By Andrew Crane, Mette Morsing, and Dennis Schoeneborn

Companies are often criticised for failing to “walk-the-talk”, that is, spending too much time telling us about the socially responsible deeds they are going to do, but not enough time actually doing them. While undoubtedly true in some cases, this type of criticism can prevent us from seeing an important, often overlooked, aspect of such talk – that it actually is an action in its own right. In that sense, talking is not just “empty words”. Talking does things. Talking is walking – or as we prefer to say it, t(w)alking!

So what exactly do we mean by saying that talking about corporate social responsibility (CSR) is actually doing CSR? Well, imagine that a company is engaged in a dialogue with its stakeholders about what its responsibilities should be. Is this “just talking” about CSR, or also a form of doing CSR? We think the latter.

Or, consider the discussions that go on behind the scenes when people in companies talk about how they should design a CSR initiative. Are they “just talking” about CSR, or also doing CSR? Again, we think the latter.

Finally, take the case of a company CEO extolling the great CSR practices that her firm does. This may, on the surface, seem again like “just talk”, but we believe it should also be seen as a form of action, because talk in itself is “performative”. What this means is that CEOs act when they talk. That is, CEO speeches map out for stakeholders, such as employees and customers, the aspirations of companies, their goals, their motivations, and (even at a basic level) what CSR means for their companies. As a statement is being uttered, such as a promise, an explanation, or an excuse, the world is no longer the same as it was prior to the utterance. Employees and customers see new aspirations to strive for, new meanings of a position, or they forgive each other. By providing words to a situation, the situation changes.

The key point here is that CSR comes into being through talk.

It isn’t that CSR happens and then companies talk about it, or even that CSR talk lays the groundwork for CSR action. CSR is effectively created in the way we talk about it. In any large company with multiple stakeholders, there is no such thing as a single view of CSR that everyone fundamentally agrees about or understands in the same way. The boundaries, the content, and all the possibilities of CSR are wrapped up in talk and come to life through the words. So talking CSR becomes CSR action, not something separate from action.

In our new article published in Business & Society, we draw on communication studies and linguistic and socio-philosophical theories to distinguish between the different ways that talking and walking CSR have been studied. We point out the need for dedicating more attention to what we call t(w)alking, that is, the mutually-forming and simultaneous character of talk and action.

For companies and their managers, this means thinking more carefully about how their CSR talk in itself is an act that transforms the situation and thereby how the organization does social responsibility. Interestingly, the words are not only performative for the organization’s stakeholders, but also for the CEO herself. The sender of the communication – by her public declaration – is influenced and transformed by her own words. In this way, every conversation about CSR is another building block in the construction of what CSR is or can be – and even what the company is or stands for.

Our article is the introduction to a special issue on CSR communication that is published in the January 2020 issue of the journal, Business & Society. We welcome you to take a look!

References:

Schoeneborn, D., Morsing, M., & Crane, A. (2020). Formative perspectives on the relation between CSR communication and CSR practices: Pathways for walking, talking, and t(w)alking. Business & Society, 59(1), 5-33. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0007650319845091