Corporate Social Responsibility Communication Through Corporate Websites: A Comparison of Leading Corporations in the United States and China

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a discourse constructed through the constant dialogue and negotiation between corporations and their different stakeholders. This article examines how leading corporations in the United States and China discuss the rationales, themes, and practices of CSR on their corporate websites through a quantitative content analysis. The results, based on data collected in 2008, indicate that leading U.S. companies demonstrate a higher level of comprehensiveness and standardization in their CSR communication, while Chinese companies in different industries take distinctive approaches to CSR. However, the differences between the CSR discourses of leading Chinese and U.S. companies have greatly diminished since 2008. Updated data collected in 2012 show that the Chinese companies have adopted an all-inclusive and homogeneous approach in CSR communication, which is very similar to the approach taken by their U.S. counterparts. Such convergence is attributed to the process of institutionalization, especially to the forces of coercive and mimetic isomorphism.