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This study aims to investigate the relations between long-window stock returns and prior years’ increases in DuPont identity components: profit margin and asset turnover. In particular, the authors examine the relative effectiveness of profit margin and asset turnover to predict years ahead stock returns.

To test the assertions, the authors regress raw, Capital Asset Pricing Model and Fama-French returns on controls and variables of interest, profit margin and asset turnover, lagged years t − 1, t − 2 and t − 3. To control for factors that could affect returns over the long windows, they also include returns lagged over years t − 1, t − 2 and t − 3 to coincide with the lagged profit margin and asset turnover variables of interest.

Results show a negative (positive) relation between returns and increases in lagged profit margin (asset turnover). However, the negative returns-profit margin relation is mitigated when increases in profit margin and asset turnover occur in the same lagged year.

This study adds to the existing body of research on the DuPont identity by temporally evaluating the relative long-run contributions of profit margin and asset turnover to firm value.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute an international perspective to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability (Sus) discussions by examining CSR/Sus reporting practices of the 200 largest state-owned and private companies in India.

The authors conduct a case study at the Danish carpet manufacturer EGE. The authors interpret the case from the perspective of pragmatic constructivism, which focusses on the integration of four dimensions: facts, possibilities, values, and communication.

The analyses showed that while most companies share CSR/Sus information through their websites they associate different levels of importance to this communication. However, the study found that overall the CSR/Sus climate in India is showing signs of positive reform.

Being among the first, this study provides a framework for future studies to continue exploring CSR/Sus context in India, a country that despite its growing importance and influence has been largely ignored in the CSR/Sus literature.

The study outlines the current CSR/Sus reporting trends and best practices in India that can help managers and organizations identify issues and topics that they could channel their resources and efforts into to maximize returns and benefits in this area.

This study provides insights into how corporations in an emerging and complex economy such as India are assuming roles of corporate citizens and are actively using web-based communication to engage and interact with stakeholders on issues that are of general concern.

The value of this study is in providing empirical insights into the strategies that Indian companies use to report on their CSR/Sus policies and commitments. The study is among the first to examine CSR in India from a sustainability perspective, and evaluate compliance with global reporting standards among top corporations.

This chapter aims to understand the communication practices of CSR in technological environments, specifically corporate websites. It is important to know what are the dimensions of CSR most valued in online communication, what content is more widespread, and if there is dialogic communication between organizations and different stakeholders. It was used a quantitative method of analysis, using the expanded web content analysis. It was based on the study results of the 1,000 largest Portuguese companies published by the Economic Journal in 2014. The chapter includes the analysis of the best companies from 24 sectors of activity of Portugal. Portuguese organizations use their websites to communicate about CSR practices. A large majority of companies dedicate to these subjects a higher number of pages. The findings indicate that the issues disseminated are various, but the predominance content is related to environmental dimension. Results suggest a low level of dialogic dimension adoption. It is proposed a theoretical framework of online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions: the technical dimension, the informational dimension and dialogical dimension, considering the different kind of publics and the different practice areas inherent to CSR. This framework is a contribution to the deepening of knowledge and understanding of online communication of CSR practices, on the perspective of public relations theory. It has practical implications to communication, because it proposes guidelines that should be considered in an effective online communication of CSR in organizations of various sectors of activity in Portugal. It is proposed a theoretical framework of an effective online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions that are part of the dialogical capacity of organizations.

Web 2.0 and the social networks have changed how organizations interact with their publics. They enable organizations to engage in symmetric dialogic communications with individuals. Various organizations are increasingly ­using different social media to enhance their visibility and relationships with their publics. They allow them to disseminate information, to participate, listen and actively engage in online conversations with different stakeholders. Some social networks have become a key instrument for corporate communication. Therefore, this chapter presents a critical review on the organizations’ dialogic communications with the publics via social networks. It puts forward a conceptual framework that comprises five key dimensions including ­“active presence,” “interactive attitude,” “interactive resources,” “responsiveness” and “conversation.” This contribution examines each dimension and explains their effect on the organizations’ dialogic communication with the publics. Hence, this contribution has resulted in important implications for corporate communication practitioners as well as for academia. Moreover, it opens future research avenues to academia.

