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Corporate responsibility in U.S. corporate websites: A pilot study
Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 93–95
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Public Relations Review
Research in Brief
Corporate responsibility in U.S. corporate websites: A pilot study Lina M. Gomez ∗ , Ricardo Chalmeta Grupo de Investigación en Integración y Re-Ingeniería de Sistemas (IRIS), Dpto. Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, Universitat Jaume I, 12006 Castellón, Spain
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 July 2010 Received in revised form 2 November 2010 Accepted 11 December 2010 Keywords: Corporate social responsibility Corporate website Interactivity
a b s t r a c t Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential component in the management of companies around the globe. Any key strategy used for CSR administration must reflect strong and effective communication channels to show CSR efforts. This study analyzes how the top 50 American profitable corporations from the Fortune 500 of 2009 communicate their CSR initiatives to different stakeholders through their corporate websites. To do this, an evaluation framework has been designed to examine features presented in CSR corporate websites. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a central topic in the daily agenda of companies around the world. Each day, more organizations are motivated to perform actions related to social and environmental aspects in an ethical and responsible direction. However, enterprises have to consider that simply behaving in a socially responsible way is not enough to improve stakeholder relations. Organizations employ multiple communication channels for transmitting their CSR actions to stakeholders. The Internet is one of these communication channels that has recently become important and has a prominent role for CSR communication (Basil & Erlandson, 2008). Therefore, an effective and creative strategic plan is needed in order to communicate CSR through the World Wide Web (taking into consideration web design, content, and interactive features for a CSR corporate website). This investigation examines how American organizations are communicating their CSR efforts through their corporate websites. This research answers the following questions: How do companies communicate CSR through their websites? Do enterprises have to take into consideration suitable corporate website features for CSR communication? In order to achieve this, an evaluation model for CSR corporate website features was designed and developed. Three categories of website features were selected: interactive, presentational, and content. This model was applied to the top 50 American companies from Fortune 500 of 2009 to find how CSR initiatives are communicated to stakeholders. 2. Methodology This investigation suggests an evaluation model of the key features (presentational, content, and interactive) for CSR corporate websites. It takes into consideration structural aspects proposed on the conceptual model created by Robbins and Stylianou (2003) about general corporate web design and content features. This research also considered two criteria for CSR web content developed by the Italian Communications Consultancy (Lundquist, 2009). Our evaluation model consists of 24 features divided into three sections: 9 criteria for presentational, 12 for content, and 3 interactive.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 906 231 3699. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (L.M. Gomez). 0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.12.005
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L.M. Gomez, R. Chalmeta / Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 93–95
The selection of the features was also done by a content analysis (Babbie, 1992) made to the analyzed corporate websites to discover the most common CSR corporate website attributes, such as: presentation and navigation (presentational category); CSR engagement and CSR projects/processes (content category), and CSR communication/information support (interactive category). The evaluation detected the presence or absence (yes or no answer) of the 24 chosen features, without considering document lengths or frequency of appearance on the CSR website. 3. Results Presently, companies are creating a major CSR presence on their websites, taking advantage of this technology. This is reflected on the results of this investigation: 82% of the evaluated organizations exhibited CSR information on their websites, and 80% had fully functioning CSR websites. Corporations should take into consideration that in order to improve stakeholder relations, the presence of an interesting and attractive web design and content is required for effective dissemination of CSR initiatives. Results presented that the companies evaluated displayed 84% of the presentational features, 60% of the content elements, and 27% of interactive characteristics from the evaluation model. 3.1. Presentational features Companies were aware of presenting their design attractively, in an accessible way, and with the availability of documents in multiple formats. Presentation: 95% of them showed a high presence of hypertext (especially images). Only half of the enterprises exhibited charts and videos or audio to reinforce CSR information. Navigation: 70% provided a CSR annual report link on the CSR website for encouraging easy access to this material. 3.2. Content features CSR content features (60%) were not as relevant as presentational features (84%). It seems that it was easier to present a good and attractive design rather than displaying, for example, CSR news. CSR engagement: the most common features were CSR goals/objectives (97%), followed by CSR achievements (77%). The least common were future plans (37%) and engagement of the board of directors (32%). CSR projects/processes: 80% of the organizations had a current CSR annual report on their websites (from 2008), and 47% presented past CSR annual reports. On the other hand, CSR-related news (37%) and key stakeholders (30%) marked the lowest scores in this category. 