Capturing the dynamic tension in CSR discourses: Toward an integrative circuit of culture model

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

6-2023

Abstract

This paper adopts the Circuit of Culture (COC) – an interpretive approach to international public relations practice based on its five moments (i.e., regulations, production, representations, consumption and identity) – as a guiding framework to analyze corporate social responsibility discourses of Wilmar, a multinational corporation based in Singapore. Sustainability reports from 2009 to 2019 were first accessed to examine the negotiation dynamics that occur in textual discourse when the company dealt with the talk-action relationship through the Communication as Constitutive of Organization (CCO) approach. These were integrated with the contextual propositions nurtured in the five moments of COC to identify the negotiating mechanisms that Wilmar constructed to make sense of, explain, and justify tensional situations between set commitments and actual performance. This study aims to demonstrate how CCO can complement COC to offer a holistic interpretive approach to understand the situated communication dynamics and discursive construction process of talk-action relationship in an international public relations context.

Keywords

Aspiration-talk, Circuit of culture, Communicative constitution of organizations, Corporate social responsibility, Discourse analysis, Tension

Discipline

Business and Corporate Communications | Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics | International Business

Research Areas

Corporate Communication

Publication

Public Relations Review

Volume

49

Issue

2

First Page

1

Last Page

11

ISSN

0363-8111

Identifier

10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.102308

Publisher

Elsevier

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2023.102308

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