Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities substantially impact a company’s reputation. As companies increasingly embrace social media to communicate CSR activities, they face the challenge of selecting the appropriate message source. In this context, this paper examines the role of message source in the relationship between CSR communication and corporate reputation.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between complexity, tacit knowledge, know-how, perception, and perception on business performance, and to suggest management implications for corporate performance and organizational executives. Therefore, the implications of this study are as follows. First, corporate representatives and staff in charge of organization should be able to access various information and contents through various routes about the work of members of the organization, and should make efforts to freely communicate among members. Second, corporate representatives and organizational practitioners should consider using the traditional methods of communication within their work, but allowing more informed and inmates to do more off-the-job activities that can increase intimacy with each other. Third, corporate representatives and organizational practitioners should provide a situation in which they can acquire work knowledge in a variety of ways, but must devise communication methods to increase information sharing and information value among members. Fourth, corporate representatives and organizational practitioners should endeavor to provide employees with educational support, family invitation events, awards and bonuses, and compliments that will make them more interested in their work. Lastly, corporate representatives and organizational practitioners are encouraged to maintain effective communication, employee pride, etc., so that the concentration of work, achievement, quality and productivity of work, and high professionalism can be maintained. You will have to work hard.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is generally regarded as good and necessary to inform stakeholders of a company’s CSR deeds. However, research has recently uncovered the practice of “greenhushing” within the context of the hospitality industry (Coles, Warren, Borden, & Dinan, 2017; Font, Elgammal, & Lamond, 2017). Greenhushing means that companies de-emphasize green credentials and CSR activities. Going on holidays is an indulgent act that might result from people feeling they have earned some luxury, including behaving lavishly in terms of resource consumption and responsible behavior. Thus, curtailing this indulgent, irresponsible guest behavior without compromising a guest’s holiday experience is a key challenge for hotels. This paper explores whether the assumption that customers do not want to hear about CSR communication while on holiday is true from the customers’ side and what type of communication achieves to curtail unethical behavioral intentions. Based on 594 usable responses from an online survey, we undertake a moderation analysis with a multi-categorical antecedent variable (different communication stimuli), pro-environmental identity as a moderator and behavioral intentions for “unethical” behavior as a dependent variable using PROCESS 3.0 for SPSS (Hayes, 2018). The results provide partial support for our theoretical predictions.

Introduction In the last decade, the concepts of responsible or sustainable luxury (Vigneron & Johnson 2004; Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007; Kapferer, 2010; Janssen, Vanhamme, Lindgreen & Lefebvre, 2014) and digital or online luxury (Kim & Ko, 2010; 2012; Okonkwo, 2005; 2009; 2010; Mosca, Civera & Casalegno, 2018) have started receiving considerable attention, as separate areas of study. Scholarship shows that communicating CSR is more and more of a strategic decision (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001) that needs to balance promises and performances of social instances (de Ven, 2008; Pomering & Donilcar, 2009; Hur, Kim & Woo, 2014;) and to impact on the audience positively through content, placement and motives of CSR messages (Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009; Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). Furthermore, with the explosion of digital contents and use, communicating CSR is even more challenging and firms increase their exposure to judgments of their real conduct (Christodoulides, Jevons & Blackshaw, 2011). Luxury players make an interesting case of investigation for the digital CSR communication, as they are peculiar both in the use of the online and in the implementation and communication of CSR (Vigneron & Johnson 2004; Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007; Kapferer and Bastien, 2009; Janssen et al., 2014). Despite some exploratory researches underline that luxury consumers are not so likely to see consistency between luxury and CSR (Davies et al., 2012) and yet, the communication of those activities can turn their perception negatively (Torelli et al., 2012), latest findings from empirical studies on luxury consumers show a growing interest in the communication of sustainability on the online (Janssen et al., 2014). However, few studies consider how consumers react and modify their perception in regard to CSR messages spread online, within luxury markets. This research has twofold aims. Firstly, it investigates the state of the art of leading international luxury players‟ CSR digital communication through the application of a theoretical framework developed by the authors for qualitative analysis of digital CSR communication contents, placement and purpose. Secondly, it explores luxury consumers‟ perception over specific digital CSR communications in order to verify whether and if there is consistency between CSR digital communication and consumers‟ reactions within luxury markets as well as underline emerging peculiarities in the way CSR is – and is expected to be – communicated online by luxury players. Theoretical development Creating experiences on the online became the imperative for luxury players (Okonkwo, 2010). This need is strengthened by luxury consumers, who are more willing to take part in the process of sharing brands‟ values through the online platforms, in a challenging multi-channel logic (Rifkin, 2000; Mosca et al., 2013). Luxury players seem to strive more than others to modify and integrate their products offer and communication on the online, because they have to adapt to a “pop” culture without losing their unique character and exclusivity (Aiello & Donvito, 2005) that can be, as some scholars suggest, identified with certain characteristics of sustainability and social responsibility (Janssen et al., 2014). The main contribution of this study is to allow a convergence between “responsible luxury” and “online luxury” by advancing the theoretical understanding of digital CSR communication within luxury markets, in terms of peculiarities, customers‟ perceptions and effectiveness. Research Design The study makes use of a theoretical framework for qualitative evaluation of web CSR communication previously developed by the authors, that is, in the context of the present research, enriched to include a qualitative investigation of all digital CSR messages (including web and social media). Firstly, the study applies the framework to 100 International luxury brands (representative of the principal luxury fashion-related personal products categories) selected from luxury reports by Deloitte, Reputation Institute and Interbrand in order to qualitative evaluate contents, placement and purposes of digital CSR messages. The qualitative evaluation is developed by the authors through the identification of KPIs reflecting the themes emerged in the framework, analysis of their frequency and Chi square test. Secondly, the study involves 400 luxury consumers within mature markets, who are tested around their perception of digital CSR communication of luxury players. The investigation over their reactions and perception of digital CSR messages is conducted through an online questionnaire and several focus groups. Statistical regression model, t-stat and comparison among the responses provided by consumers through the survey are conducted to analyse responses and match the data. Results and Conclusion Results show the that majority of the investigated players are extensively considering CSR as a core digital strategy, pointing out the growing communication of luxury goods that increased sustainability and social responsibility throughout the whole supply chain. The investigation on customers‟ perception outlines some discrepancies between players‟ communication and customers‟ reactions, showing several cases of misjudgements. On the one hand, some players fails in achieving customers‟ expectations and the actual raking of their digital CSR communication does not match the level of given perception. On the other hand, some digital CSR communications succeeds in creating positive overreactions, despite having previously evaluated as the minimum requirement as for CSR implementation and communication. Accordingly, some suggestions to managers are developed, not just around the three considered attributes of digital CSR communication (content, placement and purposes) but also around the context of buying behaviours linked to the core business and the brand values, which can be, somehow, strongly associated with sustainability and social responsibility. In particular, it emerges that luxury digital CSR communication is expected to be an integrated strategy between online and offline channels, focused upon facts, numbers, performances and results of CSR that should show high coherency with the luxury core business.