The Public Relations Handbook, 5th Edition

Chapter 9Public relations and corporate social responsibility

Ian Somerville and Emma Wood

Chapter Aims

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a key legitimising practice and promotional activity for business organisations in contemporary society. This chapter focuses on the relationship between this increasingly important aspect of a business’s promotional culture and public relations (PR), the main communication management tool of CSR. It is a company’s PR department that usually has the task of constructing a narrative that explains and justifies the organisation’s engagement with society and therefore PR practitioners can be understood as the corporation’s key promotional intermediaries (Davies 2013). One thing that is immediately apparent ...