[ecrea] Call for Papers: Special Issue of Business & Society

REMINDER: Call for Papers: Special Issue of Business & Society – 
DEADLINE: DECEMBER 12 2016

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Business & Society

CSR and Communication: Examining how CSR Shapes, and is Shaped by, Talk 
and Text

Guest editors: Andrew Crane, Schulich School of Business, Mette Morsing, 
Copenhagen Business School,  Dennis Schoeneborn, Copenhagen Business School

This Special Issue of Business & Society seeks to expand and enrich the 
body of research on CSR and communication. Specifically, it aims to 
examine the role of talk and text (including verbal, visual and written 
communication) in shaping the nature and meaning of CSR – and how CSR 
meanings in turn shape such communication. This may include scholarly 
contributions that will extend our understanding of how rhetoric, 
narrative, discourse, sensemaking, and other frameworks of meaning are 
involved in CSR communication.

The existing literature on CSR tends to be – at least implicitly – 
permeated with a normative or    prescriptive    stance    on    CSR 
communication:    either    as    optimism    about    how communication 
of CSR can be used by corporations to foster their reputation and 
legitimacy (e.g.,  Sen,  Bhattacharaya  &  Korschun,  2006;  Ferrell, 
Gonzalez-¬‐Padron,  Hult  &  Maignan, 2010) – or with a rather skeptical 
stance. These latter works suspect that communication tends to be used 
by corporations as a powerful means to ward off criticism and give false 
impressions of ‘green-¬‐washing’ or ‘window-¬‐dressing’ (e.g., Roberts, 
2003; Banerjee, 2008). Across these perspectives, communication tends to 
be primarily seen as an instrument that is  employed by  corporations to 
 disseminate  information  about  CSR  practices  (that  have already 
been implemented to a greater or lesser degree).

However, the prospective,  anticipatory, and formative role of 
communication for CSR has, thus  far,  tended  to  remain  implicit  or 
under-¬‐theorized.  More  specifically,  communicative practices can 
play an important and formative role, for instance, in constituting 
networked relationships between business firms and larger society 
(Castello, Morsing & Schultz, 2013; Schoeneborn  &  Trittin,  2013),  in 
 driving  organizational  and  social  change  (Christensen, Morsing  & 
 Thyssen, 2013;  Haack,  Schoeneborn  &  Wickert,  2012),  in 
constituting  new subject  relations  in  the  field  of  CSR  (Caruana 
&  Crane,  2008),  and  enabling  sensemaking about what CSR can and 
cannot be (Basu & Palazzo, 2008). In other words, there is a need to 
understand better what communication does to CSR and what CSR does to 
communication.

If  CSR  is  a  “moving  target”  (Christensen  et  al.,  2013;  Haack & 
 Schoeneborn,  2015),  “in constant  flux”  (Carroll,  1979)  and  “in 
a  continuing  state  of  emergence”  (Lockett,  Moon  & Visser, 2006) 
as  scholars  and practitioners  tend  to  agree,  then  a static  and 
tool-¬‐like understanding   of   CSR   communication seems   to   be 
insufficient.   New   information   and communication technologies 
(e.g., social media) appear to further push and transform the 
communicative   dynamics   within   and   between   organizations and 
their   environment (Castello et al., 2013; Whelan, Moon & Grant, 2013). 
These new challenges suggest the need for communication-¬‐centered 
works  that  can  help  understand  how CSR is  a  continuous activity 
through  which  individuals  and organizations  “explore,  construct, 
negotiate  and modify  what  it means  to  be  a  socially  responsible 
organization”  (Christensen  & Cheney, 2011, p. 491).

