CSR and Communication Research: Extending the Agenda

Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - 15:30

Time: Mon 17 June 9:00 – 17:00 followed by reception

Location: Cass Business School
Cost: £50 (Includes morning and afternoon refreshments, lunch and dinner)
Submission deadline: February 1, 2013 (extended abstracts)

Sponsored by Copenhagen Business School, Cass Business School and nSICE – network for Social Innovation and Civic Engagement

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Mette Morsing, Copenhagen Business School
Professor George Cheney, Kent State University
Professor Bobby Banerjee, Cass Business School
Professor Peter Fleming, Queen Mary University of London
Professor Martin Parker, University of Leicester

The pre-conference addresses the important field of enquiry, which is emerging at the cross-section between Communication Studies and Corporate Social Responsibility Research. In recent years, research on CSR has increasingly been concerned with perceptions, dispositions and actions of a wider range of stakeholders. This is pushing the field of CSR communication to extend its agenda from the hitherto dominant concern with the strategic CSR communication of companies, towards a considerably wider spectrum of questions, probing the role of business in society by investigating relations – symbolic as well as material – with various publics, as these are reflected in and constituted by communicative processes.

Perceptions of the role of business in society occupy an ambiguous and conflictory space and CSR communication is one of the emerging fields to investigate it. Research at the cross-section between CSR and communication should investigate the communicative landscape of business, not solely as a market, but as a public sphere where social and political roles and rules are under constant negotiation. To do so, research should probe the communication not only of corporations, but of NGOs, activists, government institutions, institutions of international governance etc. and include perspectives from developing countries and emerging markets. In doing this, CSR communication research should consider the implications of the mediation of technology (mass media, social media), as well as the mediation of semiotics and of power.  This endeavor requires an extension of the field from being primarily anchored in public relations, marketing, and strategic management to include the wider fields of political theory, social and cultural theory as well as philosophy of communication.

Submission and deadlines: Extended abstracts (500-1000 words) should be submitted to csrandcommunication@gmail.com no later than February 1, 2013. Notification of acceptance will be made by February 15. Deadline for registration is May 1.

Scientific organising team: Dr. Anne Vestergaard, Dr. Julie Uldam, Dr. Dennis Schoeneborn, Dr. Anne Kaun, Dr. Eleftheria Lekakis.

Contact in case of questions: Anne Vestergaard av.ikl@cbs.dk

For more information please go to the following website: http://csrandcommunication.com