Co-creation in Europe and China: Revisiting CR communication strategies in social media

Oliver Laasch, Alexandra Barrueta Sacksteder, Roger N. Conaway, Menglan Shi, Aranzazu Gomez Segovia

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Social media has become a key element of communication often central to processes of social construction and reconstruction, constituting new realities. This holds equally true for the field of corporate responsibility (CR) communication. A conceptual cornerstone of this field are Morsing and Schultz’s (2006) CR communication strategies. However, this concept with its three strategies of information, response and involvement was crafted before the age of social media and little research has critically examined its application in this new context. In this article we revisit corporate responsibility communication strategies in the empirical context of European and Chinese CR communication on social media. Through a sequential case study involving 30 European and 20 Chinese companies, we find distinctive characteristics of CR communication on social media. We also find a novel, fourth type of CR communication strategies of constitutive co-creation, where communication is central to a stakeholder-led co-creation process, constituting new CR activities that would not have materialized otherwise. This article’s main contributions are a systematic extension of CR communication strategies to the social media context, and a refinement of the conceptual framework by theorizing the new constitutive co-creation strategy. Furthermore, we contribute back the constitutive communication of organization discussion by foregrounding the constitutive potential of communication processes on social media.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAcademy of Management proceedings
PublisherAcademy Of Management
Volume2018.1
Publication statusPublished - 9 Jul 2018
Externally publishedYes

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