How Do Companies In The Energy Sector Invite Stakeholder Engagement Through CSR Communication Strategies?

Corporate social responsibility has become an urgent topic nowadays. Following multiple ecological scandals involving huge energy conglomerates, society has started to ask private sector difficult questions: do you care about anything outside your direct commercial aims? Do you have any idea about moral duties and social problems? What really stands behind each of your controversial actions? Companies found themselves in the position when the absence of response is a global failure in terms of brand trust, brand equity and brand reputation. Their motives and communication styles will be assessed and analyzed through interpretive inductive content analysis of CSR reports. The author of this study attempts to look at this relationship through the lens of relatively new stakeholder theory developed by R.E. Freeman and assess what is really going on in the corporate sector. By assessing annual corporate sustainability reports the following fundamental questions will be addressed: (1) how do companies frame their motivation to engage stakeholders and (2) what are specific CSR communication strategies currently used by organizations, notably towards local communities? In general, this paper builds on existing ideas concerning the topic as well as attempts to fill in certain theoretical gaps for future research and managerial application.