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Gualtieri_2024_Sage_Manag Comm Quarterly_Being responsible in a polarized world
Journal article

Being responsible in a polarized world : from dialogical to partisan CSR

  • Gualtieri, Gastone ORCID Istituto di Marketing e Comunicazione Aziendale (IMCA), Facoltà di comunicazione, cultura e società , Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • Lurati, Francesco ORCID Istituto di Marketing e Comunicazione Aziendale (IMCA), Facoltà di comunicazione, cultura e società , Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • 2024
Published in:
  • Management Communication Quarterly. - 2024, vol. 38, no. 4, p. 801–833
Communicative constitution of organization
Corporate social responsibility
Fake news
Polarization
English This paper investigates how companies approach corporate social responsibility in polarized landscapes. Polarization makes the dominant dialogical approach to CSR potentially inconclusive. Indeed, companies cannot orient societal CSR meanings through an all-stakeholder-inclusive dialogue because, in a polarized world, stakeholders form alternative meanings in separate and mutually delegitimizing conversations. To understand how companies try to appear responsible under these circumstances, we examine Italian telecom companies’ CSR reports issued throughout the launch of 5G technologies, a polarizing topic that sparked fake news and conspiracy theories. The findings show that, in such polarizing circumstances, companies may adopt a partisan approach to CSR, i.e., engaging with only one conversation to shape CSR views within it while ignoring the other. Through this approach, companies may further exacerbate polarization and shape CSR meanings to align with their core business, rather than the opposite. These implications, we argue, might jeopardize the very essence of CSR.
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Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
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Persistent URL
https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1330311
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