This study aims to analyze whether companies from six Latin American countries are encouraging dialogic communication on Facebook.

To do so, the paper studied the level of predisposition for interaction and the type of interaction achieved by companies on Facebook to produce an effective dialogic communication exchange and to generate conversation through different types of communication exchange between organizations and users. This research includes a specific analysis of the active presence, interactive attitude, interactive resources, responsiveness and conversation of 29,078 posts on 135 corporate fanpages of companies from six Latin American countries.

The results show that companies have a low interest in managing communication from a dialogic perspective on the social network, not only because a greater predisposition to interaction is needed, but also because the interaction generated is very low. Therefore, the paper identifies the need to review the communication strategy on social networks and to define a strategy aligned to the dialogic nature of the social network.

This research contributes to broadening the conceptual reflection on the evaluation of the dialogue in the digital context and aims to generate new methodological contributions to the evaluation of dialogic communication in an integrated way.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical analysis of CSR communication posted on the websites of 70 companies listed on the main stock markets in German-speaking countries, the so-called DACH region. The results of this analysis offer answers to questions that are currently being discussed in the CSR literature, namely, on the importance attributed to stakeholder information vs stakeholder dialogues in (online) CSR communication.

Using a quantitative content analysis, the study examines the extent to which leading German, Austrian and Swiss companies are meeting communication and CSR-related requirements, especially regarding stakeholder dialogue and overall stakeholder involvement.

Drawing on Morsing and Schultz’s (2006) theoretical insights concerning stakeholder engagement, this study shows that current CSR communication primarily provides information for stakeholders and contains only a few elements of consultation with stakeholders. In addition, no elements indicating stakeholder involvement in decision processes were found. Data analysed in 2004, 2007, 2012 and 2016 for the German DAX companies allowed for comparisons over time. A closer examination of these data revealed increasing professionalism in CSR communication, especially in the provision and presentation of information. Regarding information clarity and opportunities for dialogue, however, the results show low progress. The criteria set developed for the study provides guidance for how companies can improve their CSR communication, but the findings on the long-term slow progress in stakeholder involvement, in some aspects even a decrease in dialogue, also raise questions about the (perceived) use of online CSR dialogues for companies.

Communication is viewed from a strategic instrumental perspective. The empirical analysis focusses on the technical possibilities offered by the internet to make CSR communications and reporting available and understandable to stakeholders and to promote dialogue with and among stakeholders.

By focussing on online CSR communication in the DACH region, this study contributes to the current state of research and offers several recommendations for practitioners; it particularly provides critical reflection on online stakeholder dialogues and related paradigms (constitutive vs functionalistic perspective).

The purpose of this paper is to identify and develop a hierarchy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions and their interrelationships using interpretive structural modelling (ISM) methodology.

This research used ISM for framework development. ISM is, however, a sound method for developing insight into the collective understanding of the relationships between dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) identified from the literature review. The steps involved in the ISM technique are structural self-interaction matrix, reachability matrix, level partitions, developing the canonical matrix, classification of dimensions for CSR and formation of ISM.

The findings indicate that company size is the only key driver for the other dimensions of CSR and is hence placed at the very bottom of the ISM model. Above this, at Level II, the key dimensions are corporate governance, diversity and corporate profile. These act as mediating dimensions between company size and the topmost level (i.e. Level III), which comprises 15 dimensions including CSR.

Some limitations of this research indicate the need for further research. First, the proposed ISM model has only been conceptualised and has not been empirically tested using primary data. Future research is needed to validate the model in whole or part, to understand the perceived CSR of a company. Second, the methodology was limited to the use of ISM to model the CSR dimensions; it was not extended to fuzzy MICMAC analysis or to interpretive ranking.