We therefore suggest bringing a formative view of communication to the 
forefront of CSR research in this Business & Society special issue. We 
invite contributions that take stock of our existing knowledge and 
advance CSR communication theory through new conceptual considerations, 
empirical insights, and critical reflections. We particularly encourage 
papers that approach CSR communication through talk and text by drawing 
on concepts like rhetoric, narratives, discourse, sensemaking, as well 
as other frameworks that help inform the formative role of communication 
in CSR. This also may involve papers grounded in more general 
constructionist perspectives, including works that follow emergent ideas 
of “communicative institutionalism” (Cornelissen, Durand, Fiss, Lammers 
& Vaara, 2015) or the “communicative constitution of organizations” 
(CCO) perspective (Cooren, Kuhn, Cornelissen & Clarke, 2011). In this 
way, we hope to be able to compile a rich set of articles that help 
enhance our understanding of what communication does to CSR and what CSR 
does to communication.

We welcome a broad range of questions and topic areas within the broad 
theme – some indicative questions include:

How do different forms of communication shape stakeholder 
interpretations of the meaning and scope of CSR? In what ways is CSR 
communication performative with material impacts (see also the idea of 
“aspirational talk” by Christensen et al., 2013)?

How do different actors respond to, resist, and engage with specific 
rhetorical strategies and figures (e.g., allusion, analogy, hyperbole, 
metaphor, metonymy, or humor), employed by corporations in their CSR 
communication?

What narrative structures and components are used to give meaning to the 
process of CSR design and implementation?

How do actors in organizational settings differ in their sensemaking of 
CSR, including productive forms of misunderstanding?

In  what  ways  does  intensified  “CSR  talk”  influence  the formation 
 and  change  of individual, professional and organizational identities 
in the workplace (e.g., in terms of improved self-¬‐enhancement and 
identification as well as cynicism and “CSR fatigue”)?

How is CSR knowledge embedded in micro and macro discourses of 
organization and what role do governmentality and responsibilization 
play in discursive formations of CSR?

By whom, and for what purpose is the meaning of CSR (as an “empty 
signifier”) constituted through signs and symbols? What new semiotic 
language does CSR bring into economic life?

To what extent does the formative role of communication for CSR become 
intensified by new information and communication technologies (ICTs), 
such as social media? For example,  in  what  ways  does  it  influence 
and  change  image-¬‐identity relations  for individuals and organizations?

To what extent do new ICTs enable the creation of new, fluid, and 
networked forms of communication structures that, in turn, create new 
issues of corporate social responsibility (e.g., transparency, privacy, 
and surveillance) and different forms of accountability and disclosure?

SUBMISSION PROCESS AND DEADLINES

The deadline for submission of full papers is December 12, 2016. Authors 
should submit their manuscripts through ScholarOne Manuscripts at 
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bas.

Authors should be sure to specify in the submission system that the 
manuscript is for the special issue on “CSR and Communication”. 
Manuscripts should be prepared following the Business & Society author 
guidelines: 
http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal200878/manuscriptSubmission.

All articles will be subjected to double-¬‐blind peer review and 
editorial process in accordance with the policies of Business & Society.

Special Issue Workshop

To help authors prepare their manuscripts for submission, a Special 
Issue Workshop will be held on July 6, 2016, prior to the European Group 
of Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium 2016 in Naples, Italy. The 
workshop will be facilitated by the Special Issue editors.

Authors are invited to present and discuss their papers during the 
workshop and to receive feedback for further improvement of their 
manuscripts. Acceptance for presentation at the workshop does not 
guarantee acceptance of the paper for publication in Business & Society.

To  be  considered  for  the  workshop,  authors  will  need  to  submit 
 a  short  paper  (max.  10 double-¬‐spaced  pages,  incl.  references 
and  exhibits)  via  the  EGOS  website  by  March  31, 2016. More 
information about the submission procedure will be made available in 
January, 2016 on the Business & Society website (http://bas.sagepub.com 
– see updated call in the “Call for Papers” section). Note that 
submission of a short paper to the workshop is not a precondition for 
submission of a full paper to the Special Issue.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Business & Society is one of the leading journals at the intersection of 
business and society, covering issues of social responsibility, ethics 
and governance. It is the official journal of the International 
Association of Business and Society and is published by Sage. Its 
current two-¬‐ year Citation Impact Factor is 1.468 (2014) and its 
five-¬‐year Citation Impact Factor is 2.103. It is a 3-¬‐rated journal 
in the 2015 UK Association of Business Schools Journal Ranking Guide, a 
B-¬‐journal in the German Academic Association for Business Research, 
and an A-¬‐journal in the Australian Business School Dean’s list. For 
further details see http://bas.sagepub.com.

