CSR Communication

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the ‘integration of an enterprise’s social, environmental, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities towards society into its operations, processes and core business strategy in cooperation with relevant stakeholders’ (Rasche, Morsing and Moon, 2017). Ethical considerations have risen along with a set of contingent social responsibilities that corporations are now asked to fulfil by society in order for corporations to be deemed sustainable. A key aspect of CSR is therefore accountability and how these activities are communicated to stakeholders. Indeed 93% of the world’s largest 250 corporations currently report on their sustainability performance (KPMG, 2017). This information could be provided by annual reports, standalone reports, socially orientated advertising, CSR websites or even social media campaigns. This chapter focuses on the key trends in CSR reporting, starting with an introduction to the sustainability reporting context, followed by an overview of the evolution of published CSR reports. This leads into a discussion of the growing use of the internet to disseminate CSR information through both corporate websites and social media platforms.