3.3. Interactive features With the advent of social media and web 2.0 platforms, there are great opportunities for companies to engage stakeholders in CSR in an easy and interactive way. Organizations committed with social media, should be prepared to empower stakeholders to be advocates in spreading CSR messages. Communication/information support: this category was the poorest evaluated (27%) compared to presentational and content features. As Dawkins (2005) states, communication remains the missing link in the practice of corporate responsibility, and this was confirmed by the results of this investigation. More than half of the companies did not provide basic contact information such as CSR staff names, physical addresses, phone numbers or email addresses (27%). The basic contact information most used was email address (22%). These results indicate that companies are not providing basic contact information that can improve relationships with stakeholders. Corporations should understand that proactive online communication is crucial to the success of a CSR company’s strategies, and for creating dialogues and interaction with their stakeholders (Lundquist, 2009). Information tools like email lists, sharing tools, RSS news feed, FAQ section, calendar of events, and newsletters were not highly rated (35%). The information tools most used were sharing tools such as share this, email this, etc. (40%) promoting interactivity between users. Furthermore, only 37% provided communication tools such as blogs, chats, forums, feedback/contact forms and presence in social media. Feedback or contact forms (18%), presence of social media tools (18%), such as Facebook and Twitter, and blogs (13%) were the most common features. Communication and information tools are fundamental to improving and strengthening relations with stakeholders that can fulfill the expectations of both parties. 4. Analysis Overall, findings show that there are efforts made by companies to inform about CSR practices, but they are not creating online communication processes. Therefore, organizations should develop their websites in order to create real dialogues (Esrock & Leichty, 2000). Companies ought to consider that information is not synonymous with communication. Communication has feedback, but this element is not found in the information process. Through a proactive communication process, enterprises can engage their stakeholders in the formulation of CSR strategies, producing long and effective relationships with them. The application of this model to the analyzed enterprises indicates that companies should go beyond offline modes of CSR communication, to online ways where they can promote two-way communication processes that advocate opinions and ideas towards a mutual accepted goal.
L.M. Gomez, R. Chalmeta / Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 93–95
95
Results indicate that the presentational and content features evaluated are more developed and well presented than interactive features on CSR corporate websites. Interactive features were the poorest evaluated, in spite of the tremendous array of choices of social media tools for CSR. Through social media channel organizations can promote interactivity, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative knowledge. 5. Conclusion CSR communication through corporate websites ought to be performed in an effective way, taking advantage of the distinctive features for CSR corporate websites. Furthermore, CSR websites need to reflect and promote public satisfaction and organization expectations. Although this study was limited by the small sample of websites (in addition to the short period of time for the websites’ evaluation), the results are adequate for the aim of this study. Further work is necessary to examine corporate websites during longer periods of time or using a larger sample, to discover if enterprises have been improving their CSR online communication. Other future direction could study reactions of stakeholders (through survey or focus groups) about specific CSR corporate websites, and the opportunities arisen for interactivity and collaboration through web 2.0 platforms for CSR. Acknowledgments This project has been funded by CICYT and Bancaja. References Babbie, E. (1992). The practice of social research (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Basil, D., & Erlandson, J. (2008). Corporate social responsibility website representations: A longitudinal study of internal and external self-presentations. Journal of Marketing Communications, 14(April (2)), 125–137. doi:10.1080/13527260701858497 Dawkins, J. (2005). Corporate responsibility: The communication challenge. Journal of Communication Management, 9(2), 108–119. doi:10.1108/13632540510621362 Esrock, S. L., & Leichty, G. B. (2000). Organization of corporate web pages: Publics and functions. Public Relations Review, 26(3), 327–344. doi:10.1016/S03638111(00)00051-5 Lundquist. (2009). CSR online awards global leaders 2009 executive summary. Retrieved from. http://www.lundquist.it/research/ Robbins, S. S., & Stylianou, A. C. (2003). Global corporate web sites: An empirical investigation of content and design. Information & Management, 40(3), 205–212. doi:10.1016/S0378-7206(02)00002-2
Lina M. Gomez is a doctoral student in Organizational Sustainability at “Universitat Jaume I of Castellon”, Spain. She received her BA in Social Communication and Journalism from “Universidad del Norte”, Colombia, and her MA in Communication from University of Puerto Rico. Lina also holds a Master in sustainability and corporate social responsibility from “Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia”, Spain. Her research interests focus on corporate responsibility, sustainability, corporate communications, and social media. Ricardo Chalmeta is an associate professor in Computer Science in the Department of Languages and Informatics Systems at “Universitat Jaume I of Castellon”, Spain, and director of the Systems Integration and Re-Engineering Research Group (IRIS) at this university. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from the “University Politécnica of Valencia”, Spain. His research interests include enterprise re-engineering and integration, information systems, virtual enterprise, and modeling and simulation of business processes.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Public Relations Review
