How is time framed in corporate social responsibility (CSR) talk? The literature mostly fails to analyze how multiple CSR activities are framed from a temporal perspective. Moreover, those ...researchers who undertake temporal framing tend to overlook the role of home-country cultural characteristics. Using a mixed-method analysis of 2,720 CSR reports from developing country companies, we show that CSR talk is mostly framed in the future tense when firms communicate complex human rights issues such as slavery or child labor, while the past and present tenses are more frequent when they report on philanthropy and other cause-related activities. We find that these effects are stronger when firms are from countries characterized by greater uncertainty avoidance. We contribute to the CSR communication literature by showing that temporal references in CSR talk tend to differ, depending on the company-level control of CSR activities, and by highlighting uncertainty avoidance’s role as a boundary condition for aspirational talk’s performativity.
How do firms make sense of creating shared value (CSV) projects? In their sense-making processes, do they extend the meaning spectrum to include human rights? What are the dominant cognitive frames ...through which firms make sense of CSV projects, and are some frames more likely to have transformative power? We pose these questions in the context of small-scale firms in a low-to-middle income country—a context where CSV policies have been promoted extensively over the last decade in the expectation of improved economic competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development processes. We employ a grounded theory approach to identify three dominant cognitive frames used by our respondents to make sense of CSV. The most prevalent frame (
growth first)
prioritizes economic over social and environmental goals, and considers social, environmental, and human rights benefits to trickle down from economic growth and wealth generation. In the second frame (
green-win
), economic actors follow a win–win logic according to which environmental sustainability is pursued only if there are clear and foreseeable economic payoffs. The third frame (
humanizing the business
) is a niche that emphasizes the attainment of certain human rights goals, despite a perceived lack of immediate economic returns. Our work casts doubt on the capacity of CSV projects to stimulate sustainable development processes without radically changing entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames from
growth first
to
humanizing the business
.
This research investigates the role of a widely used, yet under-investigated packaging cue: the paper strip that wraps around books, known as the belly band. Drawing on cue utilization theory, we ...conducted a pilot study, a laboratory experiment and a field study in two real-life bookshops to analyze the effects of belly bands on consumers' responses, as well as on actual browsing and purchasing behavior. The results suggest that the belly band acts primarily as a visual cue; has a significant effect on actual browsing and purchasing behavior; and stimulates unplanned behaviors, producing a carryover effect on the assortment even if it does not alter the customer's budget.
•Belly band prevails as a visual cue, activating emotional reactions.•A pilot and a lab suggest that customers' attention is primarily stimulated by the band's color.•Visual elements impact affective and behavioral responses outside of conscious awareness.•Belly bands stimulate unplanned behaviors, with a carryover effect without altering budgets.
This paper tests the effects of company size, market segment and core business, on the two dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), namely CSR talk and CSR walk. The study contributes to ...the literature on CSR offering for the first time a comprehensive explanation of why companies engage in CSR, by combining different perspectives that extant research has typically examined independently. The conceptual framework developed is empirically supported using data from a global sample of 219 small and large fashion companies, operating different businesses and serving different market segments. Results illustrate that small companies engage less in CSR talk and walk than large companies. In addition, companies targeting lower market segments or the luxury segment engage more in CSR talk, and shoe and leather companies engage most in CSR walk. This study empirically supports a novel picture of drivers of CSR engagement focusing on a context that generates a high share of the global value added, though provoking a negative social and environmental footprint.
•Fashion companies embed socially responsible behaviors into their business strategies.•Small and large companies differ in the way they talk and walk CSR.•Companies targeting less visible segments, e.g., middle markets, engage less in CSR talk.•Companies with different types of core business tackle CSR talk and walk in different ways.
Prior research has focused on analyzing the content and intent of celebrity social media communications. By observing that the linguistic style of such celebrity communications drives consumer word ...of mouth, the main goal of the current research is to broaden this limited perspective. An automated text analysis of narrative/analytical, internally/externally focused, and negative/positive emotional styles in tweets by celebrity chefs, personal trainers, and fashion bloggers was conducted to this effect. The findings are threefold. First, across celebrity categories externally focused, narrative styles are more effective in terms of word of mouth. Second, emotional styles are not effective. Third, angry outbursts are an exception; they are effective drivers of word of mouth for personal trainers. As such, this research furthers scholarly and practitioner understanding of the state-the-art of celebrity social media communication: the effect of tweets' linguistic styles on consumer word of mouth.
