This study examines stakeholders' perceptions of CSR disclosures by exploiting big data about the interactions between firms and stakeholders in social media. Given that social media represent public arenas where divergentsometimes conflicting -stakeholder interests are present and debated, we draw on organized hypocrisy theory to explore how stakeholders react to hypocrisy talk, decisions, and actions strategies employed in CSR disclosures on Facebook. We retrieve and analyze S&P100 firms' Facebook posts and the related stakeholders' reactions for the period starting 24 th February 2016 to 2 nd March 2017. We find that stakeholders exhibit diverse reactions towards firms' hypocrisy strategies. While stakeholders put more value on firms' actions-related information, and such actions disclosures attract both positive and negative reactions, talk and decisions disclosures generate positive reactions and reduce negative perceptions. We also investigate how stakeholder reactions trigger firms' postdisclosure replies and find that firms engage selectively with stakeholders, avoiding those who have concerns or criticism towards firms' CSR practices. Overall, our findings show that the use of organized hypocrisy disclosure strategies in social media allows firms to manage stakeholder perceptions and maintain legitimacy.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine corporate disclosure of stakeholder-oriented actions on Twitter in response to COVID-19 during the pandemic outbreak and to empirically investigate whetherfirms’ social performance and their financial resilience impact on their engagement in, and communication of, stakeholder-oriented COVID-19 actions. Design/methodology/approach This study scrapes a sample of tweets communicated by major global listed firms between March 1, 2020 and April 30, 2020 and identifies disclosures that mention firm engagement in stakeholder-oriented actions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cross-sectional regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between firms’ social performance and the number of tweets they post about stakeholder-oriented COVID-19 actions. Further, firms’ financial resilience is examined as a moderating factor of this relationship. Findings The results show that firms with better social performance are more likely to engage in and, hence, communicate stakeholder-oriented actions for the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter. Moreover, it is evident that firms with better social performance communicate more stakeholder-oriented actions only when they belong to industries that have not been severely impacted by the pandemic. Originality/value This study has two important contributions. First, this study provides contemporary evidence of corporate disclosure of firms and their stakeholder-oriented actions on Twitter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during the initial outbreak period. Second, it reveals insights into what characteristics drive firms to engage in costly corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, and promote them on social media, in a period characterized by high economic uncertainty.

This study explores firm responses to stakeholder-initiated involuntary disclosures, which are disclosures made by stakeholders about an organization but are against the will of managers, and subsequent stakeholder reactions. We analyzed 134,977 firm Twitter replies from seven companies to identify their responses to involuntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures and find that companies demonstrate different attitudes toward engagement in the exchange about involuntary disclosures. Whereas some companies communicate with stakeholders, others are almost silent. When a company engages in communication with its stakeholders, the communication is mostly one-way, and mortification or dissent is the likely response strategy. We also find that while stakeholders generally do not continue to engage with corporate communications, they are likely to respond when companies deny the information revealed by involuntary disclosure. Our results suggest that involuntary disclosures on social media are not able to improve communication between stakeholders and companies.

Sustainable enterprises face a risk for which the pressure over financial sustainability “crowds out” their impact mission. Corporate governance mechanisms can play an important role in managing the tensions between the two objectives, by steering and driving stakeholder engagement processes. At the same time, the rise of social media has provided firms with a platform for undertaking stakeholder engagement on a large scale. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine how the governance mechanisms of sustainable enterprises affect engagement with stakeholders on social media. Specifically, we identify three distinctive mechanisms for a governance approach to stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises: The legal purpose beyond profit maximization, directors' commitment to purpose, and the adoption of purpose‐specific accountability mechanisms. We argue that each of them matters for the extent to which sustainable enterprises engage with stakeholders on social media, as well as the quality of this engagement. By scraping and classifying nonfinancial tweets posted by 1074 U.S. B Corps between 2014 and 2018 and those posted by stakeholders towards the firm, we find that the legal and ethical mechanisms are positively related to the quality of engagement while the accountability mechanism is related to both the extent and quality of engagement. Our study sheds light on the implications of governance mechanisms in steering social media stakeholder engagement in sustainable enterprises.

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