Research in Brief
Corporate responsibility in U.S. corporate websites: A pilot study Lina M. Gomez ∗ , Ricardo Chalmeta Grupo de Investigación en Integración y Re-Ingeniería de Sistemas (IRIS), Dpto. Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, Universitat Jaume I, 12006 Castellón, Spain
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 July 2010 Received in revised form 2 November 2010 Accepted 11 December 2010 Keywords: Corporate social responsibility Corporate website Interactivity
a b s t r a c t Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential component in the management of companies around the globe. Any key strategy used for CSR administration must reflect strong and effective communication channels to show CSR efforts. This study analyzes how the top 50 American profitable corporations from the Fortune 500 of 2009 communicate their CSR initiatives to different stakeholders through their corporate websites. To do this, an evaluation framework has been designed to examine features presented in CSR corporate websites. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a central topic in the daily agenda of companies around the world. Each day, more organizations are motivated to perform actions related to social and environmental aspects in an ethical and responsible direction. However, enterprises have to consider that simply behaving in a socially responsible way is not enough to improve stakeholder relations. Organizations employ multiple communication channels for transmitting their CSR actions to stakeholders. The Internet is one of these communication channels that has recently become important and has a prominent role for CSR communication (Basil & Erlandson, 2008). Therefore, an effective and creative strategic plan is needed in order to communicate CSR through the World Wide Web (taking into consideration web design, content, and interactive features for a CSR corporate website). This investigation examines how American organizations are communicating their CSR efforts through their corporate websites. This research answers the following questions: How do companies communicate CSR through their websites? Do enterprises have to take into consideration suitable corporate website features for CSR communication? In order to achieve this, an evaluation model for CSR corporate website features was designed and developed. Three categories of website features were selected: interactive, presentational, and content. This model was applied to the top 50 American companies from Fortune 500 of 2009 to find how CSR initiatives are communicated to stakeholders. 2. Methodology This investigation suggests an evaluation model of the key features (presentational, content, and interactive) for CSR corporate websites. It takes into consideration structural aspects proposed on the conceptual model created by Robbins and Stylianou (2003) about general corporate web design and content features. This research also considered two criteria for CSR web content developed by the Italian Communications Consultancy (Lundquist, 2009). Our evaluation model consists of 24 features divided into three sections: 9 criteria for presentational, 12 for content, and 3 interactive.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 906 231 3699. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (L.M. Gomez). 0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.12.005
94
L.M. Gomez, R. Chalmeta / Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 93–95
The selection of the features was also done by a content analysis (Babbie, 1992) made to the analyzed corporate websites to discover the most common CSR corporate website attributes, such as: presentation and navigation (presentational category); CSR engagement and CSR projects/processes (content category), and CSR communication/information support (interactive category). The evaluation detected the presence or absence (yes or no answer) of the 24 chosen features, without considering document lengths or frequency of appearance on the CSR website. 3. Results Presently, companies are creating a major CSR presence on their websites, taking advantage of this technology. This is reflected on the results of this investigation: 82% of the evaluated organizations exhibited CSR information on their websites, and 80% had fully functioning CSR websites. Corporations should take into consideration that in order to improve stakeholder relations, the presence of an interesting and attractive web design and content is required for effective dissemination of CSR initiatives. Results presented that the companies evaluated displayed 84% of the presentational features, 60% of the content elements, and 27% of interactive characteristics from the evaluation model. 3.1. Presentational features Companies were aware of presenting their design attractively, in an accessible way, and with the availability of documents in multiple formats. Presentation: 95% of them showed a high presence of hypertext (especially images). Only half of the enterprises exhibited charts and videos or audio to reinforce CSR information. Navigation: 70% provided a CSR annual report link on the CSR website for encouraging easy access to this material. 3.2. Content features CSR content features (60%) were not as relevant as presentational features (84%). It seems that it was easier to present a good and attractive design rather than displaying, for example, CSR news. CSR engagement: the most common features were CSR goals/objectives (97%), followed by CSR achievements (77%). The least common were future plans (37%) and engagement of the board of directors (32%). CSR projects/processes: 80% of the organizations had a current CSR annual report on their websites (from 2008), and 47% presented past CSR annual reports. On the other hand, CSR-related news (37%) and key stakeholders (30%) marked the lowest scores in this category. 