Theories and methods in CSR communication studies. A systematic review

Purpose The aim of this paper is to provide a review about Corporate Social Responsibility Communication (CSRC) from a methodological point of view. Scholars have increasingly shown interest in this topic, however, there has been no review of how different methodologies have contributed to advancing knowledge in this field. Design/methodology/approach We searched title, abstract, and related keywords through a sets of terms related to CSR (e.g. cor- porate ethical; corporate environmental; social responsibility; corporate accountability) and Com- munication (e.g. communica*; reporting; disclosure*; dialogue*; sensemaking). We narrowed down the amount of 3173 papers resulted by the search by considering only papers published on top and field-related journals. Then we classify papers into conceptual versus empirical papers. The final dataset is made by 556 empirical papers. Findings We coded each empirical paper by: 1) the research design (qualitative, quantitative and mixed me- thods), 2) the research method in terms of type of data collection and data analysis, 4) the unit of analysis, 5) the sample and 6) the context in which the study has been conducted. Research limitations/implications Future research will delve deeper into four main areas: 1) identify the main research domains of CSR Communication literature; 2) match research domains of CSR communication literature with me- thodological approaches; 3) provide a comprehensive framework of the theories and methods avai- lable in CSRC research; 4) employ co-citation analysis and content analysis on the collected papers. Originality/value The present paper systematically reviews methods and techniques employed in the CSR Commu- nication literature.