Organizing CSR Communication: Challenges for Integrated CSR Communication from a PR and Organizational Communication Perspective

In today’s interconnected society, organizations are challenged by new “social” communication structures and internal processes of decision making, communication and sensemaking; accordingly, process and practice approaches to organizational communication as well as public relations and stakeholder management are constantly changing. In parallel, organizations are stimulated to rethink their values as corporate citizen and meet their social responsibility. Assuming that every organization related interaction can be described as process of organizational self-structuring and that, furthermore, every interaction in an organization and between organizations is operated communicatively, in this paper we state that every responsibility is allocated and taken communicatively. Inspired by core values like trust, transparency and dialogue, communication management has to be refined. At the intersection of CSR and Communication theory a new concept of integrated CSR communication arises, fueled by PR theory as well as concepts of managing responsibility. These complementarities of theoretical concepts and practical implications are discussed in this chapter.