Corporate core values and social responsibility: What really matters to whom

TL;DR

This paper investigates stakeholder interests in corporate core values, especially CSR, using big data and social network analysis on Italian tweets, revealing varying stakeholder priorities and less attention to CSR than expected.

Contribution

It introduces the Semantic Brand Score combined with social network analysis to measure stakeholder interest in corporate values from social media data.

Findings

Stakeholders prioritize customer and employee values over CSR.

CSR receives less attention than expected among stakeholders.

Different stakeholder groups have distinct interests in corporate core values.

Abstract

This study uses an innovative measure, the Semantic Brand Score, to assess the interest of stakeholders in different company core values. Among others, we focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) core value statements, and on the attention they receive from five categories of stakeholders (customers, company communication teams, employees, associations and media). Combining big data methods and tools of Social Network Analysis and Text Mining, we analyzed about 58,000 Italian tweets and found that different stakeholders have different prevailing interests. CSR gets much less attention than expected. Core values related to customers and employees are in the foreground.