Leveraging corporate communication by using CSR to built a meta-corporation : the role of trust and sustainability in world car manufacturing industry : an empirical exploration

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been gaining considerable attention in recent years but with low focus on corporate communication impact. Literature review on CSR evolution is essential in understanding the transition from the neoclassical approach to a prospective based on stakeholders’ expectations, where CSR adoption in corporate communication culture is an opportunity to exploit innovation and the creativity capacity of the whole system of the company. A high focus on CSR as a strategic tool of corporate communication identifies a specific form for the Post-Fordist corporation: the meta-corporation. This specific form of meta-corporation is oriented to sustain the value of all internal and external stakeholders in a complex business world: business as an ecosystem. A business ecosystem is characterize by complexity with hyper-networking and high interdependencies between agents, institutions, and governments able to create new needs regulations and governance with a high demand of transparency and trust that push extended externalities by increasing returns. Moreover, in the business ecosystem, the meta-corporation moves coupling tools of competition and tools of cooperation in order to be able to increase brand reputation in the long run for an emergent potential value working for future stable growth. It is argued that CSR is no longer an option but a must, to produce sharing value in the long run, and in particular in a complex world of growing interdependencies between both countries and business areas, and also also encourage cooperation through healthy competition. Firms are indeed required to invest in CSR as way to leverage their long-term competitiveness and sustainability rather than enhancing their social acceptability. CSR is a strategic leverage of corporate communication through which meta-corporations enlarge their capacity to mobilize creativity and create knowledge by leveraging the power of complex social networks, empowerment, and self-organization. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the significance of this claim. Therefore, we focus on the relationship between CSR and the economic and financial performance of firms. Our sample is made up of firms belonging to the car industry, and we have chosen this industry for several reasons. There is widespread and consolidated knowledge on the environmental impacts of the car industry. Business strategies are very different among firms with respect to those issues. Consumers and institutions are very sensitive about the environmental performance of products, as well as government environmental regulations in primarily industrialized countries. Therefore, it is easier to isolate and measure the role of CSR on the economic and financial performance of the firms. Our database has been selected from different sources but characterized by high coherence. From Worldscope Global Database we collected economic and financial data on US, Japanese, Korean, and Indian manufacturers. Form this database we also collected data about board members, number of employees, and capitalization. For European-based companies we used Factiva and Amadeus. AIDA has been the main source of data in the case of Italian manufacturers. Data about CSR orientation has been collected from many sources, such as ISO, EMAS, and company sustainability reports. We explore this relationship with respect to a cluster of firms belonging to same sector (world car manufacturing industry) and with similar corporate profile in order to be able to explore the representative and emergent meta-corporation profile. We retain that CSR strategy doesn’t affect indices of profitability per se but influences stakeholders’ satisfaction and makes organizations’ brand and reputation stronger, effecting stock price volatility, and long-term sustainability, and confirms a deep role of a new emergent meta-corporation in the first Fordist and global industry (the world car industry) in transition towards Post-Fordism