Multiple voices shaping CSR meaning and practice

This submission will explore processes of communicative institutionalism (Cornellison et al, 2015) by focusing on how the communication of a multitude of actors in media and in organisational documents, construct new meanings and practices around CSR. Here, I present some samples of data analysis of this process to illustrate the process I use to explore this. I seek to discuss this approach in this forum, so further analysis can be conducted and the paper can be constructed to meet the call for papers in Business and Society. Some of the key approaches used in this paper are: • Theoretical frame sits within institutional theory and draws on processes of structuration to move between organisational/activist claims and new meanings of CSR • Use of Barley and Tolbert’s approach to structuration and the use of periods delineated by jolts to understand and depict shifts in institutional arrangements • Toulmin rhetorical analysis of the public claims made by each of the actors involved in communicating around CSR matters in order to understand the existing institutional frames actors draw on to argue their positions around new institutional arrangements.