Timothy Coombs

CSR as crisis risk: expanding how we conceptualize the relationship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a crisis risk. The bulk of the current research on CSR and crisis examined the role of CSR as an asset in a crisis. CSR as crisis risk is a direct function of CSR’s increasingly important role in reputation management. CSR has become an important aspect of corporate reputations – it is one of the dimensions used to assess a corporation’s crisis. The value of CSR to reputations is illustrated in the RepTrak reputation measure from the Reputation Institute and the value it places upon CSR. If stakeholders can challenge CSR claims by arguing a corporation is acting irresponsibly, the stakeholders can erode the corporation’s reputational assets by creating a challenge crisis. A CSR-based challenge occurs when stakeholders redefine a corporation’s current practices as irresponsible. The CSR-based challenge can be risk because it can damage reputational assets and potentially escalate into a crisis. CSR become...

Origin stories in CSR: genesis of CSR at British American Tobacco

Purpose Graphic novels have a concept known as the origin story. The origin story is background information on how a hero or villain came into being. The purpose of this paper is to explore the origin story of corporate social responsibility at British American Tobacco (BAT). The CSR origin story is unpacked by examining corporate documents from BAT that discuss the initial development of the company’s CSR program. The BAT documents are part of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL), a searchable, digital archive developed and managed by the University of California, San Francisco. It contains 85,569,326 pages in 14,360,422 documents. The library was created as part of the tobacco company settlement of a major law suit in the USA. Design/methodology/approach For this case study, the authors searched the archive for documents from BAT that had the key words “corporate social responsibility.” The documents were then analyzed using qualitative content analysis to identify key themes related to BAT’s created of its CSR programs. Findings The two dominant themes were business case BAT made for CSR and the environmental factors that shaped CSR. The business case had sub-themes of the new operating environment and reinforcing employees. The environmental sub-themes were the importance of NGOS and the top issues to be addressed in CSR efforts. The themes helped to explain why BAT was engaging in CSR, the factors shaping the start of its CSR programs, and the issues it intended to address through CSR. Research limitations/implications The analysis is limited to one organization and does not include interviews to go with the archived documents. Practical implications The paper considers the implications of the analysis for theory and practice for internal CSR communication. Originality/value The documents provide a rare glimpse inside a corporate decision to begin a CSR program and how the managers “talked” about CSR. Instead of examining external CSR communication, it examines the early days of internal CSR communication at a specific firm. The yields of the document analysis provide insights into how BAT conceptualized CSR and communicated the rationale for creating a CSR program internally. Research has relied primarily upon speculation of corporate motives or corporate public discourse designed to frame their CSR efforts. The internal documents provide an unfiltered examination of the motives for a CSR program. This allows us to better understand why a CSR program was created including the motives, targets, and desired outcomes.

Public relations and memory

Constructs a common past of a social community that extends beyond the life-span of its individual members ... generational memory refers to the common experiences of cotemporaries, to a life-world that is regarded as largely inaccessible to those who were born later on ... historical memory imagines a past that reflects the present culture of a social community instead of relating to direct experience. (Giesen and Junge, 2003: 326)

Propaganda, terrorism and ethics

Our Special Issue was inspired by the desire to confront head on difficult challenges for the public relations field. We also hoped that the Call for Papers would inspire those from outwith the discipline to contribute their perspectives. We were not disappointed in either of our hopes for the issue. We begin our Special Issue with an article by Holbrook that focuses initially on conceptual analysis, drawing on a range of literature to explore the relationship between terrorism (understood as message communication and violence) and mass communication and the way in which violence is rationalised and contextualised by terrorists. Holbrook argues that propaganda is not a static concept and points to its variable usage and highlighting connections between activist and terrorist approaches to communication and the role of ideology as central as a guide to political behaviour and action. In the final part of the article, Holbrook turns attention to Al-Qaeda, providing empirical evidence of media production outputs and the attention paid to the writing of a Syrian jihadist strategist to the concept of public relations. These writings are contrasted with those of Carlos Marighella, whose work inspired the Red Army Faction/Baader Meinhof Group, and White supremicist and neo-Nazi publications. This genre of writing is subsequently linked to mobilisation plans that include a wider group or broader movement to sustain the activism, and conceptually positioned as a form of social movement and reference to the literature within that field.

