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This study aims to analyze the content on corporate social responsibility (CSR) of Gucci, Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna on the social networks Instagram, Facebook and TikTok in order to examine the focus of the publications of these luxury brands, what type of content is more frequent and which ones generate more interaction and engagement.

An interpretive content analysis of a sample of 92 posts on CSR published between December 2021 and June 2022 is used. For this purpose, an analysis sheet validated through theoretical constructs and pilot testing is used.

Most of the social responsibility content of the fashion brands analyzed is linked to the use of sustainable materials, the protection of natural spaces and, in the particular case of Prada, the protection of the oceans. The posts that achieve the highest interactions are videos and photo reels. Although the strategies that significantly increase brands' reach on social networks are collaborations and joint posts with other fashion brands, as is the case of Gucci with NorthFace and Prada with Adidas. Also, one of the main findings of this research has been to identify that brands may be using TikTok – perhaps experimentally – to reach stakeholders in Asian countries, especially China, where other platforms such as Instagram or Facebook may have a more limited reach.

This research shows that the social responsibility activities of luxury fashion brands leverage the content marketing strategy in social networks. It also demonstrates the importance of the Asian market (mainly Chinese) in the outreach strategies of brands, as is the case of Gucci and Prada, which bet on CSR activities for the protection of the Asian tiger in the framework of the year of the tiger in the Chinese horoscope, as well as the publication of certain content on TikTok.

Although employees are considered key stakeholders, they receive limited attention in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature compared to other stakeholders such as customers. This study aims to address this gap, investigating how different factors, including CSR communication, may affect employee perceptions, and to what extent they can influence or be influenced by CSR activity.

Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from three multinationals (MNCs) operating in Bangladesh. Mid- and entry-level employees from different departments, namely, marketing, logistics, human resources, IT and finance, were approached for data collection. It is important to note that all the study participants were Bangladeshi.

This study demonstrates how CSR perceptions, shaped by the level of employee awareness, personal beliefs about CSR and perceived motivation for adopting CSR, strengthen psychological ties between employees and their organisation. One-way CSR communication adopted by these MNCs disseminates positive information about an organisation’s contribution to society and creates an aspirational and ideational image, which enhances identification, evokes positive in-group biases and encourages employees to defend their organisation against criticism. This study further demonstrates that employee CSR engagement can galvanise their experience of organisational identity, enhance their pride and reinforce their organisational identification.

Drawing on social identity theory and the CSR communication model proposed by Morsing and Schultz (2006), this study aims to understand employees’ CSR perceptions and the possible impact of this on their behaviour. Previous studies largely focus on customers’ perceptions of these activities, which means the link between CSR perception and employee behaviour remains unclear. The current study suggests that employees working in Bangladesh will not withdraw support from their organisations if CSR is used to build reputation or public image. The findings extend the literature by arguing that some employees in developing countries not only seek to improve their status by working in a reputed organisation but also tend to engage with CSR activities undertaken by their organisation.

This work aims to examine the communication on Twitter of the most responsible companies in Spain to identify the topics covered on corporate social responsibility (CSR) from the perspective of happiness and social marketing. In addition, the profiles of the messages that show an association with the impact of the messages have been identified.

An empirical analysis of the Twitter posts of Spain's ten most responsible companies has been carried out. The methodology of this work combines data mining techniques, sentiment analysis and content analysis, both from a quantitative and qualitative approach.

The results show that most brand tweets do not deal with CSR-related topics. The topics they address the most are those related to sports and the weather. From the perspective of social marketing, conversational-type tweets are the most published and have achieved the most significant reaction from the public. In addition, four messages' profiles have been identified based on the company and the emotional connotation associated with the impact, giving rise to more outstanding promotion of social causes.

Our main contribution to this work has been to value positive communication and social marketing to promote better CSR on Twitter. In this sense, it has been verified that there is a relationship between the public's reaction, the affective connotation and the company that issues the messages.

