Sweeney, Lorraine and Coughlan, Joseph
(2008)
Do different industries report Corporate Social Responsibility
differently? An investigation through the lens of stakeholder theory.
Journal of Marketing Communications, 14 (2).
pp. 113-124.
ISSN 1352-7266
Abstract
The social responsibility of business has become a major issue in recent years and
the reporting of such activity is becoming more prevalent. Companies are
attuning to the benefits of being seen as socially responsibly and many industries
are jumping on the bandwagon of reporting CSR and using different media to
communicate their activities in this arena to their stakeholders. This paper
considers the content of one type of such communications, the annual report, and
looks at how organisations are taking a focused stakeholder view of CSR rather
than a wider view as would be expected from the ambiguity of definitions of the
concept. Differences in reporting practices were found by an analysis of the
annual and CSR reports of 28 FTSE4Good firms focusing on a variety of
industries. Findings show that there is a significant difference between how
organisations in different industries report on CSR consistent with a stakeholder
view of CSR, and that this reporting follows for the most part the expectations of
the CSR communications literature. It is suggested that firms report on CSR in
line with what their key stakeholders expect, thus giving evidence for CSR
reporting as another tool in the marketing communicators toolbox.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Additional Information: |
The definitive version of this article is available at DOI: 10.1080/13527260701856657 |
| Keywords: |
Corporate Social Responsibility; stakeholder theory; annual reports; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Business |
| Item ID: |
6590 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1080/13527260701856657 |
| Depositing User: |
Joseph Coughlan
|
| Date Deposited: |
17 Nov 2015 15:51 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Journal of Marketing Communications |
| Publisher: |
Taylor & Francis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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