TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding organizational and socio-cultural contexts
T2 - A communicative constitutive approach to social license to operate among top Hong Kong companies
AU - Mak, Angela K.Y.
AU - Chaidaroon, Suwichit (Sean)
AU - Poroli, Alessandro
AU - Pang, Augustine
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Hong Kong Government Research Fund titled Best Practice in Corporate Social Responsibility Communication: Interplay Between Macro- and Meso- Factors Among Top Asian Companies [grant number GRF/HKBU/12607318].
Publisher copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Cultural discourse analysis
KW - Engagement
KW - Legitimacy
KW - Social license to operate
KW - Socio-cultural meaning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104052869&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102055
DO - 10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102055
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85104052869
SN - 0363-8111
VL - 47
JO - Public Relations Review
JF - Public Relations Review
IS - 3
M1 - 102055
ER -