"If your letter was in German, I would not understand a bit, and would have ignored that": Preliminary findings from a survey of highly skilled migrants from India and China with working/education experience in a German speaking country

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Credibility in CSR communication: concepts, methods, analyses

In globalized markets, norms for legitimate behavior are scattered and businesses must satisfy often conflicting demands of various stakeholders simultaneously. This is why communicating their Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) in a legitimate way is challenging. The present is also a high time for a debate of CSR issues and an era of public scrutiny and mistrust, catalyzed by real-time communication technologies and a 24/7 news cycle. Instances of non-credible communication, the misuse of CSR for marketing exercises, and corporate scandals with large environmental and social impact have sparked skepticism and mistrust toward CSR communication and its tools, particularly CSR reports. As a result, companies and stakeholders are trapped in the “credibility gap” of CSR reporting, which is harmful for both: stakeholders cannot satisfy their information needs regarding CSR and companies can hardly convey their CSR activities in a credible manner. Even though credibility is central to CSR communication and despite the fact that communicating non-credibly has lasting negative consequences for companies, there is no consensus about the concept of credibility and barely any studies exist that tackle credibility gaps systematically. This dissertation endeavors to investigate the issue of credibility in CSR communication theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. In particular, it analyzes companies’ and stakeholders’ perspectives of the “credibility gap” in CSR reporting. It explores concepts and methods to investigate how companies can communicate credibly and provides empirical evidence on the state-of-the-art of CSR reporting in Europe. To this end, it combines concepts from business ethics, management studies, political theory, and communication sciences and triangulates various methods. This dissertation is structured in four individual chapters framed by an introductory part and conclusions. The key findings can be summarized as follows. Chapter I proposes that communication is at the heart of CSR by highlighting Habermasian communicative action theory as the backbone of political CSR theory. Furthermore, it discusses how credible CSR communication leads to moral legitimacy and thus provides the conceptual foundation of this dissertation. Based on this theoretical advancement, the chapter develops a typology of CSR communication tools clustering them into deliberative and instrumental as well as published and unpublished tools. Chapter II presents quantitative content analysis as a suitable method to generate novel insights in business ethics, and especially CSR, research. Given the diametrical advantages of human- and software-based coding procedures, a concurrent mixed methods approach is proposed. To account for the need of ethical reasoning in business ethics research, the chapter suggests that quantitative content analyses be followed by an ethical interpretation of the quantitative results. Chapter III analyzes, for the first time, the “credibility gap” in CSR reporting from the perspective of the company, by applying quantitative content analysis as proposed in Chapter II. To this end, the credibility of CSR reports from 11 European countries is analyzed based on a multidimensional operationalization of credibility along Habermasian theory. Parametric statistical analyses reveal that European CSR reports are credible at a mediocre level. It is the content of the reports that matter for credibility, while the impact of contextual, format, and firm-level factors is secondary. Furthermore, voluntary standardization impacts credibility positively, whereas legislation does not yet have the same positive effect. Addressing the stakeholders’ perspective, Chapter IV develops a measurement scale to test the perceptions of credibility of CSR reports. In doing so, the chapter builds on a novel conceptualization of credibility along the Habermsian validity claims. The scale development comprises nine stages including a literature review, a delphi study, and three validation studies applying exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to arrive at the final 16-item PERCRED (perceived credibility) scale. Participants in the final study perceived CSR reports to be rather credible, regardless of whether the same reports had been found credible or non-credible in Chapter III. The PERCRED measure can help companies and researchers deepen the understanding of why CSR reports are often perceived as being non-credible tools. The findings of this dissertation demonstrate that the “credibility gap” equally exists from the companies’ and the stakeholders’ perspectives. To eventually bridge it, striving for true, sincere, appropriate, and understandable communication by all parties is a viable avenue. Describing credibility as a communication quality and perception construct along the four sub-dimensions truth, sincerity, appropriateness, and understandability advances the understanding of credibility in the communication sciences. This dissertation contributes to theory development in the emerging field of CSR reporting by presenting credible CSR reports as facilitators to re- and maintain legitimacy and by systematically examining this notion from the perspective of companies and stakeholders. The thesis further advances political CSR theory as it empirically confirms the impact of voluntary standardization and stresses the role of the nation state. The findings of this dissertation also hold implications for public policy makers to level the playing field in CSR reporting in order to reach credibility consistently; companies are provided with a tool to measure credibility perceptions of their reports and to better evaluate the roots of stakeholders’ criticism and mistrust

The Markets Have Decided”: Markets as (Perceived) Deity and Ethical Implications of Delegated Responsibility

The term ‘the markets’ appears as if the markets were divine authorities with their own dignity that decide, sanction and threaten like a godlike power. This extends the standard-economic definition of the market as an egalitarian transaction mechanism under the circumstances of scarcity and competition. We explore and review the historical and theoretical base of this observation. We then analyze quotations on ‘the markets’ from selected media outlets during the economic crisis in 2008. We suggest that referring to “the markets” represents a rhetorically deified, metaphysical entity implying severe moral implications, as certain agents claim to act on behalf of the market, thereby delegating personal responsibility for their actions

