Exploring New Ways of Communicating CSR to the Relevant Stakeholders: An Empirical Study

Abstract

A flower must be pollinated properly to produce seeds as final outcome of next germination to create new flowers and so on. Accordingly Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) actions and practices of an enterprise should be communicated with its stakeholders. CSR and CSR communication should go hand-by-hand. The recent business trend shows that businesses are becoming increasingly aware of CSR and CSR communication systems. Existing studies, firm’s case study and real world phenomenon also reveal that business houses and society are benefiting from CSR actions and communicating those with their stakeholders. This research explores CSR and CSR communicating strategies and finds that stakeholders have in-depth concerns about CSR. It’s interesting that popular CSR practices like charity and philanthropic actions have been replaced by environmental (carbon footprint, air and water pollution), legal    (complying regulatory imperatives) and ethical (promoting corporate ethics, norms and values) etc. Moreover, the study also shows that communicating CSR actions through CSR reporting, company annual reports or firm’s sustainability reports and advertising have become less fashionable means of exchanging CSR efforts while academic books (companies are cited as examples or extracted as referred case studies), newspaper, internet and third party (social, political, local government authorities) association have become more trusted ways of communicating CSR motives, practices and actions.