Special issue in Journal of Business Ethics on Responsible Business in Social Media
Professor Mette Morsing (CBS), Associate Professor Friederike Schultz (CBS and VU University of Amsterdam) and Assistant Professor Itziar Castello (CBS), published in a special issue of Journal of Business Ethics on "Responsible Business in Social Media: Towards New Forms of Interaction?"
02/27/2014
"Communicative Dynamics and the Polyphony of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Network Society"
This special issue deals with how the rise of social media and the mediatization of organizations are influencing business in society relations. Via cyberspace societies are undergoing a fundamental transformation, and today the combination of traditional and new media constitutes a current social reality, where social media (e.g. facebook, blogs and twitter) interact with traditional media (e.g. newspapers and magazines) in a race to set the agenda for an ongoing daily description of society. While it has been a general assumption that social media will provide a voice to the “voice-less” and equip protest actors to become more powerful and disruptive of corporate legitimacy and corporations to be better aligned with their stakeholders, the technological optimistism attached to such assumptions, seem to be challenged faced with empirical reality. In this special issue, papers discuss the hopes, potentials and challenges of social media in the context of responsible management, where questions are raised as to what extent social media actually brings more participation, deliberation, and critical engagement in business-society relations.