•Externally focused, narrative styles in celebrity tweets drive word of mouth most.•Emotional styles in celebrity tweets are not effective drivers of word of mouth.•Angry outbursts are an exception; they are an effective style for personal trainers.
This research investigates the role of subjective well-being in Gen Zers’ response to unethical situations that are encountered online versus offline. It empirically supports a model that ...incorporates moral reasoning effects and the aftermath of learning about the situation in either a first-person or third-person perspective. The findings suggest that Gen Zers are eager to show their values and participate in boycotts when facing an unethical situation. Subjective well-being plays an important role in activating versus inhibiting boycott behaviors as a response to unethical situations encountered both online and offline. Counterintuitively, Gen Zers are less likely to show support for a boycott when scoring high on well-being, since they are not willing to signal their commitment to gain social legitimacy. In fact, when coping with unethical situations, they are eager to display their true values and to enact the boycott rather than merely show support for it.
The use of contact‐tracing apps to curb the spreading of the COVID‐19 pandemic has stimulated social media debates on consumers' privacy concerns about the use and storage of sensitive data and on ...conspiracy theories positing that these apps are part of plans against individuals' freedom. By analyzing the type of language of tweets, we found which words, linguistic style, and emotions conveyed by tweets are more likely to be associated with consumers' privacy concerns and conspiracy theories and how they affect virality. To do so, we analyze a set of 5615 tweets related to the Italian tracing app “Immuni”. Results suggest that consumers' privacy concerns and conspiracy theories belong to different domains and exert different effects on the virality of tweets. Furthermore, the characteristics of the text (namely, complexity, certainty and emotions) cue different Twitter users' behaviors. This study helps researchers and managers to infer the psychological mechanisms that lead people to spread tweets about privacy concerns and conspiracy theories as well as how these texts impact the user who receives it.
This study offers the first analysis of hotel managers' intentions to maintain or diminish a service business relationship with Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) based on an empirical assessment of ...transaction-specific variables, socio-relational variables and values-related variables (namely, gay-friendliness). Based on 206 questionnaires administered to EU-based hotels, the study suggests that a hotel's intention to maintain seems to be impacted by both the economic dimension and the hotel's self-perceived gay-friendliness. The intention to diminish follows a different path, being mainly motivated by opportunistic and transaction-specific characteristics of the service. Our results suggest that hotels geared toward the LGBT travel market can benefit from being listed on OTAs without suffering brand image drawbacks. Moreover, like is already common in the CSR realm, OTAs should allow hotels to include LGBT-related information and explicitly expand their search engines to target gay-friendly hospitality.
•The decision to diminish is not the mirrored image of the decision to maintain.•A new two-factor scale of hotel gay-friendliness is developed and validated.•Hotels may perceive that the costs for listing on an OTA are too high.•A hotel's self-declared gay-friendliness plays a role in the B2B relationship continuation.•An OTA's strong reputation may shield the relationship from being diminished.
•The study ascertains the consumer CSR discourse in online reviews.•Social and environmental dimensions present an upward trend in online consumer reviews.•Environmental elements in online reviews ...are positively related with the review score.
This research investigates how consumers assess hotels’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices when writing online reviews. The study explores the CSR discourse in online reviews over a 10-year period, highlighting how CSR’s social and environmental dimensions relate to the main hospitality topics (experience, amenities, location, transactions, value). Based on a longitudinal automated text analysis covering 480,000 reviews across six European cities, the findings reveal that hotel customers have gradually begun paying more attention to CSR factors, particularly to social and environmental ones. However, the aggregate results suggest that the overall CSR consumer discourse is still very limited, although it does have important implications in terms of consumer emotions and hospitality dimensions.
Companies publish corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports to inform their stakeholders of their CSR efforts. However, the literature has shown that these reports can be used as a way to offset ...companies' involvement in corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR). By relying on a cognitive‐linguistic perspective, we investigate whether firms respond to their own irresponsible business conduct by changing their CSR reports' linguistic features and, if so, how. We use a sample of 135 large corporations headquartered in developed countries between 1995 and 2014. An analysis of their CSR reports reveals that the more a firm is involved in irresponsible business conduct, the more likely it is to use narrative (instead of analytical) and deceptive (instead of authentic) language. Moreover, we show that these two trends are particularly evident for highly internationalised firms.
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