Alongside, and independent of the rise of the digital economy, corporate responsibility is also attracting attention from academics and practitioners with discourses emphasising the intersection between businesses, consumers and citizen movements, and how these are shaped by technology. This book aims to explore the intersection between corporate social responsibility and online communities and identify new developments and tensions in this complex and rapidly evolving field.
1.1 Corporate Responsibility and Online Communities
There is a substantial academic debate on the role of the CSR in the digital economy and the way the relationships between organisations, citizens and stakeholders in society will change due to technology. This part of the book focused the discussion on the online communities and the ways that stakeholders and organisations relate in this virtual environment.
Georgiana Grigore, Mike Molesworth and Francisca Farache (Chap. 2) critically discuss several conceptualisations that have emerged in recent years, which capture the intersections between digital technology and CSR. They note that these new terms are not fully considered by their proposers, may carry nuances that obscure CSR, and might be potentially concerning as they create more fragmentation in CSR theories. The authors also try to locate positive transformation that result in responsible business practice in the age of digital technology.
Loukas Spanos (Chap. 3) highlights the importance of crowdfunding as a component of corporate responsibility strategy in the banking system. Empirical evidence from the Act4Greece case study shows how crowdfunding can be effectively incorporated into CSR, and one of the most important benefits for the bank is the opportunity to form partnerships and to communicate with the dynamic community of innovative businesses, reputable foundations, NGOs and community organizations with major impacts on society.
David McQueen (Chap. 4) explores the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL) controversy, and how the related digital campaign brought the pipeline construction in North Dakota to a temporary halt in the last few months of the Obama administration, but was subsequently greenlighted through a Presidential memorandum by Donald Trump in January 2017. This chapter investigates the efforts of citizens and an unprecedented coalition of Native American communities to be heard by the mainstream media and political establishment. It points to ongoing corporate social irresponsibility and failure to engage in meaningful dialogue with communities affected by pipeline infrastructure. It notes links to other social protest movement around the globe and the urgent need to move towards more sustainable energy systems.
Tauheed Ramjaun (Chap. 5) explores the growing importance of online forums in healthcare support, by looking at the case of people living with arthritis in the UK. An interpretive methodology is used to explore user experience on this forum and to appreciate its role in the everyday lives of people living with arthritis. Data collection methods involve qualitative in-depth interviews with nine participants that have been using the charityâs online forum as users or moderators. Findings suggest that healthcare charities need to consider a more professional approach to managing their online forums that have the potential of complementing or even substituting traditional channels of support. There are also various opportunities for unleashing the capabilities of such online platforms with the professional involvement of managerial and medical staff.
1.2 Corporate Responsibility Activities and Social Media
There has been a relentless and largely unmapped increase in corporate responsibility communication using the Internet in recent years, where organisations use their own corporate websites or social media as tools for engaging with various stakeholders and communities. The rise of social media platforms, in particular, has dramatically increased the power of stakeholderâs word-of-mouth (Du et al. 2010). This development, amongst others, is explored in the second part of this book, which deals with how organisations can engage proactively with stakeholders using digital technology and how citizens use and understand the term sustainability .
Ana Adi (Chap. 6) focuses on the emerging discourses and themes associated with the sustainability hashtag on Twitter as a way of discovering concerns, issues and key conceptual associations for the field. 15,000 tweets were collected using the data mining tool Socioviz over three different periods (between August 2015 and January 2016). The platform was used to report hashtag frequencies and the most active and influential accounts associated with sustainability . Socioviz also provided user network and hashtag network visualisation as entry points into the data as a means to identify conceptual associations with the sustainability hashtag and identify those driving and shaping the Twitter discussion about sustainability . This chapter concludes that sustainability emerges from a Twitter community with very loose ties and that the content shared around the hashtag has the effect of reducing CSR practice to sustainability alone. This tends to exclude other perspectives that posit CSR as a practice not solely related to sustainability and the environment.
Freya Samuelson-Cramp and Elvira Bolat (Chap. 7) emphasise the key motivations for social media users to interact with non-profit or charity-related campaign. In many cases, the interaction with a charity in the form of liking or sharing social media content and pages, is referred to as âslacktivismâ. This chapter examines the types of social media users (slacktivists, activists and non-conformists) that communicate with non-profit organisations. Their discussion illustrates how âslacktivistsâ can be valuable âsupportersâ and charities should nurture the relationship with them in order to receive more tangible support.
Francisca Farache, Isobel Tetchner and Jana Kollat (Chap. 8) analyse more then 3000 tweets related to CSR communication, and conclude that companies discuss more about their business practices and philanthropic activities and less about product-related initiatives. The authors advocate for a more open dialogic approach to CSR communications on Twitter, and also for the use of stakeholders opinion to their benefit. Moreover, they recommend an improvement of transparent communication on Twitter about product-related initiatives and a balance between dissemination of information and real dialog with stakeholders.
Fragkoulis A. Papagiannis, Seng Kok, and Zenon Michaelides (Chap. 9) reveal the importance of innovative services in digital communication and social networking when branding a cityâs profile. It presents the role of social responsibility in branding and networking using the case study of Thessaloniki . Their discussion is on how we can create synergy by using online and offline activities for promoting a city.
1.3 Corporate Responsibility in the Digital Economy: Global Challenges
DâAnselmi et al. (2017) points out that responsibility is for all organisations, including public administration. Corporate responsibility in the digital economy calls on organisations to identify innovative approaches to engage with stakeholders and to diversify their tools for CSR communications . It also raises questions about new areas of responsibility that need to be considered â the responsibilities that currently are silent (Grigore et al. 2017). Some of these challenges are presented in this part of the book.
Marco Frey and Alessia Sabbatino (Chap. 10) lead chapter on the United Nationâs 17 measurable Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which should be driving CSR practice were highlighted in his keynote talk at the 2016 ICSR conference in Milan. Their contribution indicates how these interconnected goals are likely to shape practitionersâ work as well as global corporationsâ policies and governance structures in coming years. This internationally agreed framework for sustainable development will help shape and organise the debate on corporate responsibility and sustainability in a global context.
Isabell Koinig, Franzisca Weder, Sandra Diehl and Matthias Karmasin (Chap. 11) identify how corporate responsibility is presented in the curriculum of education institutions at high school level from 22 countries. Their result show that corporate responsibility and related concepts (especially sustainability ) now occupy a prominent role in educational offerings of high school programmes in Europe.
Anat Toder-Alon, Tali Teeni-Harari, Estery Giloz and Eya Rosenstreich (Chap. 12) argue that when a company explicitly communicates about CSR activities and often want to portray that they are involved in âdoing goodâ, their behaviour could in fact mask immoral acts and aggressive tax avoidance practices.
Samreen Ashraf (Chap. 13) explores the factors that can have an impact on CSR practices in a country and presents them using Pakistan as a case study. Despite âlowâ penetration of the internet in that nation, the author underlines the impact of a social media campaign in promoting stakeholders rights when a company acts irresponsibly.
1.4 An Overview
This book seeks to advance an emerging body of literature examining the intersections between corporate responsibility and online communities, by drawing upon multidisciplinary fields of study and exploring various international contexts. The main benefits of this book include developing: conceptualizations of CSR in the digital economy, exploring points of intersection between CSR and the Internet and reflecting on new areas of responsibility that organisations must face in contemporary societies. This book offers new insights into corporate social responsibility and its communication and highlights emerging practices amongst online communities, particularly as they participate and engage with, or challenge, organisations in a variety of national and transnational settings. The book includes papers presente...