This study of job advertisements for internal communication practitioners aims to investigate the signals that organisations are sending the profession about what is required of these roles. The concept of corporate voice – the “voice” of the organisation – is problematised to explore tensions in vocality. The aim is to support communication practitioners to navigate multi-vocality in the evolving professional context of digital communication technologies and changes in the workplace.

This qualitative study considers the role of voice in corporate communication practices and offers insights into “digital disruption” and the discursive pressure of employers' priorities on the profession and its practices. Job advertisements for internal communication practitioners were examined during 6-month periods in 2018, 2020 and 2022, which was a significant time of change for the profession with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualitative content analysis of 514 internal communication job advertisements identifies that control and consistency are valorised, and continue to dominate descriptions of internal communication skills and responsibilities. The digital affordances that communication practitioners rely on has not changed significantly and a preference for “broadcasting” is evident.

This study provides insights into how Australian organisations shape and sustain univocal corporate communication practices, and the incompatibility of narrow configurations of voice with emerging organisational challenges such as social connectedness.

The article aims to investigate how washing practices focused on appeasing sceptics of diversity work in for-profit organizations play out in corporate online communication of diversity and inclusion efforts, and how these enable communication to a wide audience that includes social equity advocates.

Online corporate communication data of diversity and inclusion themes were compiled from the websites of eight Swedish-based multinational corporations. The data included content from the companies’ official websites and annual reports and sustainability reports as well as diversity and inclusion-themed blog posts. A thematic analysis was conducted on the website content.

The study showcases how tensions between conflicting external demands are navigated by keeping the communication open to several interpretations and thereby achieving multivocality. In the studied corporate texts on diversity and inclusion, this is achieved by alternating between elements catering to a business case audience and those that appeal to a social justice audience, with some procedures managing to appease both audiences at the same time.

The article complements previously described forms of washing by introducing an additional type of washing – business case washing – an articulation of the business case rhetoric that characterizes the diversity management discourse. While much has been written about washing to satisfy advocates of social change and equity, washing to appease shareholders and boardroom members, who are focused on profit and economic growth, has received less attention. The article suggests that online corporate communication on diversity and inclusion, by appeasing diverse audiences, can be seen as aspirational talk.

Corporations are confronted with growing demands to take a stand on socio-political issues, i.e. corporate social advocacy (CSA), which affects their reputation in the public. Companies use different CSA message strategies, including calling the public to support and act on the issue they advocate. Using reactance theory, the authors investigate the impact of CSA messages with a call to action on corporate reputation in the case of a company's gender equality initiative.

A one-factorial (CSA message with or without a call to action) between-subjects experiment was conducted by surveying 172 individuals living in Switzerland. The CSA messages were created in the context of gender equality.

The authors' study indicates that CSA messages with a call to action compared to those without overall harmed corporate reputation due to individuals' reactance, which is higher for CSA messages with a call to action, negatively affecting corporate reputation. The impact of the CSA message strategy with a call to action on corporate reputation remains significant after controlling for issue alignment and political leaning.

Communicating about socio-political issues, especially taking a stand, is a significant challenge for corporations in an increasingly polarized society and has often led to backlash, boycotts and damage to corporate reputation. This study shows that the possible adverse effects of advocating for socio-political issues can be related to reactance. It emphasizes that companies advocating for contested issues must be more cautious about the message strategy than the issue itself.

This paper aims to examine how CEO talk of sustainability in CEO letters evolves in a period of increased expectations from society for companies to increase their transition towards becoming more sustainable and to better account for progress and performance within the sustainability areas.

By adopting an interpretive textual approach, the paper provides a careful analysis of how CEO talk of sustainability in CEO letters of large listed Swedish companies developed during 2008–2017.

The talk of sustainability is successively becoming more elaborated, proactive and multidimensional. CEOs frame their talk by adopting different perspectives: the distinct environmental, the performance and meso, the product-market-oriented and the sustainability embeddedness and value creation. The shift towards an embeddedness and value-creation perspective in the later letters implies that the alleged capitalistic and short-sighted focus on shareholder value maximisation might be changing towards a greater focus on sustainability embeddedness as an important goal for succeeding with the transition towards a sustainable business.

