IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v114y2020icp421-435.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

CSR stakeholder dialogue in disguise: Hypocrisy in story performances

Author

Listed:
  • Andersen, Sophie Esmann
  • Høvring, Christiane Marie

Abstract

Based on a qualitative study of multiple stakeholder dialogues in a CSR context, the purpose of this study is to show how hypocrisy emerges in dialogue settings. As such, we challenge the normative CSR communication literature, which highlights stakeholder dialogue as an ideal way to avoid and solve potential accusations of hypocrisy. Drawing on an antenarrative methodology and focusing on the positioning strategies in story performances, this study demonstrates how new types of hypocrisy in stakeholder dialogue emerge. Rather than manifesting as a strategic space for avoiding or solving accusations of hypocrisy, this study shows that hypocrisy in dialogue is a) a performative concept, b) fundamental to organizational affiliation, and c) omnipresent and inescapable for dialogue participants, metaphorically defining the dialogue as a “theatre of hypocrisy.” Hypocrisy in dialogue is accompanied by a high level of reflexivity among dialogue participants, which we conclude is the driving force of the dialogue.

Suggested Citation

  • Andersen, Sophie Esmann & Høvring, Christiane Marie, 2020. "CSR stakeholder dialogue in disguise: Hypocrisy in story performances," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 421-435.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:114:y:2020:i:c:p:421-435
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.08.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319305016
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.08.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frank de Bakker & Frank den Hond, 2017. "NGO Activism and CSR," Post-Print hal-01803311, HAL.
    2. Markus J. Milne & Helen Tregidga & Sara Walton, 2009. "Words not actions! The ideological role of sustainable development reporting," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 22(8), pages 1211-1257, October.
    3. François Maon & Adam Lindgreen & Valérie Swaen, 2009. "Designing and Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility: An Integrative Framework Grounded in Theory and Practice," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 87(1), pages 71-89, April.
    4. Andrew Crane & Sarah Glozer, 2016. "Researching Corporate Social Responsibility Communication: Themes, Opportunities and Challenges," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(7), pages 1223-1252, November.
    5. Higgins, Colin & Walker, Robyn, 2012. "Ethos, logos, pathos: Strategies of persuasion in social/environmental reports," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 194-208.
    6. Friederike Schultz & Itziar Castelló & Mette Morsing, 2013. "The Construction of Corporate Social Responsibility in Network Societies: A Communication View," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 115(4), pages 681-692, July.
    7. Jon Burchell & Joanne Cook, 2013. "CSR, Co-optation and Resistance: The Emergence of New Agonistic Relations Between Business and Civil Society," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 115(4), pages 741-754, July.
    8. Robert Strand & R. Freeman, 2015. "Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 65-85, March.
    9. Lisa Koep, 2017. "Tensions in Aspirational CSR Communication—A Longitudinal Investigation of CSR Reporting," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-28, November.
    10. Christiane Marie Høvring & Sophie Esmann Andersen & Anne Ellerup Nielsen, 2018. "Discursive Tensions in CSR Multi-stakeholder Dialogue: A Foucauldian Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 627-645, October.
    11. Guido Palazzo & Andreas Scherer, 2006. "Corporate Legitimacy as Deliberation: A Communicative Framework," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 71-88, June.
    12. Ans Kolk, 2003. "Trends in sustainability reporting by the Fortune Global 250," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(5), pages 279-291, September.
    13. Itziar Castelló & Mette Morsing & Friederike Schultz, 2013. "Communicative Dynamics and the Polyphony of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Network Society," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(4), pages 683-694, December.
    14. Carmelo Cennamo & Pascual Berrone & Luis Gomez-Mejia, 2009. "Does Stakeholder Management have a Dark Side?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 89(4), pages 491-507, November.
    15. Colin Higgins & Robyn Walker, 2012. "Ethos, logos, pathos: Strategies of persuasion in social/environmental reports," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 194-208, September.
    16. Robert Strand & R. Freeman, 2015. "Erratum to: Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 87-87, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zarzycka Ewelina & Krasodomska Joanna & Dobija Dorota, 2021. "Stakeholder Engagement in Corporate Social Practices and Non-Financial Disclosures: A Systematic Literature Review," Journal of Management and Business Administration. Central Europe, Sciendo, vol. 29(1), pages 112-135, March.
