Abstract:
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been investigated by numerous researchers in the past decade. In addition, widespread reports of corporate crises fill the news media. Furthermore, the corporate Web site has become an image management tool used to disseminate information to publics, including CSR information.The combination of CSR, crises, and corporate Web site are investigated in this study through a content analysis of the corporate Web sites of companies currently dealing with negative press coverage and of those who were not. Specifically, the present study looks at the prominence of CSR information, amount of CSR information, and use of CSR principles and processes. Two coders analyzed the four Web sites as well as the principle and process statements provided by the researcher.Overall the findings did not show that CSR was used as a reputation-enhancing mechanism by companies who had recently received negative press coverage. While differences did occur, these were not statistically significant. However, the findings of this study are important for future research into the areas of CSR, crises, and Web site use.