Corporate social responsibility: WalMart, Maersk and the cultural bounds of representation in corporate web sites
Corporate Communications: An International Journal
ISSN: 1356-3289
Article publication date: 6 February 2007
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to analyze strategies used to communicate CSR to public audiences via the internet in Maersk and WalMart in order to examine the influence of national culture from the headquarters of each of these global corporations. The purpose of the paper is to further understanding about how CSR is framed and developed within the cultural bounds of a given nation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper extends Donaldson and Preston's model of interaction between the corporation and its stakeholders through a cultural systems approach. The notion of cultural systems is combined with three of Roome's CSR agendas – diversity, sustainable environment, and community involvement/corporate philanthropy – to examine presentations of corporate social responsibility on Maersk and Walmart corporate web sites.
Findings
The consequences in corporate web site discourse about CSR in Maersk and WalMart are strikingly different. With respect to all three CSR agendas, the WalMart site includes a more detailed explanation of its efforts, rooted in local communities in the USA. In contrast, the Maersk site CSR section includes less detail, and a focus on efforts mainly in communities outside of Denmark. These differences in discourse imply different expectations from the public emerging from cultural system differences in the USA and Denmark. Thus, even though WalMart is not necessarily more involved with CSR efforts than Maersk, it has a greater need to express its CSR activities in detail due to the differences in expectations rooted in the US and Danish cultural systems.
Originality/value
Introducing an approach for understanding corporation‐stakeholder interactions and the expression of corporate social responsibility to the public via corporate web sites as situated in cultural systems.
Keywords
Citation
Kampf, C. (2007), "Corporate social responsibility: WalMart, Maersk and the cultural bounds of representation in corporate web sites", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 41-57. https://doi.org/10.1108/13563280710723741
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited