The credibility of shock advocacy: Animal rights attack messages

This study examined the impact of a graphic animal rights campaign launched by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) against alleged abuses on a corporate farm. It considered the impact of the campaign upon the credibility of the target of the campaign as well as the producer of the campaign. Results indicated that PETA's attack message against abuses at corporate pig farms was effective in eroding the credibility of the corporate food-industry raising animals for consumption. At the same time, PETA's credibility rose overall after participants viewed the PETA attack message.     

Designing effective corporate social advocacy campaigns using valence,arousal, and issue salience

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) is a growing communications practice that involves corporations taking a public stance on a controversial social issue. Some CSA campaigns have failed in the past (e.g., Pepsi’s 2017 Live for Now Moments Anthem video) by generating public backlash and damaging corporate reputation. To test how to design CSA campaigns that are beneficial for both the corporation and the advocacy issue, the current between-subjects experiment (N = 508) employed a 2 (issue salience: moderate vs. high) X 2 (valence: negative vs. positive) X 2 (arousal: moderate vs. high) factorial design to test the effects of salience, valence, and arousal on memory and four persuasion outcomes: company attitudes, purchase intentions, political participation intentions, and social media intentions, while also analyzing the mediation of information processing. Findings support prior research suggesting that negative valence increases persuasion in CSA contexts. A high-salience issue and high-arousal language increased political participation and social media intentions but had no effect on company attitudes or purchase intentions. Practical implications for CSA campaign designers highlight the persuasive potential of negative valence in CSA messages, and the utility of high-salience and high-arousal for political action and social media engagement.     

Polarized public opinion responding to corporate social advocacy: Social network analysis of boycotters and advocators

Despite growing attention to corporate social-political advocacy, little is known about how publics mobilize and establish relationships in social media when firms are involved in hot-button issues. Using the social network approach, this study examines a network structure which emerged around boycotting and advocating for Starbucks and Budweiser when these two brands responded to President Donald Trump’s immigration ban executive order in 2017. The study identified three unique characteristics in the boycotters’ networks. The boycotters appeared not only in the aggregated brand boycotting networks, but also in the advocators’ networks. In addition, boycotters in Budweiser and Starbucks networks were engaged in boycotting other brands or organizations which were opposed to Republicans or President Trump’s policy. Finally, the network of boycotters was very dense and highly connected among subgroups while that of advocators was sparse. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Sector-dependent framing effects of corporate social responsibility messages: An experiment with non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications can be paradoxical in their effect on consumers attitudes and skepticism toward an organization, buying intentions and the organization's reputation. In this research, we investigated the effects of sector dependence and the framing of CSR messages. A 2 × 3 between-subjects experiment was used with six advertisements for two fictional organizations: one in the alcohol industry (a so-called socially stigmatized industry) and one in a non-alcohol industry. The experiment included 188 participants. The results show that the framing effects of CSR messages are sector specific: in the non-alcohol sector, CSR messages and frames had a positive effect on consumers, whereas in the alcohol sector, they had a negative effect on consumers.     

Measuring consumer digital engagement and political consumerism as outcomes of corporate political advocacy

Given the need for more research into consumer digital engagement in response to corporate political advocacy (CPA) within the public relations body of knowledge, this study examines CPA in the scholarly literature on business ethics and public relations. To advance the understanding of CPA, particularly how to measure behavioral outcomes of CPA, we develop and validate an original scale with four dimensions from two domains. The first domain of CPA outcomes is consumer digital engagement (CDE-CPA), which considers a variety of sociopolitical activities on social media and degrees of behavioral effort required for these activities. The second is political consumerism, which measures consumer political preference expression through purchasing behavior including buycotting and boycotting. Theoretical and practical implications of the research are discussed.     

Theorizing issue-driven public attention and expectations in audience responses to corporate sociopolitical activism: A mixed-method analysis

This study develops an issue-driven framework to theorize the role of public attention, support, and expectations in audience responses to corporations’ engagement in contested issues. Based on a mixed-method study using an online survey (N = 817), we investigate how two forms of expectations—normative and predictive—are associated with motivating cognitions, attitudes toward the social impacts of corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA), and buying intentions. Thematic analysis reveals a four-quadrant typology characterized by varying degrees of public attention and support: legitimate engagement, identify alignment, emergent norm, and obscure practice. The structural equation modeling results demonstrate that predictive expectations are a consistent antecedent to the perceived company–issue fit, perceived issue salience, and issue position. In contrast, the associations between normative expectations, the perceived company–issue congruence, and cognitive involvement are contingent on issue types. Perceived advocacy fit and cognitive involvement positively predict attitudes toward the social impacts of CSA. Buycotting intentions, however, are only determined by individuals’ issue position.     

