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Online CSR communication of top Hungarian companies has been analysed, aiming at the exploration of the internal and external consistency of corporate communication practices.

Critical discourse analysis was implemented in the research of selected corporate web pages and social media presence of the companies in the sample. Then a comparison of online disclosure and the unethical/illegal activities of selected industries – telecommunication, construction and retail – was made.

No positive correlation between the culpability and the intensity of online CSR communication was detected. Therefore, it is not confirmed that disclosure of socially responsible activities and principles on the web is a mere corporate lip service. However, in certain highly controversial industries companies intensively communicate about their CSR actions on the one hand, and commit different forms of misconduct on the other.

Our methodology certainly has limitations since we registered only a few forms of unethical behaviour. Additionally, our focus was on large Hungarian companies, therefore the opportunity for generalization is limited.

Our findings show remarkable dissonances in CSR communication and point to a rhetoric-reality gap that needs more attention from practitioners as well.

Applications of critical discourse analysis of online CSR communication is relatively rare, only few studies have been conducted so far to explore potential dissonances and contradictions within online communication and between communication and real activities.

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.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the communicative side of modern companies operating in the food industry, paying attention to the CSR discourse conducted in online communication. In this contribution, an attempt is made to show how the dialogue on corporate social conscience taking place at corporate websites shapes the way companies can be perceived in terms of organizational metaphors and how this perception mirrors the performance of CSR-oriented companies.

The approach applied in this chapter relies on both discursive and social theories, characteristic of investigating metaphors. To narrow the scope of the research exclusively to one sector and its online identity, the author focuses on the role of websites and their discursive content to study the CSR communication in the food industry.

The analysis of online corporate representation related to CSR practices in the selected companies operating in the food industry has led to the creation of six metaphors that can be used to discuss the performance of modern food producers from the metaphorical perspective.

The chapter concentrates on analysing the selected websites of Polish and Italian food companies, without dividing the alimentation sector into subtypes.

The topic discussed in this study may be interesting not only for the specialists and academics interested in CSR but also for the broadly understood stakeholders of the alimentation sector.

The chapter draws the readers’ attention to the role of communication in the relation between organizations and stakeholders and how it may shape organizational identities.

The issue of CSR-oriented communication in the food industry has not been studied in detail as far as organizational metaphors are concerned. As has been shown in this chapter, organizational metaphors facilitate the understanding of corporate identity in the alimentation sector, stressing its focus on corporate social conscience.

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.

The purpose of our chapter is to explore the extent to which online repositories of stories related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), reported by companies, represent a tool which can contribute, combined with the potential pressure of the social networks, to perpetuating and increasing such reporting behaviour.

In order to explore this, we have analysed the CSR stories of companies published on the largest online repository from Romania, that is, the website www.responsabilitatesociala.ro. We explore two research questions: Could a repository site facilitate that more and more companies report their CSR activities? and Will a company that presented one case at some point in time present more cases in the next reporting period? For this purpose we have used as method the content analysis having as counting unit each article published and each company which, at some point, published something. Our analysis covered the articles published within 2006–2012 and thus we have used 1121 articles/case studies.

In terms of findings, we conclude that such online repository leads to an important increase in the number of companies having their CSR activities published, although such increase has not been steady. In our view such reporting started a trend. Some companies, after being published in a certain year may have not reported the following year, but nonetheless, new companies decided to publish about their CSR activities each year. In the case of the second question, we could not determine a particular pattern. The number of companies which published, at least in 6 out of the 7 years we have analysed, has been quite low – 12, and there have been big discrepancies between years and between articles per company.

The main limitation of our chapter is that we could not correlate the articles published with other variables, such as: reporting on Facebook and on the official webpage or the extent to which CSR managers from companies think that such repositories have exerted any type of good pressure on them to publish and report their activities.

This approach is important for CSR managers and other stakeholders – such repositories can be both a source of inspiration and a good practice model. One can ‘show, view and shop’ CSR activities in one stop online and take the example further. We believe that this is something specific for all countries, where CSR entered the business as a public relations (PR) concept and then evolved.

The value of our chapter consists in exploring such simple and on-hand online repositories and finding issues of interest for further research.

The communication of messages and initiatives still remains the missing piece in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice. Traditional media and corporate websites (ruled by a one-way communication process) have failed to promote an open and interactive CSR communication process with different groups of stakeholders.

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, among other social media platforms, allow users to interact and collaborate with each other. For example, people are empowered through social media to demand more transparency regarding corporate operations that can impact society and environment. Therefore, with the popularisation of social media, companies must understand that today more than ever, they should effectively communicate sustainability practices with the purpose of building and improving stakeholder relationships. But are companies ready to engage in CSR communication through social media? In other words, are they ready to invest in relationships?

This chapter analyses how corporations use social media for CSR communication. A content analysis methodology was used to examine Twitter official corporate profiles of 50 Fortune companies over the course of a two-month period. The purpose of this investigation was to discover what type of CSR and Sustainability core subjects were communicated and the type of communication presented in the messages.

The purpose of this chapter is to carry out a theoretical review of the state of the art in relation to Latin American Small and Medium Enterprises' (SMEs) communication practices and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from 2009 to 2016. A range of recently published papers (2009–2016) is retrieved in a literature search of the Web of Science and Google Scholar under keywords such as ‘CSR’, ‘SME’, ‘Communication’, and ‘CSR in Latin America’. This chapter provides information about CSR in SMEs, indicating what can be found on this topic and how the management of CSR communication can help those firms. It also recognizes the lack of any real formation in SMEs to solve their problems in this area. This chapter emphasizes that, in general terms, SMEs are aware of CSR management opportunities but, because of the aforementioned constraints, their current CSR communications practices are absolutely basic and their management is still limited and short-term. Instead of a generalized exhaustive study, this is an approach to develop new studies in the future. It does not contain empirical results but rather practical information for reflections on CSR and communication in Latin American SMEs. A useful source of information for SME managers. CSR communications policies generate no value unless they have been taken into account in the overall design of corporate CSR policy, particularly if there is no clear vision of how new stakeholders may be more valuable strategically than operationally. This chapter fulfils an identified information/resources need and offers indications for future lines of research.

This chapter is to introduce to the reader the background, purpose, core themes and structure of the volume. Brief summaries of all the following chapters in the book are provided.

Literature review and desk research.

This chapter suggests that CSR communication as a cross-section of communication studies and CSR research should be highlighted as an important subject of inquiry to bridge the communicative gap between businesses and their stakeholders as well as the public at large. An initial theoretical framework on CSR communication is presented.

A general research direction is provided for CSR communication. It encourages more future scholarly studies in this emerging and fascinating field.

The overall purpose is to help grow knowledge and develop understanding of the ways in which businesses communicate CSR.

It is the first time in the field of CSR communication that a relatively comprehensive and systematic framework is presented. The chapters that follow in the book cover many contents of the framework.

In recent years, there has been a growing importance of sustainability communication and the role of the Internet in contemporary corporate communication that has allowed the diversification of information dissemination tools. Thus, the objective of this study is to determine the quantity and nature of the content of the information related to sustainability disclosed through the corporate website of Portuguese metal mould companies. The results obtained based on the content analysis seem to indicate that the number of metal mould companies that discloses sustainability information is quite low. Those who disclose information are in a very limited way whether in quantity or in relation to the type of information disclosed. Considering the various dimensions of sustainability, the information disclosed about environmental and social aspects is scarce. The focus is on aspects related to the economic dimension, particularly in the areas related to products and services and customers.