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This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.

The authors thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.

From this study data the authors introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. The authors find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less-harmful solution. The authors also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. The authors identify seven reporting strategies: Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.

Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industries or in larger populations.

Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company's products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm.

This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries.

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.

Over the last few decades, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received a large amount of attention in research and in practice. As a response to the growing awareness of and concern about social and environmental issues, an increasing number of companies are proactively publishing their CSR-related principles and activities. The overall research question of this study is derived from legitimacy theory and is aimed at elucidating the relationship between industry sector and CSR communication. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The empirical examination encompasses a sample that includes the annual reports of all German DAX-30 companies from 1998 to 2009. First, based on a content analysis, categories of CSR-related communication are defined. Second, these categories are used in a quantitative analysis with a longitudinal perspective to evaluate the hypothesis that companies in controversial industries communicate their CSR more intensely than companies in non-controversial industries.

The qualitative study leads to a category system that accounts not only for CSR-related activities but also for CSR philosophies and motives as the normative basis of CSR communication. The quantitative results support the hypothesis that companies in controversial industries are more active in CSR communication than companies in non-controversial industries.

Existing studies analysing CSR communication activity have been largely inconsistent and often use unsystematic approaches in choosing industries for comparison. Therefore, in this study, to overcome some of these deficiencies, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches addresses the concept of controversial industries.

This paper aims to examine whether companies in Indonesian controversial industries can rely on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices to improve potential employees' job pursuit intention, which lead to a higher quality of work life (QWL) and a better performance from their employees.

The target respondents are interns, staff and supervisors of 42 Indonesian listed companies in controversial industries. The data collection method is performed by distributing questionnaires using a seven-point Likert scale. Collected data using partial least squares (PLS) analysis are conducted and tested.

Consistent with the existing result, the authors find out that potential employees have a higher intention to join and accept a job offer from companies with a higher level of CSR practices. Regarding the corporate social responsibility, it is further proven to have a positive effect on employee's quality of work life. More interestingly, the findings of the current study reveal that CSR also affects employee performance (EP), both directly and indirectly, through QWL.

Findings demonstrate that CSR in Indonesian controversial industry represents an important factor for recruiting top employees that lead to the improvement of the employee's quality of work life and performance.

The findings indicate that enterprises should be more concerned about CSR engagement in attracting new talents, enhancing the quality of work life and cultivating the employee's performance.

This study enhances previous supports and studies on the concept of CSR and human resource management by analyzing the relationship between CSR and employee performance. Previous researches have concentrated their objectives in finding the link between CSR and the financial performance of a company. However, it must be understood that a company's success actually hinges on the performance of one of their greatest assets, the human resources. Additionally, due to the change in generations that will be the job seekers, recruitment strategy to attract job applicants and improve the job pursuit intention (JPI) is now needed more than ever. One of the strategies that Indonesian companies can use to do so is by practicing CSR. Hence, this is the first study in an attempt to observe the overall relationship of the CSR with the job pursuit intention, QWL and EP, especially in the controversial industries. The study will drive companies to intensify their efforts in maintaining good employee performance.

This study aims to explore the impact of controversial firms’ corporate sustainability assessments on their risk exposure according to the environmental, social and governance (ESG) paradigm.

This study conducts a cross-sectional study using the ordinary least squares approach to test how corporate social responsibility practices affect firms’ risk exposure, testing the three single impacts of ESG components and the impact of an overall ESG assessment. This study considers the largest Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stock market index companies and focus on a double-risk measurement – systematic and idiosyncratic – developing an empirical study on 132 controversial companies listed on the S&P index.

Empirical findings indicate that the overall ESG assessment and the environmental and social sub-dimensions decrease idiosyncratic firm risk. At the same time, no significant results are found according to the systematic risk component.

This study fits into the domain of risk management research, investigating whether additional and non-financial disclosures regarding sustainability issues decrease information asymmetries, improving investors’ decision-making and stakeholders’ relations. Prior literature has shown limited evidence on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and firm risk based on controversial companies. The main contribution is to consider the controversy as an independent factor from the industry sector, given that the implications of CSP actions and practices are mainly firm-specific.

Based on the social identification theory, this study aims to understand employees’ reactions to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in oil companies. This study finds that employees’ perceived CSR is positively related to the employee organizational identification in controversial sector companies.

