Track

Moderator

Gandolfo Dominici, University of Palermo, Italy (Business Systems Laboratory)

Objectives

There is a widespread need of change, that means to take advantage of the actual period of crisis to overcome its causes and improve. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be an extraordinarily effective tool, which may bring to a new and wider concept of value (co)creation, overcoming the limits of the classical economic and business theory based on financial capital and profit that are at the basis of the actual economic, social and environmental world crisis.

Subjects and scope

In this track we call for research addressing the various problems of information, communication and reporting for and by CSR.

Communication about corporate ethical and socially responsible initiatives may bring business benefits to both the corporate and societal levels. The number of CSR rankings and CSR inspection institutions is greater than ever and requires better instruments of communication and reporting. This must not be restricted to a firm’s decisions and actions, but extended to decisions and actions of the entire supply chain and to the human resources.

CSR communication may also attract critical attention; indeed, the more firms expose their ethical and social ambition, the more it is possible that consumers and stakeholders may believe that the company is trying to hide something. In that sense, corporate CSR engagement today requires more sophisticated communication strategies. It is therefore necessary to overcome the one-way information model of the past decades and find effective ways to implement two-ways and or many-to-many communication to enable sense-making and value co-creation by and for CSR.

Communication research may contribute to a new way of thinking in business practice resulting in better and responsible business management approaches that would help us to leave the world a better place than we found it.