Abstract
Integrated communication has expanded as a concept during the last 10 years. It is not about tightly controlling communication tactics any more, but instead it involves the strategic integration of stakeholders. On the other hand, CSR has become a common part of management practice, and CSR communication is an ongoing challenge that needs to be embedded in an overall integrated marketing communication (IMC) framework. The chapter describes the development of the recent IMC discourse, discusses the chances and challenges that IMC holds for NGO communication—and applies the IMC framework to the CSR communication of NGOs. The chapter lays out the role of NGOs in relation to businesses and focuses on the intersection of NGOs and CSR—and how this affects the communication aspect. It systematically unfolds what CSR means to NGOs and proposes a communication-collaboration challenge for NGOs in cooperating with businesses.
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Notes
- 1.
Looking, for example, at anti-Corporate Campaigns it is quite easy to figure out that the most active NGOs in these conflicts would lose their edge and of course seize to exist, if the corporation itself or the critical aspects of their behavior would have vanished (cf. Baringhorst, Kneip, Niesyto, & März, 2010).
- 2.
When Greenpeace asks for a change, they usually address the company itself. If they do not agree to enter into a discussion with Greenpeace (like in the Kitkat campaign against Swiss food company Nestlé), the next step is a public campaign.
- 3.
Identifying CSR of NGOs with self-control in terms of safeguarding the reputation and legitimacy or being transparent is only one way of applying the CSR approach to NGOs. Other authors like Waters and Ott (2014) seem to offer a broader interpretation; but if you look at the findings of their study (interviews with 17 communication managers of the San Francisco Bay area) the only descriptions for what CSR means to NGOs are “doing something for community good” and “demonstrating that the organization is accountable” (Waters & Ott, 2014, p. 13).
- 4.
The framework is similar to other literature on communication affectivity that is already more developed, namely Coombs’ (2006) SCCT model for crisis communication that has already been empirically tested and could have been a good model in terms of dealing with attribution theory. Also, the question of the interplay of variables and how they impact each other remains unmentioned.
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Rademacher, L., Remus, N. (2017). Integrated CSR Communication of NGOs: The Dilemma to Communicate and Cooperate in CSR Project Partnerships. In: Diehl, S., Karmasin, M., Mueller, B., Terlutter, R., Weder, F. (eds) Handbook of Integrated CSR Communication. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44700-1_22
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