Abstract

EIRO-GOMES, Mafalda  and  RAPOSO, Ana. The role of public relations professionals in corporate social responsability: some notes from the Portuguese reality. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2020, vol.spe2020, pp.89-107. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.0(2020).2742.

Are public relations (PR) professionals involved in the decision-making processes concerning corporate citizenship (CC) or are they only asked to report the organizations' best practices? Are organizations committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate citizenship? In the framework of a pragmatist paradigm, a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach was developed. This method is a two-phase design that is characterized by an initial quantitative phase of data collection and analysis, followed by a qualitative phase of data collection and analysis. An invitation to answer an online survey was sent to all 158 organizations that belonged to an association for the promotion of CSR in Portugal (Grace), in October 2018. Afterwards, face-to-face interviews with the CSR/CC responsible were conducted to those organizations that answered the survey. The research showed that the social (philanthropic) area emerged as the most relevant one in all the organizations interviewed, even though the area seems to be under strong reformulations. Corporations tend to choose CSR as the main concept and dislike the concept of corporate citizenship, that is, the idea of being both a social and political actor. PR practitioners seem to have fewer responsibilities than those the researchers expected to find out, at least at a strategic level.

Keywords : public relations; corporate citizenship; corporate social responsibility.

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