Forms of advocacy in social welfare work with homeless women

The article examines the practices of social welfare work with homeless women. The question asked is, what forms of advocacy can be identified in these practices, especially from the perspective of welfare rights? The research is conducted in a support point open to all homeless women, located in a large Finnish city. The data consist of a diary kept mainly by three practitioners between 21 August 2000 and 21 September 2001. The analysis, which focuses on 359 entries, shows that the diary contains elements of four different forms of advocacy: best interest advocacy; self- and consumer-controlled advocacy; partnership and personal advocacy; and citizen advocacy. The conclusions from the research have relevance to work with the most vulnerable groups in general and are of three kinds. Firstly, all forms of advocacy are significant, for they complement each other and make up for the deficiencies in other forms. Secondly, the support point functions as a refuge for the homeless women, from which contacts with other service systems are organised and negotiated. Thirdly, this kind of advocacy is needed, because vulnerable groups have the greatest risk of being excluded or mistreated in different service systems.     

Communicating corporate LGBTQ advocacy: A computational comparison of the global CSR discourse

Corporations are increasingly engaging with political and social issues through corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, in new areas such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) advocacy. Informed by institutional theory and stakeholder theory, this article systematically, comparatively, and computationally examines the intersection of LGBTQ advocacy and CSR communication. In particular, it contributes to the literature by (1) examining the global LGBTQ CSR discourse constructed by Fortune Global 500 companies (136,820 words) with semantic network analysis and structural topic modeling; (2) surveying non-profit organizations’ guidelines and comparing corporate values with them; and (3) exploring how stakeholder expectations and institutional factors influence CSR communication. Results indicate 6 corporate topics and 9 non-profit topics, which were explicated by referencing organizations’ original writing. It is further shown that stakeholder expectations and institutional factors not only affect whether or not corporations report LGBTQ efforts, but also affect what topics they highlight in CSR reports. Corporations in democratic countries with substantial stakeholder expectations emphasize areas that need high investment and exceed legal obligations.     

Public relations’ place in corporate social responsibility: Practitioners define their role

Qualitative responses from 173 PR practitioners were used to analyze their roles and contribution to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Practitioners identified five roles for public relations in CSR—significant management, philanthropic, value-driven, communication, and none. PR professionals illustrated these roles by describing their contributions to social responsibility programs. They also expressed limitations to their ability to contribute to CSR programs.     

Walk the line: Active Moms define corporate social responsibility

While many have suggested that corporate social responsibility is in part a response to stakeholders, little research has been done that gives primacy to the targeted publics’ voice, interpretations, and responses to corporate social responsibility. This research examines the meaning and attributes that Active Moms, an often targeted stakeholder group, assign to corporate social responsibility. In nine focus groups (N = 72), participants suggested that authentic CSR (a) is a combination of socially responsible business practices and campaigns to engage issues which impact their lives, (b) must be marked by longevity and consistency, (c) makes the most sense when linked to core business practices, (d) is distinct from philanthropy, and (e) is evaluated using a blend of rationality and emotionality.     

Getting called out: Effects of feedback to social media corporate social responsibility statements

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts via social media are increasingly common and are often key to achieving organizational CSR objectives. Concerns exist about potential damage caused by negative user comments and effects of user feedback to CSR efforts are mostly unknown. Exploring the effects of positive and negative comments to social media CSR statements and subsequent organizational response, this work reports the results of an online experiment (N = 257) that manipulated both user-generated feedback to organizational CSR statements and subsequent organizational responses. Results demonstrate that negative user comments are less of a concern than commonly thought, and call into question the value of organizational response to user feedback.     