3.3. Interactive features With the advent of social media and web 2.0 platforms, there are great opportunities for companies to engage stakeholders in CSR in an easy and interactive way. Organizations committed with social media, should be prepared to empower stakeholders to be advocates in spreading CSR messages. Communication/information support: this category was the poorest evaluated (27%) compared to presentational and content features. As Dawkins (2005) states, communication remains the missing link in the practice of corporate responsibility, and this was confirmed by the results of this investigation. More than half of the companies did not provide basic contact information such as CSR staff names, physical addresses, phone numbers or email addresses (27%). The basic contact information most used was email address (22%). These results indicate that companies are not providing basic contact information that can improve relationships with stakeholders. Corporations should understand that proactive online communication is crucial to the success of a CSR company’s strategies, and for creating dialogues and interaction with their stakeholders (Lundquist, 2009). Information tools like email lists, sharing tools, RSS news feed, FAQ section, calendar of events, and newsletters were not highly rated (35%). The information tools most used were sharing tools such as share this, email this, etc. (40%) promoting interactivity between users. Furthermore, only 37% provided communication tools such as blogs, chats, forums, feedback/contact forms and presence in social media. Feedback or contact forms (18%), presence of social media tools (18%), such as Facebook and Twitter, and blogs (13%) were the most common features. Communication and information tools are fundamental to improving and strengthening relations with stakeholders that can fulfill the expectations of both parties. 4. Analysis Overall, findings show that there are efforts made by companies to inform about CSR practices, but they are not creating online communication processes. Therefore, organizations should develop their websites in order to create real dialogues (Esrock & Leichty, 2000). Companies ought to consider that information is not synonymous with communication. Communication has feedback, but this element is not found in the information process. Through a proactive communication process, enterprises can engage their stakeholders in the formulation of CSR strategies, producing long and effective relationships with them. The application of this model to the analyzed enterprises indicates that companies should go beyond offline modes of CSR communication, to online ways where they can promote two-way communication processes that advocate opinions and ideas towards a mutual accepted goal.
L.M. Gomez, R. Chalmeta / Public Relations Review 37 (2011) 93–95
95
Results indicate that the presentational and content features evaluated are more developed and well presented than interactive features on CSR corporate websites. Interactive features were the poorest evaluated, in spite of the tremendous array of choices of social media tools for CSR. Through social media channel organizations can promote interactivity, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative knowledge. 5. Conclusion CSR communication through corporate websites ought to be performed in an effective way, taking advantage of the distinctive features for CSR corporate websites. Furthermore, CSR websites need to reflect and promote public satisfaction and organization expectations. Although this study was limited by the small sample of websites (in addition to the short period of time for the websites’ evaluation), the results are adequate for the aim of this study. Further work is necessary to examine corporate websites during longer periods of time or using a larger sample, to discover if enterprises have been improving their CSR online communication. Other future direction could study reactions of stakeholders (through survey or focus groups) about specific CSR corporate websites, and the opportunities arisen for interactivity and collaboration through web 2.0 platforms for CSR. Acknowledgments This project has been funded by CICYT and Bancaja. References Babbie, E. (1992). The practice of social research (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Basil, D., & Erlandson, J. (2008). Corporate social responsibility website representations: A longitudinal study of internal and external self-presentations. Journal of Marketing Communications, 14(April (2)), 125–137. doi:10.1080/13527260701858497 Dawkins, J. (2005). Corporate responsibility: The communication challenge. Journal of Communication Management, 9(2), 108–119. doi:10.1108/13632540510621362 Esrock, S. L., & Leichty, G. B. (2000). Organization of corporate web pages: Publics and functions. Public Relations Review, 26(3), 327–344. doi:10.1016/S03638111(00)00051-5 Lundquist. (2009). CSR online awards global leaders 2009 executive summary. Retrieved from. http://www.lundquist.it/research/ Robbins, S. S., & Stylianou, A. C. (2003). Global corporate web sites: An empirical investigation of content and design. Information & Management, 40(3), 205–212. doi:10.1016/S0378-7206(02)00002-2
Lina M. Gomez is a doctoral student in Organizational Sustainability at “Universitat Jaume I of Castellon”, Spain. She received her BA in Social Communication and Journalism from “Universidad del Norte”, Colombia, and her MA in Communication from University of Puerto Rico. Lina also holds a Master in sustainability and corporate social responsibility from “Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia”, Spain. Her research interests focus on corporate responsibility, sustainability, corporate communications, and social media. Ricardo Chalmeta is an associate professor in Computer Science in the Department of Languages and Informatics Systems at “Universitat Jaume I of Castellon”, Spain, and director of the Systems Integration and Re-Engineering Research Group (IRIS) at this university. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from the “University Politécnica of Valencia”, Spain. His research interests include enterprise re-engineering and integration, information systems, virtual enterprise, and modeling and simulation of business processes.