    2. Laura Maria Ferri & Matteo Pedrini & Marco Minciullo, 2022. "Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder dialogue under institutional voids: decoupling the role of corporate motives, ethics, and resources," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 26(1), pages 159-188, March.
    3. Pablo Rodrigo & Ignacio J. Duran, 2021. "Why Does Context Really Matter? Understanding Companies’ Dialogue with Fringe Communities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-26, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christensen, Lars Thøger & Morsing, Mette & Thyssen, Ole, 2020. "Timely hypocrisy? Hypocrisy temporalities in CSR communication," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 327-335.
    2. Christiane Marie Høvring & Sophie Esmann Andersen & Anne Ellerup Nielsen, 2018. "Discursive Tensions in CSR Multi-stakeholder Dialogue: A Foucauldian Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 627-645, October.
    3. Wendy Stubbs & Colin Higgins & Markus Milne, 2013. "Why Do Companies Not Produce Sustainability Reports?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(7), pages 456-470, November.
    4. Hildegunn Mellesmo Aslaksen & Clare Hildebrandt & Hans Chr. Garmann Johnsen, 2021. "The long-term transformation of the concept of CSR: towards a more comprehensive emphasis on sustainability," International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Andrew Crane & Sarah Glozer, 2016. "Researching Corporate Social Responsibility Communication: Themes, Opportunities and Challenges," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(7), pages 1223-1252, November.
    6. Beattie, Vivien, 2014. "Accounting narratives and the narrative turn in accounting research: Issues, theory, methodology, methods and a research framework," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 111-134.
    7. Anne Vestergaard & Julie Uldam, 2022. "Legitimacy and Cosmopolitanism: Online Public Debates on (Corporate) Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 176(2), pages 227-240, March.
    8. Mohammed Hossain & Md. Tarikul Islam & Mahmood Ahmed Momin & Shamsun Nahar & Md. Samsul Alam, 2019. "Understanding Communication of Sustainability Reporting: Application of Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT)," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 563-586, December.
    9. Colin Higgins & Wendy Stubbs & Markus Milne, 2018. "Is Sustainability Reporting Becoming Institutionalised? The Role of an Issues-Based Field," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(2), pages 309-326, January.
    10. Ali Alotaibi & Francis Edum-Fotwe & Andrew D.F. Price, 2019. "Critical Barriers to Social Responsibility Implementation within Mega-Construction Projects: The Case of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-27, March.
    11. Ana Nave & João Ferreira, 2019. "Corporate social responsibility strategies: Past research and future challenges," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 885-901, July.
    12. Verena Girschik, 2020. "Managing Legitimacy in Business‐Driven Social Change: The Role of Relational Work," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 775-804, June.
    13. Nataša Verk & Urša Golob & Klement Podnar, 2021. "A Dynamic Review of the Emergence of Corporate Social Responsibility Communication," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 168(3), pages 491-515, January.
    14. Annesi, Nora & Battaglia, Massimo & Frey, Marco, 2021. "Stakeholder engagement by an Italian water utility company: Insight from participant observation of dialogism," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    15. Colin Higgins & Markus Milne & Bernadine Gramberg, 2015. "The Uptake of Sustainability Reporting in Australia," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 129(2), pages 445-468, June.
    16. Eva Alexandra Jakob & Holger Steinmetz & Marius Claus Wehner & Christina Engelhardt & Rüdiger Kabst, 2022. "Like It or Not: When Corporate Social Responsibility Does Not Attract Potential Applicants," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 105-127, June.
    17. Fang, Mingyue & Nie, Huihua & Shen, Xinyi, 2023. "Can enterprise digitization improve ESG performance?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    18. Tuvana Cüre & Emel Esen & Arzu Özsözgün Çalışkan, 2020. "Impression Management in Graphical Representation of Economic, Social, and Environmental Issues: An Empirical Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, January.
    19. Mariusz Zielinski & Izabela Jonek-Kowalska, 2020. "Profitability of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities from the Perspective of Corporate Social Managers," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2), pages 264-280.
    20. Ionel Bostan & Ionela-Corina Chersan & Magdalena Danileț & Mihaela Ifrim & Viorica Chirilă, 2020. "Investigations Regarding the Linguistic Register Used by Managers to Convey to Stakeholders a Positive View of Their Company, in the Context of the Business Sustainability Desideratum," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-19, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:114:y:2020:i:c:p:421-435. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.