Constitutive Views on CSR Communication: The Communicative Constitution of Responsible Organization, Organizing, and Organizationality

This chapter provides a systematic overview of scholarship that looks at CSR from a “Communication Constitutes Organization” (CCO) perspective. One of the key tenets of CCO scholarship is that organizations emerge and are sustained in and through communication. In line with this assumption, organizations are conceptualized as inherently processual, precarious, and relational social phenomena. The chapter spells out the main implications of a constitutive understanding of the communication-organization relation for CSR research and practice. It outlines three main orientations of CCO views on CSR: (1) The communicative constitution of the organization as entity or noun (e.g., questions of how communication constructs corporations as responsible actors); (2) the communicative constitution of organizing as process or verb (e.g., how specific forms of communication, such as aspirational talk, shape organizing practices, such as CSR); and (3) the communicative constitution of organizationality as an attribute or adjective (e.g., how communication gives rise to collective action beyond the boundaries of formal organization, potentially leading to a broader understanding of CSR). The chapter closes with some concluding reflections and a future research agenda.