ABOUT THE GUEST EDITORS

Andrew Crane is a Co-¬‐editor of Business & Society, and the George R. 
Gardiner Professor of Business  Ethics  and  Director  of  the  Centre 
of  Excellence  in  Responsible  Business  at  the Schulich  School  of 
Business,  York  University. He  is  the  author  or  editor  of  eleven 
 books, including  an  award-¬‐winning  textbook  on  Business  Ethics 
and  the  Oxford  Handbook  of Corporate   Social   Responsibility. His 
 latest   book   is   Social   Partnerships   and   Responsible 
Business: A Research Handbook.  He  has  published  in  a  range  of top 
 tier  journals  including Academy  of  Management  Review, 
Organization  Studies,  Journal  of  Management  Studies, California 
Management  Review,  Annals  of  Tourism  Research,  Business & Society, 
 Journal  of Business  Ethics,  European  Journal  of Marketing,  and 
Marketing  Theory.  He  serves  on  the editorial board of Academy of 
Management Review and the Journal of Management Studies.

Mette  Morsing  is  Professor  of  Communication  and  CSR  at  the 
Centre  of  Corporate  Social Responsibility  (cbsCSR),  Department  of 
Intercultural  Communication  and  Management, Copenhagen Business 
School, Denmark, and the Co-¬‐Director of CBS Sustainability Platform 
(2011-¬‐2016). Her research focuses on organizational communication, 
identity-¬‐image theory and media studies in the context of CSR. She is 
particularly interested in studying the role of

communication   for   governance   of   business-¬‐society   relations. 
Her   research   has   been published in Journal of Management Studies, 
Organization, Human Relations, Harvard-¬‐Deusto Business Review, 
Journal  of  Business Ethics,  Management  Communication Quarterly  and 
Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society 
among others, and at publishers such as Sage, Routledge, Palgrave 
MacMillan and Oxford University Press. She is an Associate  Editor of 
Scandinavian  Journal  of  Management  (since 2015),  serves  as 
Editorial Board Member of Business & Society (since 2015), Business 
Ethics – A European Review (since 2010), Corporate Communication: an 
International Journal (since 2009), Corporate Governance: an 
International  Journal  of  Business  in  Society, (since  2004)  and 
is  a  Series  Editor  of  the Cambridge  University  Press  series  on 
"Business,  Value  Creation  and  Society"  with Edward Freeman and 
Jeremy Moon. She has edited eight books and two journal special issues

Dennis  Schoeneborn  is Professor (MSO) of Communication, Organization, 
and CSR at the Centre    of    Corporate    Social    Responsibility 
(cbsCSR),    Department    of    Intercultural Communication  and 
Management,  Copenhagen Business  School,  Denmark.  His  research 
interests  include  organization  theory,  organizational communication, 
 CSR  communication, and computer-¬‐mediated communication. His current 
research places a particular emphasis on studying  the  constitutive and 
 formative  role  of  communication  for  organizations  as responsible 
 social  actors.  From  2015-¬‐2018,  he  serves  as  the  head 
coordinator  of  the Standing  Working  Group “Organization  as 
Communication”  at  the  European  Group  of Organizational Studies 
(EGOS).   His   research   has   been published   in   the   Academy 
of Management  Review,  Human Relations,  Journal  of  Business  Ethics, 
 Journal  of  Management Inquiry,   Journal   of   Management 
Studies,   Management Communication Quarterly,   and Organization 
Studies,   among   others.   He   serves   on   the   editorial   board 
 member   of Management Communication Quarterly (since 2013), 
Organization Studies (since 2014), and Business  &  Society  (from 
2016).   He   is   also co-¬‐editor of   the   volume   “Organization 
as Communication:  Perspectives  in Dialogue”  (with  Steffen  Blaschke) 
 that  is  forthcoming  at Taylor & Francis.

