A Case Study of Csr Communication of Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata (steel and Power) Through Their official Website

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1. Introduction

Over the past several decades, the corporate world has experienced an increase in focus on organization’s ethical behaviours as well as responsibilities towards their environment. This is evident in the shift in focus from shareholder value to stakeholder value. The companies are now working hard in balancing people, planet and profits. This introduction in the organisation is a consequence of the fact that more power relies with stakeholders, who demand transparency in organizational communication and expect companies to acknowledge their presence and how it impact the company. These stakeholder expectations create a pressure on the companies to act responsible with regards to their external as well as internal environments.

Despite its complexities, CSR is perceived as both ethical and moral correct, as well as it is an approach believed to be benefitting all stakeholders. Nowadays, a major part of corporations assets include intangible assets such as reputation, goodwill, and human resource, which supports the claim that CSR approach is important for corporate success and meeting statutory compliances. The power of stakeholders is emphasized again since goodwill and reputation of an organisation is constituted by how stakeholders perceive an organization, i.e. how well the corporate communicates, utilising the tools. This also illustrates that CSR is an important area within public relations.

It should be acknowledged, that the personal relation theorists and practitioners have questioned the conception of CSR as an ethically correct approach. The arguments claim that CSR is not necessarily the optimal ethical approach as it is contravening the goal of maximizing shareholders wealth, which is deeply rooted in the corporate architecture. This puts corporations in a dilemma where they are facing a pressure from stakeholders, who want transparency and responsible actions, and on the other hand pressure from shareholders, who expect performance and maximization of wealth.

Stakeholder groups put major pressure on organizations to live up to the high expectations with respect to CSR. With the world being increasingly globalized, the organization, people, business environments and profit are highly interlinked. Major organizations, with great power and influence, are under an eye continuously and their actions are being scrutinized. This puts even higher pressure on such businesses to live up to the stakeholders expectations. Simply engaging in CSR activities is not enough though, but conveying the results in an effective manner is also important. Therefore, the personal relation department of an organisation must focus on framing their messages in appropriate ways and tailor them to specific stakeholder groups, and also consider what channels are to be utilized in order to accomplish an effective communication

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- Problem statement

As discussed in the above paragraphs, this study seeks to address the following problem statement:

How CSR activities are communicated by Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata (Steel and Power) through their official website.

It will be interesting to study these two companies in this relation as both Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata are successful conglomerate. Both have received a lot of attention from various stakeholders. Both the companies have been acting on increased pressure and are now engaged in several CSR activities, expressed through various communication tools on their official website. The aim is to analyze how companies have utilized various communication tools to convince various stakeholder groups, in transparent manner and meeting all the statutory compliances.

- Scientific method

The problem statement is about the relationship formed between the sender of the information and the receiver. It is the sender’s responsibility that how effectively it delivers information through its official website. The way the information is interpreted is not the focal point in the analysis, but how the content is communicated keeping in mind the user of the information. Here Mahindra & Maindra and Tata are the sender of the CSR communication, hence they both focus on the content as well as the medium used and the end user.

Based on this, the scientific approach for this study is Schleiermacher’s methodological hermeneutics (Reference 1). By applying the principles of methodological hermeneutics, the aim is reconstruction of the author’s mental status. The aim is to understand the intentions of the sender of the message. Henceforth, this approach assumes that there is only on true meaning of the text, which is delivered by the sender. On the epistemological level, this meaning can be reached through interpretation of sender’s intended meaning. This methodology defines the process of understanding parts and relating them to the whole unit through interpretation of the grammatical dimension and the psychological dimension in order to understand the intentions of the sender.

- Delimitation

Theoretically the scope of field of CSR is broad and it is more or less indefinable, as a result there are certain limitations set for this study. More or less all concepts within the public relations communication lack one blanket definition, which makes the field even broader. Consequently, the definitions of the various concepts in this report are not necessarily the most correct ones, but they have been applied due to an evaluation of a contextual fit.

In addition, the conclusions reached in this report must be viewed critically, as neither the findings, the process, nor conclusions have been validated by peer reviews. The study is solely based on communication of CSR by Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata’s official website. A company can communicate its CSR initiatives through various communication channels, therefore in order to get an exhaustive view of its communication and for this all channels must be included in the analysis. But due to page limitations, the focus of this report is only