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Organizations are increasingly communicating online with their key stakeholders. Chats on social media platforms, videos, and online meetings constitute key spaces for strategy communication and for the legitimation of organizations and their activities. In these digital spaces, emotions play an important role in conveying messages and convincing people to enact change. This chapter explains how strategic communication in multimodal spaces such as online communication platforms could be enhanced through emotion-symbolic work. Emotion-symbolic work involves using both text and visuals to transform negative emotions into positive ones in order to facilitate the enactment of a strategy. The chapter also discusses how multimodality, that is textual discourse to accompany visual images, can guide emotion-symbolic work and then reviews the characteristics of social media and communication platforms and the challenges and opportunities of studying emotion-symbolic work in online platforms The chapter concludes by discussing opportunities for further research.

Social media and the increasing digitalization of communications are transforming the engagements between companies and other actors, thereby reconstituting corporate social responsibility. Four key factors determine these transformations: the redefinition of actors from stakeholders to publics and echo chambers, which forms a de-institutionalized arena for engagement; the potential for democratization of engagement due to the low barriers to access; the increasing use of symbols to enhance the emotional charge of social media engagement; and the opportunities and challenges of accountability in social media platforms and issues related to opacity and power. In the light of these transformations, the chapter discusses avenues for future research that take into account the increasing awareness of the dark side of digitalization.

Scholars are divided over the question of whether managerial aspirational talk that contradicts current business practices can contribute to corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this conceptual article, we explore the rhetorical dynamics of aspirational talk that either impede or foster CSR. We argue that self-persuasive CSR rhetoric, as one enactment of aspirational talk, can attract attention and scrutiny from organizational members. Continued adherence to this rhetoric, however, creates and perpetuates tensions that lead to a vicious circle of disengagement. A virtuous circle, by contrast, requires a shift toward an agonistic rhetoric that transcends tensions by rearticulating aspirations in concurrence with situated understandings of responsible corporate practice. Our arguments contribute to a better understanding of how communication becomes constitutive of CSR and address the debate on decoupling between talk and action.

International audience; Little is known about how social entrepreneurs try to induce enactment of their cause, especially when this cause is difficult to embrace. Through a longitudinal study, we analyze how anti-plastic pollution social entrepreneurs use multimodal (visual and verbal) interactions to influence their targets and promote their cause. Our findings reveal that these social entrepreneurs use what we call “emotion-symbolic work,” which involves using visuals and words to elicit negative emotions through moral shock, and then transforming those emotions into emotional energy for enactment. The emotional transformation process entails connecting target actors to a cause, a collective identity, and the social entrepreneurs themselves. Our exploration of emotion-symbolic work offers new ways of seeing by emphasizing the use of multimodal interactions to affect emotions in efforts to influence target actors to enact a cause.

Worldwide, governments and institutions are formulating AI strategies that try to square the aspiration of exploiting the potentials of machine learning with safeguarding their communities against ...

How to build a coherent narrative of organizational identity in a socially contested field? Through an inductive study of the sharing economy, we analyzed how managers deal with conflicting collect...

How can corporations develop legitimacy when coping with stakeholders who have multiple, often conflicting sustainable development (SD) agendas? We address this question by conducting an in-depth longitudinal case study of a corporation's stakeholder engagement in social media and propose the concept of a networked legitimacy strategy. With this strategy, legitimacy is gained through participation in non-hierarchical open platforms and the co-construction of agendas. We explore the organizational transition needed to yield this new legitimacy approach. We argue that, in this context, legitimacy gains may increase when firms are able to reduce the control over the engagements and relate non-hierarchically with their publics. We contribute to the extant literature on political corporate social responsibility and legitimacy by providing an understanding of a new context for engagement that reconfigures cultural, network, and power relations between the firm and their stakeholders in ways that challenge previous forms of legitimation.

This paper develops a media theoretical extension of the communicative view on corporate social responsibility by elaborating on the characteristics of network societies, arguing that new media increase the speed and connectivity, and lead to higher plurality and the potential polarization of reality constructions. We discuss the implications for corporate social responsibility of becoming more polyphonic and sketch the contours of "communicative legitimacy." Finally, we present this special issue and develop some questions for future research. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

The paper introduces the communication view on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which regards CSR as communicatively constructed in dynamic interaction processes in today's networked societies. Building on the idea that communication constitutes organizations we discuss the potentially indeterminate, disintegrative, and conflictual character of CSR. We hereby challenge established mainstream views on CSR such as the instrumental view, which regards CSR as an organizational instrument to reach organizational aims such as improved reputation and financial performance, and the political-normative view on CSR, which highlights the societal conditions and role of corporations in creating norms. We argue that both the established views, by not sufficiently acknowledging communication dynamics in networked societies, remain biased in three ways: control-biased, consistency-biased, and consensus-biased. We discuss implications of these biases and propose a future research agenda for the communication view on CSR. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue, conceptualized and realized by a group of scholars engaged in the Global Organizational Learning and Development Network (GOLDEN) for Sustainability programme. It aims to adopt the overarching research question of the GOLDEN research programme “How do firms learn to integrate and manage sustainability in their business models, including their organizational purpose, strategy, processes, systems and culture?” as the guiding principle for case selection.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first presents the key ideas underpinning the previous research question and illustrates the research approach and agenda of GOLDEN for Sustainability. Second, it introduces the eight case studies presented in this special issue.FindingsThe cases offer good illustrations of the ongoing transition by both medium‐sized and multinational corporations dealing with learning and change challenges posed by the identification and management of sustainability issues. The selected cases represent firms operating in diverse contexts and industries, and are developed by scholars specializing in various fields connected to corporate responsibility and sustainability.Originality/valueThe paper presents cases of organizations that have made sense of the sustainability challenge and also the different approaches taken to tackle the challenge, and the results stemming from their efforts..