Changing social responsibilities: the role of advocacy organisations in the construction of the Social Support Act in the Netherlands

This paper describes a study on civic participation in legislative processes. In January 2007 a new law on health and social care in the Netherlands was implemented: the Social Support Act (SSA). This law specifically aims at greater civic participation in the implementation of the law, in the provision of health and social care and in the social policy making process. This study focuses on civic participation in policy making, more specifically on civic participation in the legislative process of the Social Support Act. It examines whether national advocacy organisations were successful in their efforts to influence the legislative process and the final construction of the Social Support Act. The main conclusion is that the client and patient organisations were indeed successful in obtaining important changes in the law both through a well informed and professional individual lobby as well as by means of collective action. Yet questions concerning the justification of high expectations for successful local civic participation in the local policy-making process remain.     

Sea change: Santa Barbara and the eruption of corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs have proliferated among the world's largest corporations. While the lion's share of scholarly attention has been devoted to the competitive advantage of CSR as a branding strategy, very little notice has been taken of CSR's history, particularly the emergence of CSR programs during the politically turbulent l960s and l970s. The paucity of historical attention has led to several distortions, including the failure to recognize CSR's origins as a survivalist reaction to crisis, and the resulting overemphasis of CSR as an unambiguously ethical model of managerial proactive effectiveness. Based on an examination of newspaper records of a politically crystallizing oil spill in the waters off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and an analysis of CSR's market penetration and rhetoric, this paper offers an alternative framework for reexamining corporate social responsibility.     

Good management,sound finances,and social responsibility: Two decades of U.S. corporate insider perspectives on reputation and the bottom line

This research sought to expand practitioner and scholarly understanding of the relationship between corporate reputation and the bottom line. An analysis of 706 firms over a 21-year timeframe revealed three attributes of reputation – management quality, financial soundness, and social responsibility – made consistently positive contributions to several measures of firm financial performance. Perceptions of corporate reputation were gathered exclusively from U.S. executives, directors, and financial analysts, referred to herein as corporate insiders.     

Communicating about corporate social responsibility: A comparative study of CSR reporting in Australia and Slovenia

This paper examines how two countries on opposite sides of the world, Australia and Slovenia, are addressing corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting issues. The authors see reporting as an important communication tool or channel which can ensure greater corporate transparency and enable a better engagement with multiple stakeholders. The paper aims to provide a review and a comparison of the CSR guidelines and reporting standards in both countries by which this communication is guided. In both countries, reporting is largely voluntary and appears to be driven by market pressures. However, differences appear in national culture as a driver with product, management and financial considerations influencing Australian reporting whereas Slovenian reporting is shaped by employee, community and environmental concerns. From Australian and Slovenian perspectives it seems to be important to increase reporting incentives in both countries and to connect and compare them to global reporting requirements.     

Perceived emotional intelligence and social competence in neglected adolescents

This research work analyses the emotional intelligence (EI) and the social cognitive attitudes and strategies in adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age in residential care. The aim of the work is to identify those aspects that hinder their socio-emotional competence, requiring a more urgent intervention. We explore the presence of significant differences between the variables under study according to gender and age range (12–14 and 15–17) and we analyse the relationship between the dimensions of their EI and their social competence. The results show a lack of EI in these adolescents, with all three dimensions being affected: emotional attention, clarity of feelings and emotional repair. As for social competence, it can be seen that the adolescents are characterised by a lack of confidence and firmness in their interactions. Worthy of note is the impulsive cognitive style, as are the rigidity of thought and the tendency towards social mistrust and suspicion. There are many difficulties concerning the strategies for resolving social problems. This research highlights the need to design training programmes for the residential care centres that will favour their socio-emotional development.     

The influence of customer use of corporate websites: Corporate social responsibility,trust, and word-of-mouth communication

This study investigates the potential of organization websites from the customer's perspective. The findings include significant direct effects of customers’ use of corporate websites on their perceptions of a company's corporate social responsibility and their trust in the company, and indirect effects of their use of corporate websites on positive word-of-mouth through trust. The results also indicate a close link between perception of corporate social responsibility and trust.     

A model of corporate social performance: Social satisfaction and moral conduct

This article discusses corporate social performance (CSP) in manager–consumer interactions. The article identifies CSP with the private provision of public goods. The model analyzes two kinds of social preferences: the consumer's taste for CSP and the manager's taste for CSP. The primary force in determining the level of corporate moral conduct is the resulting social satisfaction in the interactions. A behavioral view identifies an alternative source of inertia as the low level of moral conduct insensitive to the social values. The firm operating at the high level of moral conduct focuses on meeting the expectations of socially conscious consumers and improves the provision of public goods.