Costruzione di un modello operativo per valutare e migliorare la CSR communication sulle Corporate Facebook Pages

Abstract

The thesis aims to develop and implement an operational model to identify, assess and improve the requirements of CSR communication and, consequently, increase legitimacy on Corporate Facebook Pages. The study is divided in two sections, the first one dedicated to the analysis of literature review on the subject (Fukukawa & Moon, 2004; Waters et al., 2009; Parker et.al 2010; Gomez & Chalmeta, 2011; Siano et al., 2016); the second one, dedicated to methodology and the empirical analysis. The theoretical premise of research is based on the identification of a gap, both in the academic and managerial field, concerning the identification and use of effective feedback and evaluation tools to be applied to “CSR communication” in digital environments, in order to analyze this phenomenon in a more global and comprehensive way. In this regard, the proposed model aims to offer a unitary, organic and integrated vision of the main requirements that characterize online CSR communication. From a methodological point of view, the model has been developed both on the basis of the literature review in the field of legitimacy (Vaara, E., & Tienar, J., 2008; Reast, Maon, Lindgreen & Vanhamme, 2013), stakeholder engagement (Dobele, Westberg, Steel, Flowers, 2014), social media communication (Carrington et al., 2005; Di Bari, Riccardo, 2010; Bonsón & Ratkai, 2013), sustainability and CSR communication (information and involvement strategies) (Siebert, 2011; Adomßent & Godemann, 2011; Dade & Hassenzahl, 2013, Morsing & Schultz, 2006; Colleoni, 3 2013), and from the analysis of the corporate facebook pages of the organizations classified by the Reputation Institute in the “Global CSR RepTrak 2015”. To test the feasibility of the model, a pilot study on Corporate Facebook Pages of the companies classified by the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSWI) 2015, over a period of six months, is carried out. The pilot study involves the use of different tools and analysis techniques according to a mixed methods approach: Facebook developers tools for the automatic extraction of posts, Likealyzer and the software NooJ (Natural Language Processing environment) in order to implement an automated content analysis (Silberztein, 2003, 2015; Elia, Vietri, Postiglione, Monteleone, & Marano, 2010). The research brings out the construction of an operational model enables to evaluate the requirements of the CSR communication on the corporate FB pages, providing a score to the individual companies and an industry-ranking. The results of the pilot study highlight that the organizations communicate CSR on their Corporate Facebook pages still marginally, since the leadership in terms of content appear focused on marketing or product communication. In addition, the companies analyzed tend to adopt information strategies in a greater way than involvement strategies. Therefore, emerges the tendency of companies to adopt a "one-way" communication approach in which the organization internally defines its "CSR agenda". The study offers interesting insights from a theoretical and managerial point of view. From the managerial point of view the model provides digital communication consultants with an operational tool that is useful to improve the CSR communication on corporate FB pages identifying corrective actions in the “weak” areas. On a theoretical level, the thesis is part of a new field of research on CSR communication (Godemann, Michelsen, 2011). In fact studies and research concerning the assessment and improvement of critical factors of CSR communication on the social networks sites (Lundquist, 2014, Bonsón & Ratkai, 2013) are not much developed in literature to date. The work also contributes to enrich the debate on the different CSR strategies within stakeholder management, focusing attention on the fact that CSR communication can be considered as a legitimization strategy that can be adopted by companies. Starting from the legitimacy and stakeholders theories, the study identifies CSR communication strategies aimed at stakeholder engagement as the result of both "information" and "involvement" strategies. The model does not pretend to be exhaustive as it focuses on a limited number of factors, without considering the information only visible to the facebook page's Administrators. Moreover, the proposed model presents the inherent limitations of content analysis (Beattie, McInnes, & Fearnley, 2004). Future research are auspicable in order to test the effectiveness of the model on a large-scale. Moreover It would be interesting to check the possibility of applying the proposed tool to other digital environements, such as Twitter and Google +. [edited by author]