Do Corporations Communicate What the General Public Expects? Investigating the Gap between Corporate Self-image and Public Perceptions of Corporate Responsibility

ABSTRACT

The present article uses a multi-method approach to compare two perspectives on the responsibility of corporations: the public image and the corporate self-image. Responsibility is understood as a social construct that depends on who attributes it. This also means that people can have very different perceptions of the responsibility of corporations, all of which may not be covered by typical Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication. Moreover, corporate legitimacy can be at risk if these perspectives drift too far apart. This article presents a public survey (N = 1,003) that was conducted in Germany, as well as a content analysis of responsibility judgments (N = 498) communicated by selected German corporations. The multi-method study uses the example of the clothing and banking industries. Results show differences between the self- and public images, particularly when it comes to the prioritization of responsibility fields. The people surveyed emphasize legal responsibility objects much more than the analyzed corporations. In addition, the self-image communicated by the researched clothing manufacturers deviates more from their public image than the self-image communicated by the banks. The findings suggest that corporations, especially from the clothing industry, should take stronger evaluation, communication monitoring and stakeholder dialogues into account.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Doreen Adolph-Selke for her valuable contribution to the research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.