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Talk is also action: New research on CSR communication

Walk-the-talk, talk-the-walk or t(w)alk? A common view is that much talk and no walk will get you nowhere – and certainly not when it comes to CSR management. You have heard it before: ‘action speaks louder than words’. But talk is not necessarily inferior to action, according to Mette Morsing, Professor and Mistra chair of sustainable markets at Stockholm School of Economics

Talk is also action, and practices are produced and reproduced in ongoing communicative action. Morsing and her colleagues Dennis Schoeneborn and Andy Crane refer to this as “t(w)alking”. 

As the emerging field of CSR grows, research has focused on the relationship between CSR communication – “talking” – and CSR practices – “walking”. But in the new article Pathways for Walking, Talking and T(w)alkingMette Morsing and her colleagues demonstrate the opportunities of integrating constructive conversation into CSR work. 

Communication plays an important role 
Based on communication studies and socio-philosophical theories, the researchers distinguishes between three different formative views on the relationship between communications and practises: walking-to-talk, talking-to-walk, and t(w)alking. 

While the notions of walking-to-talk (most basically: communication about action to account for the past) and talking-to-walk (most basically: communication drives action to new commitments in the future) are well-known processes in CSR practice and literature, the authors suggest that talk and walk actually occur simultaneously, i.e. t(w)alking. 

Rather than seeing communication and action as two separate analytical categories where one informs another in a straight timeline, the new term makes us aware how organizational practices and structures come into being in discursive practices. It is an on-going process where CSR talk and CSR walk are joined together and push the organization forward. For organizations to evolve they engage in ongoing dialogue, feedback and guidance and these communications are central in constituting structures, roles, duties and power relations of the ‘real firm’. 

- In this perspective, communication is the pivotal point to not only set a CSR agenda to make action happen, but in this communication that is where CSR emerges. It is not ‘just communication’. It is real action, says Mette Morsing. 

Highlighting diversity in the workplace 
An example of t(w)alking is, for instance, an organization that has implemented diversity management as a CSR activity. By seeing how diverse voices inspire and influence each other and the way the organization functions, we get a better understanding of how CSR as a practice cannot be separated from these on-going conversations. 

- With our notion of t(w)alking we hope to highlight the fact that CSR communication is also CSR action. By collapsing the analytical divide between communication and action, we are able to better appreciate the important role of communication for the workings of strategies, practices and other organizational action. Hopefully our findings can be used as a compass to provide directions for future theoretical research and empirical studies in CSR and beyond, says Mette Morsing.

Interview by Emilie Eliasson Hovmöller

More reading

Morsing, M. and Spence, L. (2019). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication and small and medium sized enterprises: The governmentality dilemma of explicit and implicit CSR communication. Human Relations, (OPEN ACCESS) DOI: 10.1177/0018726718804306

Christensen, L.T., Morsing, M. and Thyssen, O. (2019). Timely hypocrisy? Hypocrisy temporalities in CSR communicationJournal of Business Research,(OPEN ACCESS) 

Christensen, L. T., Morsing, M. and Thyssen, O. (2017). License to Critique: A communication view on standards.Business Ethics Quarterly, 28, 239-262 

Christensen, L. T., Morsing, Mand Thyssen, O. (2015). The polyphony of values and the value of polyphony. ESSACHESS - Journal For Communication Studies, 8, 9-25

Christensen, L. T., Morsing, M. and Thyssen, O. (2015). Discursive closure and discursive openings of sustainability. Management Communication Quarterly, 29, 135-144

Morsing, M. and Roepstorff, A. (2015). CSR as corporate political activity. Observations on IKEA’s CSR identity-image dynamics. Journal of Business Ethics, 128, 395-409 

Guthey, E. and Morsing, M. (2014). CSR and the mediated emergence of strategic ambiguity. Journal of Business Ethics, 120, 555-569 

Castello, I., Morsing, M. and Schultz, F. (2013). Communicative dynamics and the polyphony of corporate social responsibility in the network society: A communication view. Journal of Business Ethics,115, 681-692 

Christensen, L.T., Morsing, M. and Thyssen, O. (2013). CSR as aspirational talk. Organization, 20, 372-393

 

 

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