The findings are relevant for policymakers and government bodies when developing policies and regulations aimed at improving the positive impact of companies on global sustainable development. Findings are also useful for management teams when structuring their sustainability talk as a response to external pressure.

The findings provide relevant input on how social norms, values and expectations are shaping the corporate discourse on sustainability.

The findings of this study contribute to an increased understanding of the rhetorical response in influential CEO letters to the surrounding sustainability context, including new national and international policies as well as sociopolitical events and discourses related to sustainability. This offers a unique frame of reference for further interpretational work on how CEOs frame, engage in and shape the sustainability discourse.

This study explores the role of institutional pressures and top management support in digital corporate social responsibility (CSR) adoption. It also investigates the impact of digital CSR on social trust and corporate sustainability.

Data were collected from 279 managers of Jordanian companies. Smart PLS was utilized to analyze the research model and test hypotheses.

The results reveal that coercive pressures, normative pressures, memetic pressures and top management support significantly impact digital CSR adoption. The results also show that digital CSR significantly impacts social trust and corporate sustainability.

This study provides worthwhile insights into the literature on drivers of digital CSR, social trust and corporate sustainability in unprecedented crises. This study enriches the literature on the relationship between institutional theory and innovative IT solutions adoption theories. The review of prior research confirms an absence of empirical examinations of the causal relations among institutional forces, digital CSR, social trust and corporate sustainability.

Taking a dynamic endogenous perspective, this study aims to examine neglected endogeneity issues in the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and brand value and the relationship’s moderation by corporate governance.

The study uses the three-stage least squares (3SLS) method on 990 samples of the 110 most valuable listed companies published by the World Brand Lab for 2013–2021 to empirically test the two-way interactive endogenous relationship between CSR and brand value.

The findings reveal that increasing investment in CSR increases brand value in the current period, which prompts companies to reduce investment in social responsibility, resulting in a decline in future brand value. Concerning the moderating effect of corporate governance variables, the size of the board of directors and the board’s proportion of independent directors positively regulate the relationship between CSR and brand value. By contrast, the proportion of executive shareholdings has a negative impact.

This study’s findings complement previous studies on endogeneity in the relationship between CSR and brand value, and enrich the literature on corporate governance, CSR and brand value as a whole. In addition, the study uses the 3SLS method, which avoids endogeneity problems and eliminates the one-sidedness of the subjective selection of instrumental variables.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the utilization of visual impression management techniques within sustainability reporting. Specifically, the study aims to determine whether Italian companies employ impression management tactics in the presentation of graphs within their sustainability reports and, thus, problematize visual data communication in corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The research adopts a multimodal content analysis of the 58 sustainability reports from Italian listed companies that are GRI-compliant. The analysis focused on three types of graphs: pie charts, line graphs and bar graphs. In total, 860 graphs have been examined.

The study found evidence of graphical distortion techniques being employed by companies in their sustainability reports to create a favorable impression. Specifically, graph distortions are found in column graphs and not in line or pie charts. In particular, selectivity, presentation enhancement and measurement distortion techniques seem to be extensively used when adopting column graphs in sustainability communication. Moreover, social sustainability–related topics tend to be more represented of other area of CSR reporting. This suggests that companies, whether consciously or unconsciously, engage in impression management techniques when using graphs in their sustainability reports.

The study findings suggest that more consciousness is needed for companies when engaging in the construction and selection of graphs in their sustainability reports and that decision-makers should develop a clear guide for ethical visual communication.

The paper systematically analyzes visual impression management techniques in communicating sustainability data and, in particular, advances literature on graphical distortion. The value lies in empirical evidence of distortion adoption in GRI-compliant reports as well as problematizing visual data communication as a fundamental challenge for sustainability communication management.