Academic writing as autocommunication – the case of doctoral dissertations on CSR

Abstract

In this article, we explore the self‐oriented rather than socially‐oriented reasons why a doctoral dissertation in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is written. We base our article on Yuri M. Lotman’s idea on autocommunication which we use as tool in analysing a group interview conducted with six doctoral students studying in the field of CSR. We suggest that autocommunicational aspects might play a much more important role in rationalized Western culture and science than is often realized, and our main thesis is that one essential reason for writing a doctoral dissertation in the field of CSR might be to communicate with oneself and that this even might contain a therapeutic dimension. Implications for students, supervisors and future research are discussed at the end of the article.

Keywords:

• autocommunication
• corporate social responsibility
• thesis
• writing
• organization theory

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Karoliina Malmelin, Frans Prenkert and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. In the article we use the term CSR in a rather broad sense (see Garriga and Melé 2004), though our focus is centred on the environmental and social aspects of the concept.

2. By our use of therapy/therapeutic in this article, we aim to amplify the potential importance of what is later referred to as the second mode of communication. We do not refer to therapy in a medical sense, as a treatment for a diagnosed illness, although there is an established discourse on writing as therapy in the medical sense that could be relevant here (cf. Wright and Chung, 2001), indicating that writing could be a ‘powerful therapeutic technique’ (Esterling et al. 1999, 94). Instead, we here use therapy in a broader sense (cf. Ahonen, 2001). For us, as for Greene (1980), therapy is a way of coping with one’s emotions and frustrations over a certain area or areas.

3. By this we do not mean that there are no such scholars in other areas of interest as well. We are just being careful not to generalize too much here.

4. Weick (2004) makes excellent use of smoke and crystal as metaphors when writing about discourse. Even though his point is to some extent different from ours, we share the idea that the smoke is underestimated by scholars. We also cannot help but think of this metaphor in terms of the link between burning fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect.

5. By the expressions ‘Western cultural hemisphere’ and ‘Western culture’ we refer to cultures rising from the historical European heredity, including, for instance, the US, Canadian and Australian cultures as well as the modern Western European cultures. Moreover, as often suggested, the underlying assumptions of Western culture, such as instrumental rationality, has also dominated modern science.

6. Adopted and modified from Lotman (1977) and Broms and Gahmberg (1983, 485).

7. Adopted and modified from Lotman (1990, 22) and Broms and Gahmberg (1983, 485).

8. All the interviewees were writing their doctoral thesis on the environmental and/or social aspects of business.

9. While the term ‘focus group interview’ is often used in research and methodological literature, we prefer to use the shorter expression ‘group interview’.