Knowledges, reflexivity and power

The relationships between knowledge, discourse and power in historical and sociocultural contexts are foregrounded in this issue of Public Relations Inquiry. This issue begins with Macnamara’s critical review of evaluation in practice, highlighting the historical and continuing rupture between theory and praxis in relation to this concept. Macnamara notes the recent ‘flurry of industry activity’ that has resulted in a range of public declarations and standards such as the important sounding Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles and proceeds to analyse three key aspects: reach (dissemination based on advertising concepts and practice), tone/sentiment and engagement. His analysis throws up inconsistencies, lack of clarity, the conflation of concepts, methodological problems and exaggerated claims. Macnamara challenges a number of fundamental assumptions and practices, such as the application of return of investment (ROI) to public relations contexts, but arguably more importantly, he highlights the most important issue as the lack of engagement between academia and practice. In so doing, there is an implicit critique of hierarchical transmission models of knowledge exchange thus highlighting an apparent gap in understanding the thinking that underpins public relations work in practice (though see Pieczka on expertise, 2002, 2006, 2007, and L’Etang and Powell on knowledges, 2013). This suggests the need for basic research, but Macnamara also critiques critical scholars for their lack of attention to measurement and evaluation arguing that

Political formations, discourses and actions

The articles in this issue explore a range of political themes connected to discourse, identification and power. The first article (Vardeman-Winter, Tindall and Jiang) considers how the descriptive theory of intersectionality has critical implications for public relations as a discipline and a practice, challenging situational theory and established conceptions of publics. Intersectionality implicitly politicizes public relations since identities are sociopolitical constructions and raises issues for research practices, explored by the authors through critical review of past empirical studies. The authors argue that their approach offers a better understanding of ‘phenomenological situations’ making use of ethnographic insights. The tensions between interpretations that respectively propose organizations or publics (activists) have more power is foregrounded as: ‘Intersectionality illuminates this “crisis of representation” over who has what power in public relations, based on their identities and how these identities are situated in sociological contexts.’ Identities and identity formation and maintenance are seen as central to the understanding of the acquisition, enactment and ‘management’ of power. Power is central to the second article (Place and Vardeman-Winter) where: ‘The public relations industry can be viewed as a site through which power is exercised, and public relations professionals are players in systems of power dynamics and relations.’ The authors discuss hegemonic discourses in public relations where the concept has had purchase in considering the impact of public relations practice in society as well as in paradigm debate within the field itself (L’Etang, 1996: 34; Roper, 2005) blending insights from subaltern and post-colonial theories while adapting Foucault’s concept of

Media, socio political theory and reflexivity

The final issue of our first volume of Public Relations Inquiry has a strong thematic focus around political communication and political ideology. The relationships between public relations, public communication and propaganda underlie the specific contributions as do the challenging issues of public participation, dialogue, transparency, and the relationships between public communicators and the media. The tensions between idealism and realpolitik are a point of engagement as contributors conceptualize a variety of empirical and conceptual projects. We open with the contribution of Ian Somerville and Shane Kirby, which analyses the public relations strategies employed by the mainstream political parties during the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ referendum campaign in spring 1998. Based on extensive empirical research, including elite interviews with politicians, campaign directors, press officers and political strategists from the main political parties and textual analysis of the rhetoric employed in campaign materials, the study is positioned conceptually as an exploration of practice in relation to dialogic and dissemination communication models, arguing that the latter is more appropriate in contemporary democratic societies. The article is characterized by its detailed review of the concepts of dialogue and dissemination and its sensitivity to structures of argumentation and logic and also reveals the revolving doors between elite communicators and politicians, a feature that also emerges as significant in our second article by Larsåke Larsson, whose detailed historical study recounts the emergence and development of government press relations in Sweden. This fascinating

Ethics, identities and discursive formations

As editors we value diverse perspectives and research approaches, and in this issue we include contributions that elucidate public relations using concepts and theories from outside the mainstream, in order to generate new insights and research agendas. We have also included articles that are written around empirical work, and those that focus solely on the development of argument to unpack and problematize concepts. As it happens, there is some consonance among the articles; for example: shared concerns in relation to ethical praxis at the individual, organizational, societal and global levels; an interest in occupational identities; and a commitment to reflexivity. We open our second issue with an article that argues for a hermeneutic approach to public relations ethics with a view to increasing reflexivity in the field. Hermeneutics, according to Fawkes, is central to public relations practice: ‘given the centrality of interpretation ... the practitioner is constantly interpreting various internal and external publics to the organization and vice versa, and is prized for skill in understanding the nuances and navigating the pitfalls of interpretation’. Her article proposes a new approach to considerations of professional ethics in public relations. She presents a taxonomy of public relations theory linked to ethical theory, highlighting a number of problematics. She questions the way in which discussions about the loss of public trust focus on their lack of trust rather than on the lack of trustworthiness and her article re-orientates the burden of analysis about public relations ethics onto public relations actors and agents, rather than their critics. She highlights the value of a human-centred approach and understanding through interpretation within a relational context, indicating along the way that there are important, but relatively unexplored components within public relations ethics such as spirituality, thus leading towards a more holistic conception of public relations.