The proposed ISM-based model for the identification and ranking of CSR dimensions and their interrelationships offers decision makers and practitioners a more convincing representation of the problems affecting the exploration of CSR dimensions. The utility of the proposed ISM method lies in imposing order and direction on the complexity of relationships among these dimensions, which will help top management and decision makers to better use their available resources in optimising their CSR practices. The framework allows policymakers to effectively incorporate these dimensions into their practising of CSR.

This is the first research on CSR to conceptualise a framework of causal interactions among its key dimensions using ISM methodology.

The era of globalization has increased the challenges for multinational corporations (MNCs) to retain legitimacy. In striving for legitimacy, MNCs increasingly engage in dialogue processes with their stakeholders. However, the era of globalization and the parallel rise of the Internet and the new “Web 2.0” have dramatically widened the range of options for such dialogue processes. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in particular make use of “social media” (e.g., Facebook, Weblogs, Twitter) which enable them to quickly generate attention regarding socially and environmentally harmful business practices by MNCs. In response, MNCs have started applying social media technologies for corporate communication purposes. However, given the novelty of these activities, we lack knowledge on how these organizations make use of social media. Therefore, in this chapter, we examine how MNCs and NGOs utilize one particular social media application, that is, Twitter, for dialogic stakeholder communication.

In our empirical study, we examine current practices of Twitter usage by MNCs and NGOs. We investigate a dataset of more than 3,000 Twitter articles from 30 MNCs and 30 NGOs in the German-speaking world. Our analysis is based on the “conceptual orality or literality” scale by Koch and Oesterreicher (1994).

The comparative analysis shows that on average MNCs and NGOs exhibit a surprisingly similar profile on Twitter. Both tend toward conceptual literality. However, the analysis of Tweets per organization reveals a much larger variance. At the extreme poles, while some NGOs (like Greenpeace Youth) make extensive use of the medium’s potential for conceptual orality, some MNCs (like Deutsche Börse) almost entirely adhere to conceptual literality. In other words, these MNCs promote a classical one-way model of communication and fail to make use of the dialogue-like qualities of the medium.

We analyzed a small number of organizations and we restricted our study to MNCs and NGOs in the German-speaking world. Furthermore, Twitter only allows for short messages with a maximum of 140 letters or signs. This, in turn, renders questionable whether the medium is suited to establish deliberative dialogues between MNCs and NGOs that are based on more elaborate arguments which can be expressed in the short format.

Our study addresses the lack of research regarding new possibilities for stakeholder communication in the age of social media. Moreover, the study methodologically contributes to the study of social media in the context of corporate communication by applying the scale of “conceptual orality or literality” to MNCs’ and NGOs’ Twitter usage.

The chapter examines the employment of unique social media concepts (e.g., dialogue, engagement, mobilization, authenticity, influence, and transparency) for CSR communication among top companies in Latin America. A quantitative content analysis of 1,000 tweets from corporate official accounts of the top 25 largest firms in the Latin Trade ranking was performed. Tweets were randomly selected if contained hashtags or keywords related to CSR concepts (CSR, sustainability, citizenship, society, environment, etc.). Transparency was the social media concept most employed on CSR-related messages on Twitter. However, most of the companies did not include any of the social media features analyzed. The results of this chapter are consistent with previous studies that social media is used as another traditional informational channel. This work only analyzed tweets sent by Latin American companies, it did not take into consideration responses to messages (replies or retweets of the followers of each company). Future studies can examine stakeholders’ response regarding CSR communication for in-depth analysis of the use of social media by Latin American companies. Organizations and companies can benefit from the results of this work in order to craft effective content on social media that includes features and strategies that can resonance to different groups of stakeholders. CSR social media communication studies that focused on Latin America are scarce. Our study is pioneer in analyzing the usage of social media concepts for CSR communication in Latin America.