Answering the sub-question 3: What IT industry-specific characteristics of CSR can be recognized?
The thematic analysis within a sample organization’s CSR reports gives an insight into the themes (table 9) that are valuable for an IT organization and should also be emphasized in the CSR management framework.
When analyzing the results, it can be stated that most of the CSR actions made are corporate philanthropy. Philanthropic actions must not benefit only the society but also the organization itself. (Carrol, 1991, 42) This refers to the concept of shared value (Porter & Kramer, 2011) which means that CSR should be seen as a concept creating economic value in a way that also creates value for the society (Porter &
Kramer, 2011). When looking at figure 3, which visualizes the CSR hierarchy, it can be concluded that many of the CSR investments are also aiming to create better business results at the same time with CSR related investments (Carrol, 1991).
Notably, in the theme 1, the philanthropy is present. The technology as a solution -subtheme includes the idea that fundamentally the business is developing social wellbeing in the community, efficiency, create savings, environmentally friendly solutions and embraces the growth. This how, IT can contribute to the business innovation and wealth generation that affect business organizations, societies, and nations (Elliot & Binney, 2008).
In the theme 2, investing into employees, all sub-themes can be considered to represent philanthropy with regarding the benefits of the organization. Also, all companies state that employees are the most valuable asset for the organization.
Companies are promoting diversity, creating career opportunities and promoting better health. They are trying to affect the employee positively, but also another reason is that the good treatment of employees may develop and maximize their potential for the organization (Ashridge Centre for Business and Society, 2005, 11-12.) Also, the sample companies state a caring organization attracts professionals and increase the employee engagement which is crucial for the business success.
In the theme 3, the collaboration with stakeholders, when involved in the CSR, the employees can use their potential for advocating, complying, participating and even leading the CSR engagement (Rupp, Williams, & Aguilera, 2011). All sample companies are involving both internal and external stakeholders into CSR actions to create engagement and also to develop the level of use of technology, skills of technology or innovations. Better engagement may have a positive association with employees’ organizational identification, loyalty boosterism, interpersonal helping and personal industry behavior (Farooq, Rupp & Farooq, 2017, 980). Also, organizations having employees’ volunteering programs are stated to be deriving by the sense of control mutuality because it gives employees feeling that their opinions and inputs are taken into consideration. This enhances the perceptions of control with the organization. (Dhanesh, 2014, 1-154)
Thus, in addition to the themes that are relevant for CSR in the IT industry, it can be stated that the industry is making philanthropic investments into CSR. However, there are also themes that can be set in between the economic and philanthropic stages in the CSR hierarchy pyramid (figure 3). The data protection is seen as a human right which represents the ethical responsibility in the pyramid (figure 3), but at the same time, legal responsibilities hold. It is not voluntary neither from the legal or ethical point of views to do business. Thus, investing in data protection is field specific and must do, before investing in the philanthropy.
Answering the sub-question 4: How to develop CSR strategy forward with stakeholders in the IT field?
The interests of stakeholders might go beyond the organizations’ self-interest, which is why modern companies have become increasingly involved in interactive, collaborative and mutually engaged relationships with stakeholders to develop CSR strategy further. (Lim & Greenwood, 2017, 768, 774, 775) Especially marketing actions such as cause-related marketing and corporate social marketing require high stakeholder engagement (Abitbol & Lee, 2017, 797). Furthermore, stakeholder engagement as a communication strategy seems to be effective in achieving three CSR goals: business, employee and community goals from a managerial perspective. (Lim & Greenwood, 2017, 768) Thus, the sub-question four was investigated by analyzing the companies’ CSR posts and amounts of interactions on Facebook.
In Facebook, the amount of CSR related posts is high. On average, 44% of the posts are related to the CSR issues which state a relatively good presence of the CSR communication in the social media. Even though the number of CSR posts is high, the sample companies on the IT field are facing difficulties to engage followers into an interactive conversation. The average of the comments per post is two which cannot be considered as an interactive communication that could provide an insight for the further CSR strategy development.
Also, the amount of post likes is relatively low. If the average number of followers 2 million, and one posts reach 70 likes on average, the engagement rate drops to near 0. The number of shares is eight times higher than the number of comments which states that people are not interested in sharing their point of views with the company itself but rather with their friends and followers. The interactions in the shared posts are not included in the research.
It seems that even though there is a growing need for business organizations to make CSR investments, there are multiple barriers that need to be conquered in communication. One challenge is globalization that disconnects organizations from places and makes the communication difficult (Mazutis & Slawinski, 2015, 148) Microsoft has tried to conquer this issue by creating local Facebook pages and engaging local communities with local language and local focus.
At the moment, most of the posts also link to the information source either on the company’s websites or external websites. By analyzing the social media posts on Facebook. It can be concluded that all the Facebook posts have visual and text content that promote a CSR related activities or engagement. Also, new communication strategies could be implemented to create interactive discussion with stakeholders. By using social media more effectively, the IT organizations should meet three requirements: (1) the engagement of stakeholders, (2) recognition of the value of other and (3) empathy with stakeholders and stake seekers (Kent & Taylor, 2016, 64-65).
One emerging trend of CSR communication is setting up CSR dedicated social networking websites with the goal to share information about CSR initiatives (Abitbol
& Lee, 2017, 797). This was excluded from the content research, and the focus was only on the main company Facebook pages. Usually, many followers of CSR dedicated Facebook pages are employees themselves and employee and workplace-related posts significantly increase the engagement in social media (Abitbol & Lee, 2017, 802). Also, it is suggested that to build ethical CSR relationship via social media; the communication should be moved away from advertising, marketing, and brand promotion and focus on the human aspect of communication.
(Kent & Taylor, 2016, 66) Thus, it can be concluded that the social media posts should focus on employees to gain more interaction and avoid “greenwashing.”
The research is giving somewhat biased results because the engagement of the IBM is manipulating the averages numbers of engagements. However, the research reflects the diversity of the social media strategy. IBM has fewer followers than Microsoft (Finland), Indra and SAP but scores the best in the post engagement.
Thus, the success in creating engagement with the followers is significantly higher in IBM than in other organizations.
5. CREATING A CSR FRAMEWORK FOR IT INDUSTRY
In this part of the research, the results are discussed more carefully to develop the final framework for the strategical CSR management in the IT field. In the second part, the framework is drawn and explained more carefully.