing number of organizations focus on creating value in economics and growing their aspect, encompassing human, social and environmental perspectives. Traditionally, organizations mostly contained corporate social responsibility (CSR) as their actions only in an economically favorable situation. However, CSR can also be used in an unfavorable time as a strategic process to recover and sustain the organization during a crisis. The purpose of this study is to review six years (2015-2021) articles published on strategic CSR.

The literature review of the current study examines through source data and combination findings the role of strategic CSR during a time of crisis. The search was conducted using Google Scholars, Psych Info, Emerald Insight, Science Direct and ProQuest. The study reviewed six years of articles on strategic CSR (2015–2021).

The paper concludes by suggesting propositions and a model that indicated that effective communication encourages employees and external stakeholders to participate and enhance their contribution during the crisis and help gain a competitive advantage.

The present review demonstrated managing crisis by incorporating strategic CSR initiatives. The role of communication is important for understanding the crisis, which builds a trust-based relationship with employees and external stakeholders and enhances their participation and engagement that can help sustain during the crisis. This study will help the organizations during the time of crisis because strategic CSR initiatives reduce the negative effect of the crisis and help achieve organizational competitive advantages.

The present review bridges the gap in strategic CSR during the COVID-19 crisis interface. This review aims to understand the role of strategic CSR during the time COVID-19 of crisis. This study contributes to the strategic CSR research by giving clarity regarding the managing crises of organizations.

Prior research studies have discussed the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) during crisis situations in increasing the resilience and sustainability of the companies. There are two basic models of crisis management – reactive and proactive. When a crisis occurs, suddenly firms tend to act reactively and progressively take proactive steps to manage the crisis. CSR can also be reactive and proactive during crisis situations. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to explore whether CSR during the COVID-19 pandemic moved from a reactive to a proactive stance, with specific focus on CSR legislation, corporate CSR response and corporate thinking about CSR.

This paper adopts a mixed methods approach, using both qualitative and quantitative research designs. This study draws upon both primary and secondary data.

The results highlighted the change in the CSR approach from being reactive to being proactive as the pandemic progressed. This was observed through the increase in frequency of CSR legislation, and the shift in the intent of CSR legislation from “prompting to donate” to “prompting to volunteer.” Similarly, the shift in reactive to proactive CSR corporate response was observed through the increased spending on CSR and improved COVID-related CSR reporting.

This study recommends companies to manage crises by becoming more proactive. CSR activities need to be closely aligned with national developmental objectives, and collaborate with various stakeholders to achieve the intended outcomes of the activities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research paper is one of the few to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on CSR in India at a time when India went through three waves of the pandemic. This study corroborates with other studies in terms of managing crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate whether or not public relations efforts in corporate social responsibility (CSR) influence the news media in corporate crisis situations.

The study conducted a content analysis of press releases and news media based on traditional human-coded cross-lag analyses and a machine learning technique, a novel method of big data analysis to test hypotheses.

Results indicate that CSR press releases indeed influenced the news media. During the crisis point, however, agenda-building was not observed.

Corporations need to continue CSR activities and provide public relations materials consistently even after a crisis, as an agenda-building role could be recovered.

The study examines the relationship between CSR and crisis situations in an agenda-building theoretical framework. The authors introduce agenda-building in the corporate sector with machine learning techniques.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multidimensional corporate social responsibility (CSR) crisis typology from the consumers’ perspective and to provide an agenda for future research.

Basic content-related dimensions for characterizing CSR crises from the consumers’ perspective are derived from a review of relevant static crisis typologies. Different types of consumer responses to negative CSR information are derived from various theoretical approaches. Dynamic process models of corporate crises are reviewed to assign various types of consumer responses to different crisis phases. Linking both static and dynamic approaches leads to a comprehensive consumer-oriented typology of CSR crises that is illustrated with examples.

A CSR crises typology is developed based on three consumer-related dimensions: the extent to which the company is attributed blame by consumers; the amount of perceived damage potential; and the perceived CSR relevance of the crisis situation. The combination of these dimensions results in eight different crisis types. For each of these crisis types, different forms of consumer responses are assigned that prevail in the so-called potential, latent and manifest crisis phase.

Future research could address the empirical review of the crisis typology presented, its refinement by considering various consumer and stakeholder segmentation approaches and the advanced dynamic analysis of CSR crises by including stakeholder characteristics that impact the diffusion of CSR-related negative publicity.

The results of this paper support early crisis detection and effective crisis management by identifying relevant target variables for crisis communication.

The typology developed enables a broad spectrum of CSR crises to be classified, including those that have been neglected in previous systematization approaches, such as CSR-related tensions, general sustainability crises and product-harm crises. Due to its theoretical foundation, this paper also contributes to a clearer demarcation of existing CSR crisis constructs.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of varying cultural dimensions, according to Hofstede, on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance before and during the COVID-19 crisis.

This study examines the moderating impact of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on the relationship between CSR and firm performance. The database comprises 36,295 firm-year observations from 2,135 firms operating in civil law countries.

The findings confirm that CSR investments have a positive impact on firm performance both before and after the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, it becomes evident that cultural dimensions play a moderating role in the CSR–firm performance relationship. The crisis has generated a shift in perspective, emphasizing the advantages of CSR in terms of reputation and financial well-being in the post-crisis environment.

The significance of this study lies in its examination of the relationship between CSR and firm performance within the framework of Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory, before and during the COVID-19 crisis.