Understanding organizational and socio-cultural contexts: A communicative constitutive approach to social license to operate among top Hong Kong companies

Angela K.Y. Mak*, Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Alessandro Poroli, Augustine Pang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Embracing a constitutive view of communication, this study explores how organizations in Hong Kong make sense of and negotiate their corporate societal commitment. It does that by examining how the considered organizations construct their engagement in society and talk of their aspirations on identified society-oriented doings by cultural discourse analysis. Findings show that the studied Hong Kong companies constructed their engagement by communicationally relating to other societal actors, establishing we-ness in community engagement actions, incorporating elements of the local cultures (languages and places) and in their reasoning and disclosing emotion-rich considerations. Aspirations were instead presented through a constant reference to stakeholders’ interests and concerns and local and international standards’ precepts. Companies also tended to recognize that interventions had to be undertaken steps by steps, while searching for credibility in “more-balanced” vision-statements. This study offers a socio-cultural perspective complementary to studying social license to operate in public relations research.

Original languageEnglish
Article number102055
JournalPublic Relations Review
Volume47
Issue number3
Early online date20 Apr 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2021

User-Defined Keywords

  • Cultural discourse analysis
  • Engagement
  • Legitimacy
  • Social license to operate
  • Socio-cultural meaning

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