Non-Financial Information versus Financial as a Key to the Stakeholder Engagement: A Higher Education Perspective

In light of the increased demand for greater accountability and legitimacy, new disclosure mechanisms based on non-financial transparency have emerged. Universities cannot be left behind with respect to these social demands. In addition, continuous competition in excellence is driving higher education organizations to exhibit a greater visibility of their results, necessarily incorporating more non-financial aspects to boost stakeholder engagement. The novelty of this work lies in the analysis of the real state of non-financial vs. financial information in both public and private universities and in the exploration of their influence on stakeholder online engagement. To this end, a content analysis of the universities’ web pages and Facebook profiles was conducted, and a multivariable linear regression analysis was performed. The main results show that private and larger universities that lead Webometrics for Google Scholar Citations, and those that have gradually been adopting financial reporting, are the most interested in implementing Facebook as a two-way communication strategy. It seems that stakeholders react more to financial transparency and, therefore, universities still prefer financial disclosure to improve accountability

Engaging stakeholders through Facebook. The case of Global Compact LEAD participants

Facebook has deeply modified the way people communicate and interact. From a business perspective, Facebook has enormous potential as a means of communication and stakeholder engagement. It enables companies to share contents rapidly and efficiently with a large number of stakeholders worldwide. People can personalise their Facebook profile to receive updates from selected companies. Moreover, people can reply to such posts or simply manifest their approval by liking or sharing the posts. In this way, people also propagate corporate information among their own friends. The dramatic diffusion of Facebook should encourage companies to virtually interact with a network of stakeholders 2.0, using Facebook as a stakeholder engagement tool. The evolution to Web 2.0 goes with a general change in the social and business environment. In today’s world, both policy makers and the public expect that companies work in a sustainable way and consult their stakeholders about corporate strategies, operations and performance. The discussion should concern social and ecological cares as well as economic issues. In this sense, the engagement of the Facebook community could considerable enlarge and improve the dialogue. This paper offers a theoretical and empirical analysis to answer the following research question: do sustainability-oriented companies use Facebook as an effective means of stakeholder engagement? The paper contains an investigation based on UN Global Compact LEAD members, characterised by strong commitment and cooperation with governments, civil society, labour and the UN in order to promote sustainable practices. To evaluate the contribution of Facebook to the dialogue on sustainability, the investigation considered the types of contents published by the LEAD companies on their Facebook pages in 30 days. According to the subject, seven categories of posts emerged from the analysis: human rights and social citizenship; labour; environment; anti-corruption; strategy, business activity and economic performance; news on products and services; other. To evaluate the use of Facebook for stakeholder engagement 2.0, the investigation verified how many “likes”, comments and “shares” each post received and how often the company replied. The analysis showed that some LEAD members did not have a Facebook profile, which is unacceptable nowadays. Moreover, the companies with an official page rarely covered all three perspectives of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic issues). Furthermore, companies rarely replied to stakeholders’ comments. Based on the empirical evidence, most LEAD participants should modify the way they used Facebook. Therefore, the results of this research may help them improve stakeholder engagement 2.0

Reactivity to sustainability metrics: A configurational study of motivation and capacity

Previous research on reactivity – defined as changing organisational behaviour to better conform to the criteria of measurement in response to being measured – has found significant variation in company responses towards sustainability metrics. We propose that reactivity is driven by dialogue, motivation and capacity in a configurational way. Empirically, we use fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to analyse company responses to the sustainability index FTSE4Good. We find evidence of complimentary and substitute effects between motivation and capacity. Based on these effects we develop a typology of reactivity to sustainability metrics, which also theorises the use of metrics as tools for performance feedback and the building of calculative capacity. We show that when reactivity is studied configurationally, we can identify previously underacknowledged types of responses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for studying and using sustainability metrics as governance tools for responsible behaviour

The Accountability Web: Weaving Corporate Accountability and Interactive Technology (2010)

This article is a synopsis of and set of recommendations emerging from a research project commissioned in 2009 and culminating in a working paper published in May 2010 by the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of the Mossavar–Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The project was undertaken in the early days of social media and online interaction. Authors Bill Baue and Marcy Murninghan were designated as research fellows to take an in-depth look at implications produced by the interface between newly emerging interactive technology—at that time called “Web 2.0”—and corporate accountability. The report maps the landscape of these applications, which were being used to advance interactive corporate accountability (that is, forms of accountability that engage both companies and their stakeholders). From that emerged a typology of the degrees of stakeholder engagement, which they call the Accountability Web Matrix. The matrix maps the progression in corporate accountability on one axis and the progression of Web 2.0 tools on the other and provides examples within the resultant cells

Social Justice Documentary: Designing for Impact

Explores current methodologies for assessing social issue documentary films by combining strategic design and evaluation of multiplatform outreach and impact, including documentaries' role in network- and field-building. Includes six case studies

Analysis of the use of Twitter as a tool for the management and communication of the CSR of leading European firms

The management of corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires dialogue between the organisation and its stakeholders. Considering that, today, interaction among any members of society is becoming increasingly faster and easier due to the use of Web 2.0, this latter can be considered a suitable tool for CSR management. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the use of online social networks by enterprises as a communication strategy tool in the field of CSR management. To this end, all the messages from the verified Twitter accounts of 50 leading European blue-chip companies (EuroStock 50) from the year they were activated until June 2016 (127,811) were analysed using automated and manual content analysis. The conclusions drawn by this study show that this social network is only used for informative purposes, no two-way collaborative communication strategy being found. This leads to the need to proactively make companies aware of the advantages of social networks as CSR management tools and drivers of a collaborative interaction with stakeholders that would allow a more sustainable and more inclusive performance of CSR principles in their activities

Responsible corporate governance: An overview of trends, initiatives and state-of-the-art elements. What sort of globalisation is sustainable?

Transnational corporations' (TNCs) economic operations cover numerous countriesand can be diverted between several continents. These units have reached a level ofsignificance, having not only economic, but also social and environmental implications. This justifies that they shall be treated separately as a social phenomenon,when considering strategies for the development towards sustainability.This paper presents the concept of Responsible Corporate Governance (RCG), asa strategy to govern TNCs. RCG is suggested as a stakeholder based policyinstrument, which aims at allocating responsibilities to societal actors aiming atcorporate accountability. RCG recognises that the process of societal change isstrongly based on what can be called as bottom up-processes. Learning processestake place through the interaction of the different societal members, whicheventually leads to macro changes. Therefore, governing TNCs towards sustainability improvements is considered to be a collective process including all stakeholders. Firstly, the paper places the concept of RCG in the ongoing debateof political modernization based on the fact that society develops overtime and thepolitical system must correspondingly modernize. In this context, politicaloverload developed as a consequence of increased resource interdependencies isexplained and as a resolution, network approach is discussed. Secondly, demands on the orientation of the TNCs in terms of accountability and innovative actionare brought forward. Here, the paper also lists down corporate elements (stakeholder empowered corporate governance, management and performanceevaluation systems, transparency enhancement and accountability verification), which need to be in place to attain an accountable orientation in the society.Following, using an analytical framework, the orientation and capabilities of each societal actor (environmental non-governmental organisations, financial institutions, intergovernmental organisations) to affect improvements in the corporateresponsibility elements are investigated and recommendations for their effectiveorientation are listed. --