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This study aims to investigate how organizational culture (OC) and transformational leadership (TL) affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance (environmental performance and social performance) and financial performance (FP) in the context of the Italian manufacturing sector. Grounded in resource-based view theory, this study explores how these factors influence sustainable firm performance.

Data gathered from 260 employees were analyzed to examine the multidimensional aspects of CSR, encompassing social and environmental sustainability.

The findings highlight the pressing need for sustainable firm performance in the existing environment, supporting the hypothesis that firms achieve sustainable and FP through the recognition of TL and OC. Moreover, a positive and significant relationship between CSR performance and FP was established, underscoring the strategic importance of integrating CSR initiatives into core business practices. This study offers valuable insights for both academia and firms, providing theoretical and practical implications that underscore the importance of cultivating a robust OC to drive performance enhancements.

This study is novel because it is one of the first, to the best of the author’s knowledge, to analyze the relationships between TL, OC and performance components associated with CSR.

The modern corporation is evaluated by many measures that go beyond profit, which was the emphasis for years previously. Today’s corporation is weighed against expectations of many stakeholders, including not just customers but employees, investors, the government and even the public at large with no discernible financial or other tie to a company. As such, corporate boards necessarily must be concerned with more than financial performance, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the increasing emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. Given that public relations scholars and practitioners have long been concerned with stakeholder relationships, social responsibility and other non-financial indicators, it would make sense that public relations has a more obvious presence on corporate boards.

This study examined the 25 companies in the Fortune Modern Board 25 to determine how many board members had a background or expertise in public relations that would contribute to the leadership necessary for the concerns of the modern corporation, and whether the boards had a committee designated to public relations or related functions.

Results show that there are few corporate boards that have public relations represented prominently in either their members or committees. The same is true for executive leadership teams. Public relations or communications executives do appear to play some role in ESG, CSR and DEI reporting, but often there are staff members with those specific titles and roles.

The study was limited to 25 corporations on a Forbes list that ranked them as best in communicating ESG, CSR and DEI. The method examined publicly available literature which was revealing to the research questions, but more could be learned by interview or survey with CCOs.

The study shows the current presence of public relations capacity in terms of members of corporate boards, corporate committees and among the C-suite is not significant. Also, rather than PR as a function owning modern concerns of DEI, ESG and CSR, there are professionals with specific expertise in those areas who are responsible for those corporate issues.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), ESG (environmental, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) have recently been stressed as important for corporations to measure and report. The role of the public relations profession in managing and/or communicating in these areas is important to consider in terms of public expectations and satisfaction of communication on these subjects.

This paper is unique in integrating public relations theory and practice with board theory and the current management concerns with ESG, CSR and DEI. Little if any previous research has considered which professions are in charge of communicating on these concerns.

This study aimed to evaluate the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for knowledge synthesis, the production of written content and the delivery of coaching conversations.

The research employed the use of experts to evaluate the outputs from ChatGPT's AI tool in blind tests to review the accuracy and value of outcomes for written content and for coaching conversations.

The results from these tasks indicate that there is a significant gap between comparative search tools such as Google Scholar, specialist online discovery tools (EBSCO and PsycNet) and GPT-4's performance. GPT-4 lacks the accuracy and detail which can be found through other tools, although the material produced has strong face validity. It argues organisations, academic institutions and training providers should put in place policies regarding the use of such tools, and professional bodies should amend ethical codes of practice to reduce the risks of false claims being used in published work.

This is the first research paper to evaluate the current potential of generative AI tools for research, knowledge curation and coaching conversations.