The authors chose to analyze five oil companies in India. These companies are large in size and revenue and provide a valid context for the present study. A survey of 316 employees had been carried out in the year 2015 at the headquarters of these companies located in India.

The finding shows that organization CSR activities enhance employees’ organizational identification, which in turn leads to employee commitment to their organization. Furthermore, the finding highlights the relationship between perceived CSR and organizational identification, which is mediated by perceived external prestige and perceived organizational support.

The limitation of this study is the cross-sectional research design. The variables under investigation were measured only at one specific point of time. Another restriction of the study is that the data had been collected from the self-reported questionnaire. The results were dependent on how employees perceive and interpret how outside world assesses or views their organization.

This study provides a first step of empirical evidence suggesting that CSR engagement is important and can help in building the relation with stakeholders even in controversial industry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivations underpinning recent evolving corporate social and environmental reporting (CSER) among enterprises in China through the lenses of senior managers.

Using the interpretive tenets of engagement research, semi-structured in-depth interviews were adopted to explore the perceptions of senior managers from 21 large companies in various industries. The aim is to make sense of the emerging CSER phenomenon occurring in the field through engagement, observation and penetrating interviews.

The findings identify the main enablers driving CSER in China as: regulations and government influence; management awareness; benefits to company image; peer pressure/reporting by peers and public pressure on controversial companies. Guided by a system-based theoretical framework in terms of motivations for CSER, this study offers insights into the effectiveness of using widely adopted Western-based theoretical approaches in a Chinese context where companies operate against a different socio-economic, political, regulatory and cultural backdrop.

The deep-rooted face (Mianzi) culture has the potential to influence managers to portray a positive image about their companies and themselves.

This engagement-based study is one of the few initiatives exploring managerial perceptions of CSER in China that adds to the scant literature pertaining to rich “emic” data in accounting, encompassing cultural influence by applying systems-oriented theoretical framework. The stimulus for CSER identified are useful for regulators and organizations to better comprehend how to set effective policies that promote CSER and fit the distinctive institutional characteristics of China.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research and practice have grown in preeminence over the past two decades. In corporations, global institutional frameworks (e.g. the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) have guided and spurred the adoption and operationalisation of CSR strategies across industries and sectors. In academia, the business case for CSR seems to have been one of the main research foci towards the transition to more ethical and more responsible management. However, recent ecological and social disturbances (i.e. COVID-19 pandemic, global warming, etc.) have challenged our understanding of the role that CSR can play in this transition. In this chapter, we explore how the use and instrumentalisation of CSR practices in both academia and business have led not only to eroding the concept from its conceptual essence, but also to giving increased power and legitimacy to the very ailments that CSR was created to heal.

The aim of this chapter is to propose a critical analysis of socially responsible investing (SRI) through debate and reconstruction. Our goal is therefore to try to understand how the definition of ethics in finance has steered SRI towards a financial approach where ethics is guided by finance.

This chapter proposes a two-point approach consisting of a meta-debate and development perspectives. Each approach is divided into three debates (ideological and philosophical, scientific and practical), which are interconnected.

The chapter concludes that the debate on mainstream SRI is necessary but should be re-discussed, as it is preventing in its current form the concept from developing and being grounded in real ethical values, sacrificing the individual ethics that should be driving investing decisions.

The chapter proposes to rethink the paradigm around SRI through a conceptual framework that re-inserts finance within ethics, where non-financial performance and impact investment should be at the centre of the scientific debates, leading to an SRI based on exclusion, the consideration of controversies and social impact measurement.

The chapter explores how different theoretical traditions address the gaps between talk (symbolic communication practices) and actions (substantive performance) in organisations. The chapter details the main theoretical approaches in greenwashing research, namely legitimacy theory, attribution theory, institutional theory, signaling theory, impression management approaches and constructivist approaches. Among these latter, Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) challenges the dominant view in literature and suggests abandoning the traditional dichotomy of talk versus action. The different approaches to studying greenwashing are presented along with main questions and research methods used in each field and sub-field of study. For each theoretical approach the main research trends and novel research questions are proposed. Researchers, doctoral and post-graduate students may appreciate this as standalone contribution to guide their future studies in this area, by designing their research avenues based on the best practices in the field.