Storytelling and corporate social responsibility reporting: A case study commentary on U.K . food retailers
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Stories, in one form or another, are probably as old as the human race, but in recent years, businesses have increasingly come to recognise the importance of storytelling. The aim of this paper is to offer an exploratory commentary on how storytelling is employed in the corporate social responsibility reporting process by the leading U.K. food retailers. The paper begins with an outline of the characteristics of storytelling within the corporate world, reviews the ways storytelling is employed by the U.K.'s top 10 food retailers' as part of their corporate social responsibility reporting processes. The paper identifies a number of storytelling formats, including photographs and images, video clips, messages, and cameo case studies, used by the selected U.K. food retailers, and offers some reflections on their current approaches to storytelling. Although the stories employed by the selected retailers often have a strong human impact and can strike emotive chords, the authors would argue that stories can, at least partly, be misleading in that they do not necessarily fully reflect a retailer's corporate social responsibility record.
Source: Journal of Public Affairs
DOI: 10.1002/pa.1834
Authors: Peter Jones, Daphne Comfort
Institution: University of Gloucestershire
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2808543768