Business-centered versus socially responsible corporate diversity communication. An assessment of stakeholder (dis)agreement on Twitter

The role of strategic internal communication in empowering female employees to cope with workplace gender discrimination

“…Workplace gender discrimination has been studied widely across disciplines. However, findings and explanations largely focus on organizational systems and management but overlook the perspectives of public relations and communication (Maiorescu-Murphy, 2022). Nearly two decades ago, public relations scholars proposed the excellence theory, a dominant theory that infers ethical and effective communication between organizations and the publics in the form of dialogue (Grunig, 1992;Grunig et al, 2002).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility on Twitter: A Review of Topics and Digital Communication Strategies’ Success Factors

“…As Gender shift is an emerging megatrend and sustainability is increasingly becoming a hygiene factor, at the same time, the ethical cluster (a discussion of ethics in strategy and social business contexts) is steady and the environmental cluster is even declining over time [13]. As diversity activism increased in western societies, US corporations also changed their approach to diversity notably over time, when in 2017 they stressed the benefits of diversity on their operations via a business-centered diversity communication approach and switched to socially responsible corporate diversity communication by 2021 [10]. When drawing conclusions from CSR topic investigation on Twitter and taking a greater period of time into perspective for analysis, it is crucial to understand, that topic relevancy may change over time and neglecting this development can lead to inappropriate strategic derivations for companies.…”

“…Especially environmental and social CSR engagement act as safeguards in reducing online negative WOM about the company; while economic CSR engagement has only a small effect [41,66]. Especially companies following long-term consistency in approaching for example diversity topics on Twitter receive more positive sentiments and higher engagement than companies that made swift changes in the aftermath of increased pressure from activist groups [10]. Additionally communication on diversity topics that go beyond a company's own CSR objectives again increased positive user responses [10].…”

“…Especially companies following long-term consistency in approaching for example diversity topics on Twitter receive more positive sentiments and higher engagement than companies that made swift changes in the aftermath of increased pressure from activist groups [10]. Additionally communication on diversity topics that go beyond a company's own CSR objectives again increased positive user responses [10]. Pons et al (2021) found that environmental tweets with the word "environment" throw a positive sentiment while tweets with the word "climate" mainly have a negative mood, since Twitter users associate climate change with the increase in severity and frequency of certain environmental disasters and, tweets containing the word "environment" mainly refer to environmental and sustainable practices which are seen as valuable to fight against climate change and to improve the environmental behavior of companies [71].…”

“…In the search for suitable communication channels, Twitter in particular offered a good environment for corporate communication and stakeholder management in the context of CSR [9]. The microblog became a medium for large user interaction on ethical corporate practices [10] and a valuable channel to create an emotional bond, positively impacting consumer trust [11]. At the same time, Twitter offers low-threshold access to historical data via the publicly available API.…”