Strategically Communicating

Given what we’ve been talking about in class the past couple of weeks — especially understanding our audiences and finding the right voice and tone to represent our narratives, what do you all think about this PSA campaign?

In the Weber and Marley (2009) article, I found the fluctuation of corporate social reporting — and consequently how it’s viewed by stakeholders — pretty interesting because it seems like this would be an area to cut out from the reports (were these types of reports included in the 10Ks of companies?). I say that because when most stakeholders look at these reports, they’re looking at the bottom line (dollars and cents) to see how the company has performed because they have some vested, financial interest. Do stakeholders read these reports if they’re not financially motivated?

Anyway, it would seem like the corporate social reporting in one of these reports wouldn’t have much of an impact on the bottom line. However, I’d be willing to bet that years down the road, the goings-on in the corporate social world would play a fairly significant factor in the company’s financial health, and consequently, it would affect the stakeholders.

When it came to the results of the Weber and Marley (2009) article, I wasn’t sure how the findings would come out because my knowledge of the world of corporate social responsibility (in terms of stakeholder salience) in other countries is fairly limited, but I did think Hypothesis No. 5 would be supported by the data. When I read four of the five hypotheses were not supported by the data, it was surprising.

Ultimately, wouldn’t it be better to study actual stakeholders than what Weber and Marley did?

Weber and Marley’s results make sense, but I’m confused why the authors excluded companies with social responsibility reports on their web pages, rather than as standalone downloads, since the former seems better designed to engage many of the external, non-traditional stakeholders with which this research is concerned. Such folks aren’t likely to download and peruse a report, much less be previously aware of it or seek one out. Any such internal report would have to be digested then presented in just such a user-friendly fashion to reach stakeholders beyond the corporate community.

The authors also conclude that, “seeing a business stakeholder only in terms of legitimacy… would be incomplete and vulnerable to… unexpected impacts…” (643). I think it could also be helpful to simply broaden the context in which we consider stakeholders legitimate. Though the authors state on 630 that they’ll later define the three salience terms, I never saw those definitions arrive, so I assume they simply agreed with the previous description of “legitimacy as a powerful influence in the social network” (672). I’m not sure why “the social network” is included there, but the idea of legitimacy as simply having influence seems complete in itself. I’m not even sure why we need that three-type triangle, since power is a measure of influence, and urgency is irrelevant except as an intensifier of the other two measures- it does not have any value on its own.