Corporate Social Responsibility Communication: A Multi-method Approach on Stakeholder Expectations and Managers’ Intentions

Organisations need to legitimise their behaviour in order to be accepted and supported by society. This study analyses the different perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a multi-method approach. First, a content analysis of the companies’ annual and CSR reports and qualitative interviews with the communications executives analyses the social engagement that is communicated and the companies’ motives for their activities. Second, the expectations of potential stakeholders regarding the social engagement of companies are analysed via a quantitative survey. Results show that the reporting of philanthropic activities dominates the annual reports. However, as interviews show, these altruistic motives were mostly associated with expectations on economic benefits, where differentiation from competitors is mentioned as the main motive for the CSR engagement. With respect to topics, the CSR activities of the companies correspond in general to the stakeholders’ expectations. Nonetheless, hardly any of the stakeholders are able to bring an explicit CSR activity of a company to mind. This might be because this is ‘pull-information’ for which they actively have to look, but companies might also be failing to effectively communicate their CSR engagement