The Markets Have Decided”: Markets as (Perceived) Deity and Ethical Implications of Delegated Responsibility

The term ‘the markets’ appears as if the markets were divine authorities with their own dignity that decide, sanction and threaten like a godlike power. This extends the standard-economic definition of the market as an egalitarian transaction mechanism under the circumstances of scarcity and competition. We explore and review the historical and theoretical base of this observation. We then analyze quotations on ‘the markets’ from selected media outlets during the economic crisis in 2008. We suggest that referring to “the markets” represents a rhetorically deified, metaphysical entity implying severe moral implications, as certain agents claim to act on behalf of the market, thereby delegating personal responsibility for their actions

Shorting ethos?: Aristotelian ethos in the context of corporate reputation, persuasion and shared values

Corporate ethics is a complex field of study that focuses on the sources and role of moral expectations among modern corporate stakeholders. While there has been significant theoretical development and adoption by practitioners on the topic over the past thirty years in the field, ethical scandals persist, almost at unprecedented levels. The pressure to meet short term shareholder financial targets, the lack of consistency and clarity of moral expectations among stakeholders, the corporation as an imperfect social environment, all contribute to the status quo where corporate ethics can be a familiar but elusive goal. At the same time, there have been fundamental changes in the flow of information recently. Information now flows as speeds and volumes unimaginable thirty years ago. More importantly, it now flows through very decentralized patterns such as social media which have changed the ability of corporations to manage their reputation and brand. This paper focuses on one concept within the broader field of ethics, virtue, in an attempt to better understand the role that it currently plays, but also could play, in business ethics by studying its application in persuasion. Chapter I provides an overview of the concept of ethos which can be roughly translated as moral character, and positions it in the context of the modern corporation. Corporate moral character is evidenced through the decisions a company makes via its decision-makers and actors, which often have an impact on the various stakeholders including customers, clients, the government etc. Chapter II traces the relationship between virtuous conduct and corporation reputation management. It proposes that virtue, through its role in ethos can be intrinsically beneficial to a corporation and a competitive advantage in the marketplace in terms of corporate reputation, which is increasingly viewed as a valuable asset. According to Aristotle, Ethos has three components; virtue, practical wisdom and goodwill towards others (Arist. Rhet I.2,1356a). Ethos is a critical element to persuasion along with pathos (use of emotion) and logos (use of logic); speakers that embrace all three in a message will be more persuasive. Corporations routinely rely on persuasion to be effective and successful, from advertising to sales, to employee relationships. Chapter III then proposes corporate virtue as a form of Shared Value (SV), a theory proposed by Porter and Kramer (2011). While Shared Value has received critical acclaim over the years as an economic theory effectively and efficiently promoting the interests of the broader society at the same time as the interests of the modern corporation, the theory has been challenged more recently for its lack of clear definition and ability to be implemented properly. This chapter argues that corporate virtue meets the qualifications of Shared Value, and should be promoted within corporations in view of its influence on persuasion, positively benefitting the company, and the positive effects that virtue has on corporate stakeholders like society, employees, government etc. Chapter IV explores the concept of persuasion at a higher level, particularly as it can be related to organizational communications and organizational rhetoric. Persuasion is a concept that has likely existed as long as there has been communication.. The study of persuasion can be traced back to ancient Greece where Aristotle put structure to the process as a means of creating an educated citizen, an element critical to emerging democracies. The chapter is framed around the notion that persuasion as a means of attitude change can be developed in a more instrumental manner characterized by one way communication such as traditional marketing and public relations efforts. The chapter proposes that persuasion can also be developed in a more deliberative manner, which is supported in the etymological root persuadere, emphasizing a more ethical discourse including two way communication and more equal bargaining position. It then looks at how persuasion is developed in the organizational context today, including advances in the social sciences to better understand the mechanisms of persuasion including the Elaboration Likelihood Model, inoculation theory model and expectancy value theory, suggesting that persuasion in a deliberative manner is underdeveloped in organizational rhetoric. Lastly, Chapter V describes the advent and implications of corporate reputation risk through the case study of Goldman Sachs in 2008. Reputation risk develops when actual corporate behaviour deviates from the reputation that the corporation has among its stakeholders in regards to any particular trait. To the degree there is a difference between a corporation’s reputation or how it is perceived in regards to a particular topic such as product quality, timeliness, altruism, truthfulness, and its actual behaviour, then reputational risk may develop to the degree that its reputation, an increasingly valuable asset to companies today, may be devalued. To the degree that ethical or virtuous conduct is a component of a corporate brand, which is critical particularly in service industries such as banking, any lack of consistency with actual conduct could have significant financial implications. Collectively these chapters demonstrate how virtue and its role in persuasion serves as a common denominator in business ethics, and a valuable vehicle to promote ethical conduct in a complicated social environment called capitalism