Plan of Action: Three-factor Model of CSR Implementation and Application to Public Relations
CSR requires a comprehensive approach that, according to Basu and Palazzo (2008, see especially page 208), features the classic troika of human nature:
- Cognitive: Matters of identity and legitimacy that define what and how firms think
- Linguistic: Matters of justification, positioning, and transparency that define what firms say
- Conative: Matters of posture, consistency, and commitment that define how firms behave.
Practitioners can participate in the cognitive, linguistic, and conative aspects of their organizations to foster the alignment of mutually beneficial interests in society.
Cognitive: Public relations, through issues monitoring, can play a vital role in helping the organization to know and think about changing CSR standards and the means for achieving them. The reality, however, is that beyond scanning for changing stakeholder expectations and helping to create a matrix of multidisciplinary players to learn about and analyze such changes, public relations is not expert on many of the matters that are at the core of CSR standards and performance management. Others in management must commit to a strong CSR program. Accountants must recognize, appreciate, and implement higher financial management standards, as must general counsel, engineers, process experts, human resources specialists, nutritionists, environmental impact specialists, to mention only a few of the key disciplines.
Effective public relations and CSR requires every discipline in an organization to understand how an organization can improve, how that improvement enhances stakeholder relationships, and how it can be communicated. Such planning often requires practitioners to convince management that stakeholders are calling for higher engineering standards and processes to achieve employee or product safety, or even more daunting—sustainability. Practitioners may not know what is required in terms of engineering standards or accounting practices. But, practitioners can ascertain that strains occur when key stakeholders expectations are not being met—or when they are being met but the stakeholders do not know that fact.
Linguistic: Exploring the interconnection of communication and management (public relations and CSR), Clark (2000) observed that these two disciplines “have similar objectives: both disciplines are seeking to enhance the quality of the relationship of an organization among key stakeholder groups. Both disciplines recognize that to do so makes good business sense” (p. 376). Making this conclusion, she also noted that “questions as to the chosen message and how it affects the reputation or perception of an organization as responsible remain” (p. 376). Relevant to reputation and issue position are the terms that define a good organization and the socially responsible position on key issues. In such matters, meaning matters.
From this linguistic perspective, public relations can play a leadership role in understanding the terminology or linguistic changes in the communities where each organization operates—outside-in thinking. As the famous language theorist Kenneth Burke (1973) observed, we are interested in co-created meaning. Human experience can never free itself from the terminology operating at a given moment that filters views of physical and social realities (including standards of corporate responsibility). As Burke reasoned, “We must use terministic screens, since we can’t say anything without the use of terms; whatever terms we use, they necessarily constitute a corresponding kind of screen; and any such screen necessarily directs the attention to one field rather than another” (p. 50). Looking as he did so well for the chinks in the armor of communication, he warned: “If language is the fundamental instrument of human cooperation, and if there is an ‘organic flaw’ in the nature of language, we may well expect to find this organic flaw revealing itself through the texture of society” (Burke, 1934, p. 330).
No useful discussion of CSR can ignore the terminological challenges, and the role of public relations in such efforts. “In any process of institutionalization, meaningfulness is never ‘given’ but has to be struggled for, has to be secured, even against the resistance of others” (Clegg, Courpasson, & Phillips, 2006, p. 8). Public relations helps to define key terms that become part of the general dialogue which influences how the ideology of and evaluation of CSR performance is conceived in each society in any era. Therefore, practitioners should be especially trained and positioned to understand, appreciate, and respect the development of idioms that are current in private and public sector thinking and decision making.
Conative: Discussing the conative dimension of CSR, Basu and Palazzo (2008) reasoned that it focuses on matters of posture, consistency, and commitment that define how firms tend and prefer to behave. Organizations enact the standards of CSR in all that they say and do. The operational enactment of each organization’s standards of CSR occurs by “putting their money where their mind and mouth are.” This enactment opens the door for another key role of public relations: To help the organization communicate internally and externally its commitment to various standards and goals and the actions that demonstrate that commitment. Best practices companies believe transparency includes stating their CSR goals and then reporting how well they meet those goals. Such statements can help reduce any legitimacy gap by demonstrating how organizations meet or exceed the expectations of others.
In this way, effective public relations can foster mutually beneficial relationships, which Heath and Coombs (2006) reasoned exhibit the following characteristics:
- Openness and transparency: Letting others see whether the organization has sound CSR principles and whether it meets them
- Trustworthiness: Demonstrating that the organization uses CSR principles to be seen as reliable, non-exploitative, and dependable.
- Cooperation: Enacting collaborative decision making regarding what standards should be met and the measures needed to achieve them
- Alignment: Showing that the organization is responsible, responsive, and able to achieve rectitude through shared interests, rewards, and goals with its stakeholders
- Compatibility of views/opinions: Co-creating (socially constructing) through dialogue the standards and implementation of CSR
- Commitment: Planning and operating in ways that achieve a balance between the interests of the organization and those of the persons whom the organization affects and whose support the organization needs for its success
Although CSR and public relations are not identical they must be interdependent to be effective: Being the good organization as prerequisite for being a good communicator.
In truth, few articles on CSR focus on how it can be communicated. Clark (2000) sought to correct this flaw by showing the parallels between CSR and communication management approaches to public relations which features problem identification, conflict resolution, and relationship quality.
We may add scope to Clark’s argument and show public relations to have a dynamic role in the processes by which organizations advance their CSR performance, in pursuit of strengthening the relationships between them and their stakeholders. In this way, public relations can help organizations to make society more fully functioning (Heath 2006) by solving collective problems rather than merely managing relationships in ways that can accommodate various entities to one another. Having a good relationship does not mean that organizational standards of CSR will be raised. In fact, an antagonistic relationship is more predictive of the kind of change that has led to higher standards of CSR. They have been forged through heated debates (issue communication focusing on fact, value, and policy) by various groups engaged in power resource management, at various times with the good of society genuinely not under consideration but merely the good of a sector of the society, perhaps to the disadvantage of some other sector.
As cases, Enron and other businesses in crisis demonstrate that often the organization with what seems to enjoy the best relationships with stakeholders may not actually—and substantively—be the ones adhering to high CSR standards. The paradox is image driving substance rather than substance driving image. The quality of such relationships needs to be based on solid principles and the willingness and ability of each organization to meet or exceed stakeholder expectations over the long term. Sometimes, and cases are ample to demonstrate this point, organizations foster positive relationships to seem to be good when those relationships actually mask a crisis in the making. Once the crisis manifests itself, the relationships are not only demonstrated to be based on false assumptions and performance standards, but the damage of falsely built relationships makes crisis response and recovery difficult, and even impossible. A sound foundation of CSR commitment can help an organization recover from crisis. In sharp contrast, if the crisis results from inadequate or fraudulent CSR commitment, it is very likely to be even more damaging.
Black and Hartel (2004) conceptualized a model which they tested empirically to better understand the connections between their concepts and the way that public affairs and CSR can make organizations more effective.
- Public relations can support value attuned behavior and dialogue.
- CSR can define and support ethical business behavior and accountability.
- More socially aware organizations exhibit a higher commitment to and ability to achieve genuine dialogue and engagement with stakeholders,
- Organizations with higher CSR exhibit a caring atmosphere (commitment) in the workplace and higher standards of business ethics and
- “foster employee beliefs about the value of accountability” (p. 140).
In such matters, organizations under attack may smooth relationships instead of making true change in ways to reduce the honest hostility of critics. Advocacy as a cognitive variable can, and probably should, be seen as a positive communication option since it addresses from many perspectives the key issues upon which standards of corporate responsibility are forged and framed.