This article looks into the process of searching for new forms of legitimacy among firms through corporate discourse. Through the analysis of annual sustainability reports, we have determined the existence of three types of rhetoric: (1) strategic (embedded in the scientific-economic paradigm); (2) institutional (based on the fundamental constructs of Corporate Social Responsibility theories); and (3) dialectic (which aims at improving the discursive quality between the corporations and their stakeholders). Each one of these refers to a different form of legitimacy and is based on distinct theories of the firm analyzed in this article. We claim that dialectic rhetoric seems to signal a new understanding of the firm’s role in society and a search for moral legitimation. However, this new form of rhetoric is still fairly uncommon although its use is growing. Combining theory and business examples, this article may help managers and researchers in the conceptualization of how firms make sense of their role in society and what forms of differentiation they strive for through their rhetoric strategies.

Through a discourse analysis of more than 750 projects of Asian firms over 6 years we distinguish between two main Corporate Social Responsibility rhetoric: symbolic and managerial. Both types of r...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand whether firms evolve towards more comprehensive postures of CSR and what strategic factors drive the change.Design/methodology/approachThe approach is deductive‐inductive research based on six critical case studies and supported by extensive review of related literature. The paper provides historical analysis of six firms leaders in their industry (Nike, Shell, General Electric, 3M, CEMEX and IBM) combining primary and secondary data.FindingsFirms evolve over time towards more complex CSR postures. This evolution is driven by some key strategic factors. The article sets out a three‐stage framework connecting CSR evolution and the strategic change factors.Practical implicationsThe paper provides managers with a framework to promote strategic CSR change in their organizations.Originality/valueThe paper is a joint research study on the evolution of CSR and strategic drivers of change.

The ‘Occupy’ protests provide numerous examples of new social movement organizations based on a complex, multilayered ecosystem heavily supported by social media and its ability to connect heterogeneous social networks. Studies of these type of organizations have stressed not only the importance of new media tools as a mobilization channels but also the influence of the Free Culture Movement on the genealogy, in terms of its composition, agenda, framing, and organizational logic (Fuster-Morell, 2012). Studies of the Occupy movements’ activities have shown the importance of the online tools for new forms of mass mobilizations, for example (Borge-Holthoefer et al., 2011). Mobilizations become different in their nature: they are faster, can connect previously unlinked people, and are spontaneous (Bennett, 2003). However, few studies have looked into organizational characteristics beyond the online processes and their effect on mobilization. This article investigates how new forms of organizations characterized by being complex and multilayered networks select their organizational objectives and turn them into political matters. We ask how these organizational goals emerge, how they are selected, organized and ultimately impact the political arena.

What does it take to manage a polyphonic, aspirational and loosely coupled environment? We propose a revised understanding of the conditions that enriches the current debate on corporate social res...

Through a rhetoric analysis of 776 projects from firms located in 22 Asian countries, the authors argue that companies are looking for new forms of legitimacy that cannot be completely explained using traditional management theories. The authors introduce political theory into the debate. First, this study proposes a three-approach model of legitimation: The first approach is based on the strategic rhetoric as a mechanism for achieving pragmatic legitimacy, the second one uses the institutional rhetoric for gaining cognitive legitimacy, and the third, the political approach, is one through which firms seek to obtain moral legitimacy. The political strategy is aimed at improving the discursive quality between corporations and their stakeholders. Second, since the motivation for differing legitimacy strategies should be understood within their institutional environment, the authors look for patterns within each strategy dependent on national, industry, and firm-specific characteristics.

Despite an increasing interest in failure in entrepreneurship, little is still known about how it is made sense of by the entrepreneurs themselves. We argue that making sense of entrepreneurial fai...

Despite growing recognition of the importance and influence of social media tools, there remains little research that addresses the utility of social media as a data source. As a result, management...

While scholars have explained how frames gets transformed during framing contest in a process of collective negotiation of meaning, less attention has been given to the process of strategic agency ...

The introduction of new information and communication technologies such social media platforms in organizations results in a new emerging logic of stakeholder engagement around sustainable developm...

Resumen del trabajo presentado al Academy of Management Annual Meeting on Opening Governance, celebrado en Vancouver (Canada) del 7 al 11 de agosto de 2015.

In an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, the legitimacy required to structure a new field does not only come from building stability within the field but also from managing struggles...

In this work, we propose a process model for intentional creation of a social movement field. Central to our model is that instigators’ intentional strategies must attend to the interaction of the ...

The rapid rise of web-based media for communication changes the interplay of organizations and stakeholders, and opens up new ways of coordinating protest or pressure responses. It poses new theore...

We analyze the role of power transforming stakeholder engagement practices under the conditions of the network society. We look at how Global Health (pseudonym) managers navigate between two compet...