REFERENCES

Banerjee S.B. (2008) Corporate social responsibility: The good, the bad 
and the ugly. Critical Sociology, 34(1), 51-¬‐79.

Basu, K., & Palazzo, G. (2008). Corporate social responsibility: a 
process model of sensemaking. Academy of Management Review, 33(1): 
122-¬‐136.

Carroll, A.B. (1979). A three-¬‐dimensional conceptual model of 
corporate performance. Academy of Management Review, 4(4), 497-¬‐505.

Caruana, R., & Crane, A. (2008). Constructing consumer responsibility: 
exploring the role of corporate communications. Organization Studies, 
29: 1495-¬‐1519.

Castelló, I., Morsing, M., & Schultz, F. (2013). Communicative dynamics 
and the polyphony of corporate social responsibility in the network 
society. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(4), 683-¬‐694.

Christensen, L. T. & Cheney, G. (2011). Interrogating the communicative 
dimensions of corporate social responsibility. In Ø., Ihlen, J. L. 
Bartlett & S. May (Eds.), The Handbook of Communication and Corporate 
Social Responsibility (pp. 491-¬‐504). Oxford, UK: Wiley ¬‐Blackwell.

Christensen, L.T., Morsing M., & Thyssen, O. (2013). CSR as aspirational 
talk. Organization 20(3), 372–393.

Cooren, F., Kuhn. T., Cornelissen, J.P. & Clarke, T. (2011). 
Communication, organizing and organization: An overview and introduction 
to the special issue. Organization Studies, 32(9), 1149-¬‐1170.

Cornelissen, J. P., Durand, R., Fiss, P. C., Lammers, J. C., & Vaara, E. 
(2015). Putting Communication Front and Center in Institutional Theory 
and Analysis. Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 10-¬‐27.

Ferrell, O.C., Gonzalez-¬‐Padron, T. L., Hult, T. M., Maignan, I. 
(2010). From Market Orientation to Stakeholder Orientation. Journal of 
Public Policy & Marketing, 29(1), 93-¬‐96.

Golob, U., Podnar, K., Elving, W. J., Ellerup Nielsen, A., Thomsen, C., 
& Schultz, F. (2013). CSR communication: quo vadis? Corporate 
Communications: An International Journal, 18(2), 176-¬‐192.

Haack, P. & Schoeneborn, D. (2015). Is decoupling becoming decoupled 
from institutional theory? A commentary on Wijen. Academy of Management 
Review, 40(2), 307-¬‐310.

Haack, P., Schoeneborn, D., & Wickert, C. (2012). Talking the talk, 
moral entrapment, creeping commitment? Exploring narrative dynamics in 
corporate responsibility standardization. Organization Studies, 
33(5-¬‐6), 815-¬‐845.

Lockett, A., Moon, J., & Visser, W. (2006). Corporate social 
responsibility in management research: Focus, nature, salience and 
sources of influence. Journal of Management Studies, 43(1), 115–136.

Roberts J. (2003). The manufacture of corporate social responsibility: 
Constructing corporate sensibility. Organization 10(2), 249-¬‐265.

Schoeneborn, D., & Trittin, H. (2013). Transcending transmission: 
Towards a constitutive perspective on CSR communication. Corporate 
Communications: An International Journal, 18(2), 193-¬‐211.

Sen, S., Bhattacharaya, C. B. & Korschun, D. (2006). The role of 
corporate social responsibility in strengthening multiple stakeholder 
relationships: A field experiment. Journal of the Academy of Marketing 
Science, 34(2), 158-¬‐166

Whelan, G., Moon, J. & Grant, B. (2013). Corporations and citizenship 
arenas in the age of social media. Journal of Business Ethics, 118, 
777-¬‐790.

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