PurposeThis study aims to explore multifaceted corporate social responsibility (CSR) covered in popular English newspapers in the UK, USA, mainland China and Hong Kong from 2000 to 2016 via a computer-assisted analytical approach. This study moves the understanding of CSR away from corporate self-reporting to the mass media and raises interesting questions about the role of the news media in presenting CSR as a multifaceted, socially constructed concept.Design/methodology/approachData were retrieved from CSR-related news articles from 2000 to 2016 that were archived in the LexisNexis database. Guided by the theoretical framework of agenda setting, a computer-assisted content analysis (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) was used to analyze 4,487 CSR-related articles from both business and non-business news sources. Analysis of variance was used to compare salient CSR topics in each country/region.FindingsThis study identifies newspapers as an alternate to corporations' attempts to distribute CSR information and construct CSR meaning. The findings revealed that the news communicates a variety of CSR issues that are aligned or beyond what CSR was defined in corporate CSR reporting, as suggested in previous studies. In addition, CSR news coverages differ between the business and nonbusiness news sources. Furthermore, the media tone of CSR coverage significantly differed across the regions and between the business and nonbusiness newspapers.Social implicationsEmerging topics in CSR news coverage, such as business education, could help companies identify untapped CSR realms in the market.Originality/valueThis study contributes to CSR communication research by adding a non-corporate perspective regarding what CSR means and should be focused on. The news media presents CSR using a heterogeneous approach as they not only provide surface reports on corporations' CSR activities but also offer in-depth discussions.
The present study aims to identify and interpret the emerging strategies employed by nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in communicating with their business partners on Twitter. A computer-assisted content analysis was applied to analyze 5,661 tweets posted by 65 NPOs. The study identified three corporate social responsibility communication strategies, which were characterized by a distinctive emphasis on stakeholder engagement. We analyzed NPOs that targeted different issues-initiated corporate social responsibility partnership conversations at varying levels by adopting self-promotional, partner-oriented, and balanced-interest strategies to justify and promote their relationships with multiple stakeholders on Twitter. This exploratory study contributes to the scant research on cross-sector social partnerships communication from a nonprofit perspective and adds nonprofit-specific evidence to the existing theories and practices.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore possible factors leading to a successful mediation in Chinese mediation shows. In China, media always play an indispensable role in information dissemination, morality advocacy and policy explanation.
Design/methodology/approach This paper employed content analysis of 166 episodes of one representative mediation show, Gold Medal Mediation, and regression technique in data analysis.
Findings Results of ordinal regression suggested that "secret talking", rather than transparency, between disputants had significant influence on successful mediation. Function of mediators is limited in reaching full mediation. The effective factors leading to full mediation include compromise of rights, secret talking, attitude of the observer cohort. It suggests that the role of mediator is limited, rather than being over-exaggerated, in successful mediation. The successful mediation is largely dependent on disputants' motivations. Additionally, "compromise of rights" by disputants is a key factor in solving disputes.
Research limitations/implications Findings of this study revealed the role of Chinese mediation shows in propagating mediation in contemporary Chinese society and supporting upheld morality values. Due to the nature of the chosen mediation show, some disputes take more than one episode to solve. However, this study looks at each episode without considering the integrity of the dispute. That is, if the disputes take two episodes, the coder codes the two episodes as two separate disputes instead of looking at it as one dispute.
Originality/value By exploring various aspects of mediations shows, including the role of mediators, disputants and a cohort of observers, this study can both explicitly show predicted factors to successful mediations on the shows, and can implicitly examine the power and perceived justification of mediation in contemporary China via media.
This study uses online surveys administered in the US ( N = 491), the UAE ( N = 538), and South Korea ( N = 548) to examine the associations between transparency strategies in CSR communication (i.e., participation, substantial information, and accountability) and the public's evaluation of corporate trust. Additionally, it investigates the mediating roles of perceived altruism and skepticism toward CSR, while also exploring how these associations differ across the three selected countries. When testing a proposed model using the combined data from three countries ( N = 1,577), our findings suggest that transparency strategies do not directly contribute to corporate trust. However, the participation aspect leads to corporate trust only through the influence of perceived altruism, while substantial information predicts a reduced level of CSR skepticism. Notably, results derived from country-specific data reveal intriguing patterns concerning accountability. In the US, accountability leads to altruism and fosters corporate trust, while in the UAE, it contributes to fostering corporate trust. However, in South Korea, it leads to increased skepticism. Conversely, in South Korea, substantial information contributes to building corporate trust. We discuss the implications of these findings from the unique institutional, social, and cultural perspectives of the countries studied.