Conference Agenda

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the existence (or not) of the missing PR link in sponsorship.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative approach is taken. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with football fans who are members and season ticket holders of their team. Data collected will be processed following a thematic analysis.

Findings: Preliminary findings indicate that cynicism and apathy shadow to a good extent the relationship dimension the sponsor intends to achieve with the fans.

Research limitations: Given the limited development of measurement scales on cynicism, especially in relation to sponsorship research, a quantitative approach may not be yet followed. Being able to follow a quantitative approach would have allowed further analyses of data. In addition, the research is limited to the specific sample and time constraints.

Practical Implications: The value and necessity of PR is observed as sponsorship seems to be exploited mainly for its commercial contribution. The study clearly indicates that PR is a missing link and natural home for sponsorship. PR concepts and theory need to be utilized when investing in sponsorship.

Originality Value: The research of sponsorship from a Public Relations perspective is scarce. The vast majority of the literature explores sponsorship from an advertising or marketing lens. Moreover, the concept of cynicism in the field of sports sponsorship remains yet unexplored. This study aims to shed light on all these elements. Finally, the assertion that there is a relationship being formed between sponsor and fans is challenged.

Scepticism is becoming more prevalent surrounding organisations’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation and communication. Consumers are increasingly sceptical of CSR claims. Notwithstanding the proliferation of CSR research across various disciplines, management research over-fixates on the strategic paybacks of CSR, and less attention is devoted to why CSR is under siege. Scepticism from consumers and stakeholders is an apparent barrier to effective CSR communication, yet this managerial issue is often overlooked in both academia and practice. This study provides a scoping review to assess the status quo and frontier of CSR vis-à-vis scepticism research. This study proposes that CSR is intimately connected with the underlying issue of scepticism. The boomerang effect of CSR is, to a certain extent, a result of shortcomings surrounding the issue of consumer scepticism, and communication and public relations managers ought to take into consideration the issue of consumer scepticism against their CSR communication practice and mitigate the so-called issue accordingly.

Purpose: This study investigates the impact of different levels of greenwashing on corporate image and credibility. Greenwashing is defined as the perception of a discrepancy between a company’s claims to protect the environment and its actual actions in this regard.

Design/methodology: In a 4x2 between-subjects experiment, participants were shown a publishing company’s promise to use 90% recycled paper in its production, followed by the revelation that the actual amount of recycled paper used was either 90%, 86%, 54%, or 23%. Additionally, the pre-image of the company was manipulated by depicting it as either a popular or an unpopular employer.

Findings: Results indicate that even a small discrepancy between a company’s environmental claims and concrete actions lead to a decrease in image perception and credibility. These perceptions, however, were not influenced by a positive or negative pre-image of the company. Furthermore, the study shows that motivated reasoning and violation of expectations mediate the discovered effects.

Originality: Overall, this research highlights the importance of aligning environmental claims with actions to maintain a positive corporate image and credibility.

Purpose: The aim of our study is to provide a large-scale empirical analysis of how organizations disclose their social responsibility and CSR efforts in moral terms. Applying moral foundation theory, we investigate to what extent and how CSR communication is founded on morality. We apply a comparative perspective and investigate to what extent differences exist between the moral anchoring in CSR communication in corporate reports and the companies' country of origin.

Design/methodology/approach: We use computational text analysis to investigate English-language CSR reports issued by corporations in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 1997 and 2015.

Findings: We do not have findings yet, but we expect that all our hypotheses will be supported by the data.

Social Implications: With our investigation, we find out to what extent morality is anchored in CSR communication and how corporations, in this way, assess their actions concerning their moral quality. Our study reveals how companies (co)construct CSR and how morality becomes an instrument of a company's self-description.

Originality/value: Morality should be a crucial aspect of CSR, and moral foundations theory provides an established, well-developed, and differentiated view of it. Given the ever-growing pertinence of morality in today’s politicized societies and the role of corporations in it, it is significant and innovative to connect the two literature streams to improve our understanding of the role of morality in CSR. The application of automated text analysis allows large-scale analyses of patterns and trends over time, offering generalizable insights for the theoretical development of CSR.